Speciation in real time and historical-archaeological and its absence in geological time
Sodré Gonçalves de Brito Neto1, Everton Fernando Alves2*
1Departament of Geology, Federal University of Goias, UFG, Brazil.
2Departament of Biotechnology, genetics and cell biology, State University of Maringá, UEM, Paraná, Brazil.
*Corresponding author. E-mail: evertonando@hotmail.com Tel:+5544998416858
ABSTRACT
For decades the evolutionary biology has made efforts to understand the meaning of "species" and explain the training process. Currently, there are over twenty different concepts of species. The use of different concepts leads to improper and misleading comparisons. On the other hand, catastrophic biologists for decades used the term "type" or "group" for what they consider categories of organisms not genetically related. Thus, each of the various categories of species, subspecies and varieties seen today were designed to diversify a basic common ancestor type. Morphological patterns around the genus taxon was identified with ancestral fossils buried in a catastrophic recent basic; this model tells us a story of a period of: 1) rapid speciation, 2) stay with high number of species in a stable environment (fossil replay without environmental evolutionary pressures), 3) disaster followed by massive burial of population alive evidenced by the repetition of the same fossil species (which detracts punctuality), 4) presence of several different species together in the fossil record, lots of vertebrate fossils (which features disaster of great magnitude and high rates of sedimentation), and 5) drastic environmental changes causing radiation of species in samples of recent layers and in millions of species in the current biodiversity.
Keywords: Basic types ancestors, catrastrophism, rapid speciation, morphological stasis, punctualism.
INTRODUCTION
In recent centuries, evolutionary biology has made efforts to understand the meaning of "species" and explain their formation process. Currently, there are over twenty different concepts of species (de Queiroz, 2005). The use of different concepts leads to comparisons under different criteria. However, such imprecision at the taxonomic end (species taxon) leads us to define in more comprehensive taxonomic ranks. In this work, we will consider the MPGT rank (morphological patterns around the genus taxon) as a reference.
Many of the species and their variations observed today reflect the same morphological patterns around the taxon belonging to the genus level. Morphological patterns around the genus taxon (MPGT) are therefore what we consider as the peculiar characteristics of the original basic types currently present in most species and their variations found in nature (Eldredge and Stanley, 1984). Many species and their variations living today reflect similar morphological patterns. The stability of those same fossil morphological patterns, even with an increasing number of species, encourages us to formulate important questions to be considered in this paper.
The thesis of basic ancestor kinds (Marsh, 1941) was supported by the fact that the fossil record present low variability (morphological stasis) and low radiation of fossil species (Zimmerman, 1960; Martens, 1997; Albrecht and Wilke, 2008; Alisson, 2013), regardless of their respective plasticity or phenotypic or genotypic malleability (Ghalambor et al., 2015). In addition, other factors that support the thesis of basic ancestor kinds are over 4229 well-documented genus of "living fossils" that are so called because they have undergone few changes over time, therefore remaining similar to those found in the fossil record (Romer, 1966; Whitmore, 2013a; Whitmore, 2013b). Probably reflecting the ideas of his time, Darwin quoted that deduction when wrote: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. In England the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, afterwards Dean of Manchester, in the fourth volume of the 'Horticultural Transactions,' 1822, and in his work on the 'Amaryllidaccæ' (1837, p. 19, 339), declares that "horticultural experiments have established, beyond the possibility of refutation, that botanical species are only a higher and more permanent class of varieties." He extends the same view to animals. The Dean believes that single species of each genus were created in an originally highly plastic condition, and that these have produced, chiefly by intercrossing, but likewise by variation, all our existing species. Rafinesque, in his 'New Flora of North America,' published in 1836, wrote (p. 6) as follows:—‘All species might have been varieties once, and many varieties are gradually becoming species by assuming constant and peculiar characters:' but farther on (p. 18) he adds, ‘except the original types of ancestors of the genus.’"(Darwin, 1859: 554).
When we speak of morphological stasis in the fossil record, we refer to the sedimentary layers between the Ediacaran/Cambrian until close to the layers of the Pleistocene period, as demonstrated by several publications based on the theory of punctuated equilibrium (punctualism) proposed by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Gould (Levinton and Chris, 1980; Woodruff, 1980; Williamson, 1981; Eldredge, 1986; Van Bocxlaer and Hunt, 2013), and not to the recent layers where the variation radiates in a wide range of modifications.
The morphological patterns linked to the genus taxon can be observed in the fossil record appearing suddenly in all sedimentary layers, with expressive appearance in the Cambrian and abrupt emergence without gradualism throughout the entire geologic column, although with a surprising repetition pattern. Such a finding has been published for decades by supporters of punctualism that accept morphological stasis and radiation resulting in speciation only in the most recent geological layers (Levinton and Chris, 1980; Woodruff, 1980; Williamson, 1981; Eldredge, 1986; Van Bocxlaer and Hunt, 2013).
A recent evolutionary study corroborates this statement by saying that: "The dominating view of evolution based on the fossil record is that established species remain more or less unaltered during their existence. Substantial evolution is on the other hand routinely reported for contemporary populations, and most quantitative traits show high potential for evolution. These contrasting observations on long- and short-time scales are often referred to as the paradox of stasis, which rests on the fundamental assumption that periods of morphological stasis in the fossil record represent minimal evolutionary change." (Voje, 2016).
Thus, this article has as object of study three observed and well documented facts: sudden fossil emergence, morphological stasis with repetition of the same fossil species and burst of adaptive radiation revealing all the potential for plasticity and malleability of the phenotypes and genotypes of living beings.
The speciation and variations which, as we have seen, fit the MPGT can be observed occurring in real and historical-archaeological time, but are absent in the same proportion in the fossil record. That becomes relevant as we understand the reproductive success of variations and its stability along the time, since variation around genus does not require large bio-transformations, but should occur anyway in the fossil samples, but such variations are supposed to happen, with increasing stability and reproductive success (with the exception of extinct). Surprisingly, today we have nearly the same number of bodily patterns among the nearly 2 million living species already cataloged (estimated between 9 and 100 million) and the almost negligible 300,000 fossil species from Cambrian/Ediacaran to Pleistocene (Woodmorappe, 2000; Sadava et al., 2009; Mora et al., 2011; Catalogue of Life, 2016). Comparing morphological patterns one expects a significantly larger number of MPGT in the fossil record if it corresponds to a sample of the biodiversity during 544 million years of the Phanerozoic eon. Therefore, the fact that the number of current species, in the millions, cannot overcome the number of bodily patterns present in the fossil record suggests evolution bounded on the morphological patterns or basic ancestor kinds (baraminology) or MPGT.
Subtypes of rapid speciation
We understand speciation in real time as a phenomenon in which two or more populations of the same species change in new arrangements of pre-existing genetic information, caused by geographical barriers and mass death, but in a time frame such that the entire process can be observed, from start to finish.
We can also classify the speciation process in two ways: real-time or historical-archaeological time. Speciation in real time is that of bio-modifications limited to basic kind, equivalent to a new "species" emerging quickly, observed ̶ for experimentation or non-controlled observation ̶ in 50 years. Speciation in historical time, on the other hand, refers to bio-modifications equivalent to a new "species" above 50 years which may or may not be observed in the lifetime of the observer or research project. In such cases, there are 50% of chance of direct observation and the remaining 50% depend on deduction, for example, from chromosomal analysis and calculations of radiation rates (Trivedi, 2000).
The role of genetic drift in the process of speciation
There are several mechanisms involved in the process of speciation (epigenetics, genetic drift, natural selection and geomagnetic forces in crossover, etc). Due to the fact that speciation is closely related to genetic drift and the consequent loss of gene pool from a previous population, studies on the basic ancestors model (ABRC) that suggest real-time speciation become fundamental in explaining the current evidence of limits to adaptation in different living organisms (Bell, 2013).
Genetic drift is a mechanism that changes randomly and suddenly – due to disasters or isolation processes, for example, − the allele frequencies of a population (Ridley, 2006; Freeman and Herron, 2009). On the other hand, it is believed that natural selection is directed, that is, eliminates many deleterious mutations, necessary changes get lost together, ignores neutral and deleterious mutations (mainly those manifested after reproductive period), selects remaining or useful pre-existing characteristics or the ones conveyed as an epigenetic response to the environment (Sanford, 2014). However, as stated by the American biologist Lynn Margulis, "Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create." (Teresi, 2011: 68).
Furthermore, due to the fact that genetic drift idoes not distinguish distinguish between good and bad genes, and that the natural selection filter also fails, the result is loss of genetic variation, leaving the species genetically poor and "increasingly close to extinction". In other words, genetic drift the gene pool of a population and natural selection handles to some extent what has left. It is known that the effect of genetic drift is the the more significant the smaller the population is and may appear at different times in the history of mankind. In this sense, it is possible that the drift had a fundamental and predominant role over natural selection with regard to the rapid speciation process after a major disaster.
The speciation process after disasters
Major disasters around the world are the cause of most sedimentary layers present in the globe, which are associated with massive flooding and destruction across the planet (Souza, 2008). The consequences of mass death, endogamous stress in surviving species and geographic isolation, besides other factors, result in very favorable conditions for rapid speciation (Wilmer et al., 2011). The ABRC model advocates the burial of the biodiversity of the entire planet by spontaneous stratification in marine transgressions and regressions, followed by rapid speciation by evolution engines (Berthault, 1986, 1988, 1998, 2013; Brand and Tang, 1991; Snelling, 1997; Chadwick and Spencer, 2006).
The ABRC model of quick formation of sedimentary layers predicts a moment when a few surviving humans and animals isolated by such disasters (with global magnitude and energy) would have started to repopulate the land; and subsequent drifts and endogamous stress were bound to happen, exactly as one observes in Denisovan species (Prüfer et al., 2013) and in the foundations of ethnicities of similar biotypes dwelling upon dissimilar fossil halogroups such as Mongolian-like people in Americas upon dissimilar negroid fossils in Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Mexico. It was also observed in China, with Mongols dewelling over Caucasion fossils both in terms of human ethnicities and thousands of other living beings similar among themselves and isolated from their relatives.
In this context, real-time speciation legitimizes the model of a recent "evolutionary leap" with two bio-differentiating peaks related to episodes from the beginning of human genetic entropy (Fu et al., 2013) after the corresponding catastrophes that would empoverish the gene pool of living beings and would give the survivors the legacy of founder effect as a result of migration and geographical isolation--a frequent situation in peripatric speciation − on a planet with a totally reconfigured ecosystem where the epigenetic mechanism would work to match nrrds in the new environment (Ridley, 2006; Eakin, 2014; Weyrich et al., 2016).
Peripatric speciation is a mechanism by which we can explain the huge increase in post-disaster diversification. It is a type of speciation by which new species are formed in isolated peripheral populations (Ridley, 2006). In peripatric speciation, drastically reduced populations make complete speciation to be the most likely outcome of geographic isolation, because genetic drift acts more quickly in small populations. Genetic drift added to strong selective pressures would cause a rapid genetic change in small population of descendants (Wilmer et al., 2011).
Observations in the present can serve as an example to understand better the cases of peripatric speciation. A recent study states that "an analysis of more than 2,000 species of birds provides an insight into how various forms of beak evolved and points to a single rare event as a trigger for rapid initial divergence of avian lineages" (Bhullar, 2017). All this succession of facts can be glimpsed through a scenario where most organisms destroyed by these major associated and consequent disasters, remaining only small populations of survivors (Wilmer et al., 2011).
According to a report published by Folha de São Paulo about this finding,"what seemed to fascinate most other biologists, however, is the high speed with which the phenomenon of character displacement occurred. 'I believed it would take much longer' commented on 'Science' the biologist David Pfening, from the University of North Carolina. The average reduction of 5% in the size of beak, considered drastic by biologists, occurred in about a year, practically from one generation to the next" (Folha de s. Paulo, 2006).
The surprise of the evolutionary biologists with the discovery of this new phenomenon occurs due to lack of understanding of other coadjuvant mechanisms that work on those bio-modifications limited to the basic kind, such as Epigenetics and energy and thermal affecting the crossover (Fondon and Garner, 2004; Eakin, 2014). According to Dr. Jean K. Lightner, there seems to be three mechanisms for the variations associated with adaptive radiation: 1) hybridization, 2) mutation and 3) environmental screening of ancestral alleles (by natural selection mechanisms and meiotic drift) (Lightner, 2016). These observations, even if they do not significantly increase the debt of missing links in punctualistic Paleontology, it greatly increases the debt of fossil taxonomic variabilization for the historical-geological model that assumes at least five major catastrophes separated by millions of years in the history of Earth.
An interesting detail is that research related to real-time speciation both support Darwin’s observations in functional biology (punctuated equilibrium) and utterly destroys the evolutionary postulates in terms of geological periods (phyletic gradualism) and it is perfectly compatible with the biblical catastrophist model that bets at rapid speciation driven by the effect of bio-modifications limited to the basic kind.
Baraminology and the study of "basic kinds"
There is a very fluent communication between the biological Darwinism and the ABRC biological model, where many use evolutionary discoveries, such as real-time speciation, to get closer to the historicity of a short period of time and using the recent radiation as justification for the whole biodiversity. The synthetic theory of evolution, more specifically acting on the biological realm, that teaches differentiation of species, in this context, has low discord among the most advanced classes of ABRC, especially to scientists that support the "Baraminology" movement (Marsh, 1941; Wise, 1992; Robinson and Cavanaugh, 1998; Frair, 2000; Jerlström, 2000; Wood and Cavanaugh, 2001; Cavanaugh and Wood, 2002; Wood, 2010; Aaron, 2014). Their disagreements focus more on the geo-paleontological history between Cambrian/Ediacaran and Pleistocene.
Since 1941, the ABRC model goes against the idea that speciation is synonymous with "evolution" due to speciation-related studies in the field of Baraminology (Marsh, 1941; Wise, 1992; Robinson and Cavanaugh, 1998; Frair, 2000; Jerlström, 2000; Wood and Cavanaugh, 2001; Cavanaugh and Wood, 2002; Wood, 2010; Aaron, 2014). The American biologist Dr. Frank L. Marsh, a founder of the Creation Research Society coined the word "baramin" (Marsh, 1941; Frair, 2000). It was derived from the combination of two Hebrew words − bara (created) and min (kind) – referring to basic kinds created (Frair, 2000).
In 1990, the catastrophist paleontologist Kurt Wise noted the need for an ABRC-biosystematics − a method of study, naming and classification of baramin (Wise, 1990; Frair, 2000) or ancestors of MPGT as advocated. The scientific field was officially named "baraminology" which simplistically means the study of baramins or basic ancestor kinds. According to the researchers Reinhard Junker and Siegfried Scherer, "basic kind is a classification unit, a taxon, is the result of work of systematic disruption as is observed in nature" (Reinhard Junker and Siegfried Scherer, 1996: 34; Wood et al., 2003). Simply put, basic created kinds have diversified over time until reaching what we now know as subspecies.
There are some falsifiable rules to consider a group of species as belonging to a basic common ancestor kind. Dr. Junker and Dr. Siegfried Scherer stress in the 6th German edition of the book Evolution, a critical text book: "all the individuals who are directly or indirectly by crossbreeding are considered belonging to a basic type (genetic level) and every biological species which clearly resemble each other belong to a genus (morphological level); every biological species which in principle can cross each other belong to a basic type (Morpho-genetic level)" (Junker and Scherer, 1996: 34).
Furthermore, the authors add that "two individuals belong to the same base type when the embryogenesis of a hybrid goes beyond the maternal and developmental phase contains a coordinate expression and paternal and maternal morphogenetics genes" (Junker and Scherer, 1996: 34). In addition, baraminologists use a series of methodological criteria for membership to determine the limits of baramin groups (Robinson, 1997; Wood, 2001, 2002, 2005; Cavanaugh and Sternberg, 2004). In general, the methods show specially degrees of similarity and dissimilarity between groups and can show useful taxonomic information, resolving more and more accurately factors that affect the likelihood or not of kinship, thereby increasing its contribution in biology applied to techniques of genetic improvement and study of the evolutionary behavior of populations.
Baraminology, also known as systematics of discontinuity, is quickly becoming one of the most active areas of research in ABRC (Scherer, 1993) and some of its methodologies were applied and tested even by researchers associated with the gradualist geologic model of fully common ancestry with highlights in journals with peer review (Senter, 2010; Wood, 2011). As we have seen, the main purpose is to determine which organisms share a common ancestor (Frair, 2000). The basic idea advocated in this field of research is that there are limits to the possibilities of breeding that cannot be crossed. In this context, baraminologists aim to find "discontinuities" in the history of life, or the limits of common ancestry (Remine, 1993).
This research field gets an additional boost from the current evidence showing that "experts" have erroneously classified some species within a given genus due to a “wish” to discover the universal common ancestor (Lopes, 2015). Paleontologists claim that a third of the "species" recognized as being dinosaurs may even have not existed (Horner and Goodwin, 2009). For them, those "species" may be not separate species, but juvenile stages or subadults, in development, erroneously identified as specimens of other species. In an article published in Science magazine, for example, Schwartz and Tattersall (2015) argued that this miracle of the multiplication of the nomenclature of species went too far.
It is worth remembering that although Baraminology has achieved promising results, its conclusions are not definitive (Wilson, 2010). Since it is a recent field, more research is required and its methods and techniques must be examined in order to legitimize its place in the toolbox of science.
Genetic entropy on speciation
What about the costs when speciation really happens? Another major obstacle against phyletic gradualism model is that it is neutral in relation to the improvement or worsening of the process of speciation, although it is assumed that genetic drift causes loss of genetic variation in small populations. The model of many basic ancestors buried in a recent catastrophism (ABRC), on the other hand, with the proposal of genetic entropy, argues that speciation results in loss of genetic information and the consequent genome degeneration due to adaptations as evasive capabilities, dangerous and stressful for the populations (Ariza, 2007; Sanford, 2014; Crabtree, 2013a, 2013b). Other evidence corroborates the ABRC model as it suggests that this loss of genetic information due to deleterious mutations in humans has happened recently, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago (Fu, 2013).
Entropy on genetic information is increasingly evident in everything that is observed: on genetic drift, selection/elimination, mutations and in immunological complexities, among other mechanisms. In humans, for example, the current estimates are between 100 and 200 new mutations per individual every generation (Nachman and Crowell, 2000; Dolgin, 2009; Lynch, 2010). Of those, the data vary between 1 and 15% of deleterious mutations that cause direct loss of genetic information in humans in each generation (Nachman and Crowell, 2000; Lynch, 2010; Eyre-Walker and Keightley, 1999; Shabalina et al., 2001; Keightley, 2012).
With respect to fitness, a study published in 1997 estimated between 1 and 2% the rate of loss of human aptitude, that is, a high genetic cost which causes mankind to degenerate in each generation due to exhaustion of adaptive resources required to maintain its genetic variety (Crow, 1997). In 2010, another study estimated that human fitness is declining in 3 to 5% per generation (Lynch, 2010).
The Dutch zoologist Duyvene de Wit described perfectly such a genetic impoverishment process by stating that “When a marginal population clears the way for a new habitat, it cannot carry with it all the genes of the maternal population, but only part of them. Each new race or species that originates from another has, therefore, a poorer gene pool. Consequently, the loss of substance from the gene pool is the price each race or species has to pay for the privilege of existing. If the process of speciation occurs again and again consecutively, there will eventually appear species whose gene pools are so completely depleted that insignificant changes in environmental conditions are enough for them to become extinct. Efforts to adapt to environmental changes as a result of insufficient recombination lead ultimately to a minimal genetic state. If this minimum limit is exceeded, there will be no further possibility of survival. For this reason, the tragic and irrevocable fate of highly adapted species or specialized breeds is genetic death" (Kahle, 1999: 87; Junker and Scherer, 1996).
Therefore, the ABRC proposal is reasonable and becomes increasingly supported by scientific data when it claims that living beings were healthier and fit in the past compared to their present counterparts, without the defects from forced adaptations and distinct selective pressures in order to survive.
Fossil record and the lack of diversification of species
Speciation in proportion to the observed biodiferenciator behavior is missing since there are only about 300,000 fossil kinds repeating among the estimated trillions of samples in all geological strata up to the Pleistocene (Woodmorappe, 2000; Sadava et al., 2009; Loceye, 2016). That fact indicates the absence of sequences during the process of speciation when contrasted with the estimate of 8.7 million species currently alive (Live et al., 2011).
In other words, the absence of "diversity" in the fossil record reveals that the diffs occur most in the present (millions of species) than throughout the geologic column (hundreds of thousands). That indicates a time when living beings did not need to adapt frequently to survive, because they live in an environment more comfortable to life.
Recent evidence indicate that the beginning of the diversification of some genera of plants considered "living fossils", for example, occurred at the same time around the world and in a much more recent period than previously assumed, conflicting with gradualistic proposal (Nagalingum et al., 2011). Furthermore, it was reported that such a rapid diversification was caused a big climate change.
Actually, there are several mechanisms of integrated adaptations and modifications currently recognized. The fact that they exist in living beings allow us to suggest that the bio-modifications never ceased to exist. However, the curious thing is that gradualists suggest that in 90% of the total 544 million years ago the Phanerozoic, bio-modifications stagnated, repeating in the geologic column the same species and only recently in the upper layers there are large-scale bio-diversification (radiation) (Gould, 1981). Figure 1 helps our understanding by showing that in 500 million years, the graph shows little variation reaching about two thousand genera on average, whereas only in more recent periods there is an explosion to an estimate of five thousand genera.
Figure 1: Explosion of life in the planet during Phanerozoic. From Rohde and Muller (2005).
Dr. Tom Kemp, curator of the zoological collections of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oxford, for example, made the following admission: "as is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly" (Kemp, 1985: 67).
The same fact is observed by Peter Williamson, a professor of Geology at Harvard University by suggesting that neo-Darwinism has failed to explain the systematic discontinuities in the fossil record: "the principle problem is morphological stasis. A theory is only as good as its predictions, and conventional neo-Darwinism, which claims to be a comprehensive explanation of evolutionary process, has failed to predict the widespread long-term morphological stasis now recognized as one of the most striking aspects of the fossil record". (Williamson, 1981: 214).
Darwin suggested that living beings arise by gradual evolution and hoped that one day the fossil record would confirm his prediction, but that was not what happened: Darwin was wrong. Day after day, the numerous fossils excavated throughout the world have disproved the hypothesis of gradual change in overlapping layers claimed to be chronological. Unlike what Darwin expected, recent data reveal sudden appearance patterns (explosions) followed by long periods of little change.
The famous evolutionist paleontologist Niles Eldredge admitted in New Scientist magazine that: "Paleontologists ever since Darwin have been searching (largely in vain) for the sequences of insensibly graded series of fossils that would stand as examples of the sort of wholesale transformation of species that Darwin envisioned as the natural product of the evolutionary process. Few saw any reason to demur - though it is a startling fact that ...most species remain recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in geological sediments of various ages." (Eldredge, 1986: 55).
The absence of fossil intermediates is too obvious to remain hidden by gradualists. The evolutionary biologist Dr. David Woodruff of the University of California expressed in Science magazine his disappointment with evolutionists concerning the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record: "fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition" (Woodruff, 1980: 716).
Therefore, after so many admissions, we finally agree with the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis when she says: "there is no gradualism in the fossil record. [...] ' Punctuated equilibrium' was invented to describe the discontinuity in the appearance of new species [...] The critics, [including the ASCRs critics] are right about their criticism. [...] The evolutionary biologists believe the evolutionary pattern is a tree. It’s not." (Teresi, 2011).
Examples of rapid speciation
There are several reports of emergence of new "species" in periods ranging from tens to thousands of years. According to that information, speciation is a phenomenon that does not require millions of years to happen. The American biologist Dr. James Gibson, Director of the Geoscience Research Institute (GRI), an institution affiliated with the Andrews University (USA), maintained by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, described an example of real-time speciation: "a new species of copepod [crustaceans] has formed in the Salton Sea in Southern California in less than 30 years." (Johnson, 1953; Gibson, 2002).
Several studies reported that in a period as short as 10 to 36 years different populations of lizards have suffered significant morphological changes enough to be considered new "species" (Morrell, 1997; Herrel et al., 2008). Other well-known examples of real-time speciation include bacteria (Shikano et al., 1990), flies (Huey et al., 2000), finches (Grant and Grant, 2006), frogs (Hoskin et al., 2005), beetles (Halliburton and Gall, 1981) and plants (Groves and Groves, 1880; Foucaud, 1897; Marchant, 1963).
Dr. Gibson also provided examples of speciation in archaeological-historical time: "a population of green monkeys lived on the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean for less than 100 years, but has developed morphological aspects equivalent to a new species." (Ashton et al., 1979; Gibson, 2002). "Hawaii had no banana trees until about 1000 years ago; however, there are native Hawaiian moths that only eat banana trees. These new species emerged in less than 1000 years" (Zimmerman, 1960; Gibson, 2002). On these examples, Dr. Gibson concludes: "the capacity of rapid change is confirmed both by experimentation and observation of nature" (Gibson, 2002).
Conclusion
Morphological patterns around the genus taxon (MPGT) are identified with basic ancestors buried in catastrophism (ABRC), since this model complies with the fact of rapid speciation observed, that would require a very large proportional variability in fossil record if it represented millions of years of evolution and that, in addition that there is no such taxonomic variation, is also confirmed with morphological stasis, repetition of the same species and 4229 genera of living fossils; such a picture reflects a sudden burial of the living beings on the planet and not a supposed evolutionary history of life.
Reports of speciation in history and archaeology, which are able to justify all biodiversity in a short time, tell us also that there should be much more variability in the fossil record than there is. The Cambrian explosion, the absence of sampling fossil variability (morphological fossil stasis) and lack of radiation in the fossil record until the Pleistocene, tell us a story of a period of: 1) rapid appearance, 2) permanence of a high number of species in a stable environment (fossil replay without environmental evolutionary pressures), 3) disaster causing massive burial of live populations evidenced by the repetition of the same fossil species (which detracts punctuality), 4) presence of several different species together in the fossil record, fossils of whole huge vertebrate animals (which characterizes disaster of great magnitude and high rates of sedimentation) and 5) drastic environmental changes causing radiation of species in samples of recent layers and in millions of species in the current biodiversity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support in the English-language translation by MPhys. Eduardo Lütz.
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