Saltation (biology) - Use By Creationists

Use By Creationists

Some creationists have associated Goldschmidt's "hopeful monsters" with the theory of punctuated equilibrium, as proposed by Eldredge and Gould. Punctuated equilibrium differs from hopeful monsters in that the former acts on populations rather than individuals, is theoretically more gradual (which proposes to take 50,000 to 100,000 years), functions by the evolution of reproductive isolation (through mechanisms such as allopatric speciation), and the latter says nothing of stasis. Creationists such as Luther Sutherland claim that both theories inadvertently appeal to the absence of fossil evidence for evolution and thereby undermining the theory of Darwinian evolution. This predicament is used by creationists to argue that "there are no transitional fossils." Paleontologists such as Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, and Steven M. Stanley avoid this by explaining that transitional forms may be rare between species, but "they are abundant between larger groups", and none of these paleontologists support Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" hypothesis. Steven M. Stanley argued that some of Goldschmidt's views err mainly in exaggerating the importance of "chromosomal rearrangements" leading to "rapid changes in growth gradients or developmental sequences, and on what we now call quantum speciation."