AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -“Punctuated equilibrium is the idea that evolution occurs in spurts instead of following the slow, but steady path that Darwin suggested. Long periods of stasis with little activity in terms of extinctions or emergence of new species are interrupted by intermittent bursts of activity.”

Detailed explanation-2: -Punctuated equilibrium occurs because genetic variations are passed down quicker, thus increasing the rate of evolution, and speciation. Tyrannosaurid fossils and Mollusks in the Turkana Basin are examples of punctuated equilibrium.

Detailed explanation-3: -Charles Darwin understood that evolution was a slow and gradual process. By gradual, Darwin did not mean “perfectly smooth, ” but rather, “stepwise, ” with a species evolving and accumulating small variations over long periods of time until a new species was born.