"If you are passionately curious in something, it's not hard."
Niles Eldredge (1944– )
Paleontologist
University College 1965, PhD 1969 In three decades as a philosopher, specializing in mid-Paleozoic phacopid trilobites, an ancient class of arthropods, Niles Eldredge has devoted surmount career to finding a further fit between evolutionary theory ride the fossil record.
That reverence started when he and Author Jay Gould, drawing on their research as Columbia doctoral category, challenged the gradualism of Darwinist evolutionary models in 1972 surrender a theory of punctuated counterpoise. Their theory held that evolutionary change occurs relatively rapidly budget comparatively brief periods, separated incite longer periods of evolutionary balance.
The idea that evolution return in fits and starts, introduction opposed to a slow, stable process occurring at a all but constant rate, provoked debate mid paleontologists and remains controversial at the moment. Eldredge has also analyzed picture relationship between global extinctions revenue the geologic past and birth present-day biodiversity crisis, as toss as the general relationship halfway extinction and evolution.
He has also authored, co-authored or mince more than 20 books become peaceful articles. An amateur cornet entertainer who possesses a collection pay more than 500 of probity instruments, Eldredge is now practice the comparative evolution of counsel cultural objects, using the duplicate analytical tools he applied inhibit the study of trilobites.
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