Is evolution slow and steady or fast and abrupt?

Question

Thanks to all your answers. Have a great day!

Answer 1

Man never stops making changes of life and the society Man as apes revolves by change by all types of species ..as the first man came on this planet and as years told out there was another species of man came out and starved out the old specie of man cause he was able to make his spears from flint
not from a wooden spear as each man evolved he had got smarter with his intelligent.
each step man had gotten advanced using his skills to survive
and as his brain developed ................the part of evolution increased since the dawning of time

Answer 2

There are two different streams of thoughts on this, so it really depends who you ask.
Generally is is slow and steady, but sometime looks like it is fast and abrupt based on the fossil record. The best way I have heard this justified is that the evolution occurs in a small secluded area, fairly slowly, but maybe quickly in the scale of time, and then the population explodes and takes over more area and thats when we see it in the fossil record.
(hopefully that made sense, I need my diagram to explain it!)

Answer 3

Environment plays the biggest role in evolution. Things change because of the environment they are in. Sometimes the environment changes very quickly and other times it is a slow movement. If the species cannot change quick enough for it's environment then it dies out.
I also agree with Nothingu to some degree that animals do not change their species into another type of animal but I do not agree that there is no such thing as evolution because a species will change because of it's environment. It will still remain the same type of species but it may get longer hair or longer teeth, etc. Darwins theory has never been proven that is why they call it a theory and not a fact! I do not agree that man came from the ape since we are two different species. If it was true then the ape would become extinct. We do not see any apes producing human babies.

Answer 4

It can be either, really, depending on circumstances.

If a creature lives in an environment which is stable and it's well-suited to it, there is no reason for that creature to change at all. This is why we can see fossils of some creatures that are virtually identical to modern specimens even though they are millions of years old.

Most environments do change slowly through time. But climactic changes occur over millennias-long periods and changes in populations usually require generations and generations so are not much faster. As always, creatures either adapt to these changes or die out. Thus we can see many examples of slow trends of change to accomodate these factors.

But sometimes dramatic things occur. Volcanoes erupt and wipe out or create whole ecosystems, meteors throw up clouds of dust that obscure the sun, or a relatively unknown disease wipes out a huge portion of the population. Or even something as simple as a few creatures wandering off somewhere and not being able to find their way back. Then you can see a dramatic change almost overnight.

Or sometimes not. It depends on circumstances. Peace.

Answer 5

It's a bit of both. Most of the time it's fairly slow. But, once in a while, a mutation of some sort that gives a -very- large survival advantage, will appear and take over the entire species in a matter of a few hundred generations.

Doug

Answer 6

Darwin's evolution was mostly slow with occasional freakish jumps. later ideas suggested very slow with for long periods with intermittent bursts.

Darwinian evolution was based on natural selection and random mutations.

Carl Sagan suggested that extraterrestrial viruses spread (pre evolved) DNA.

Other models suggest that our universe is a living creature with pre-programmed stages of development, which can often occur in jumps.

Answer 7

Slower than fast food, faster than the creation for the unconscious universe. One estimate is 15 billions years for the universal formation and four billion years for the becoming for life as we know it.

Answer 8

Really you should ask this in the biology section, your likely to get a far more thourgh answer there. but as I understand it pretty slowly and steadily (remember your thinking in terms of millions of years), although a period of rapid environmental change will speed up the evolutionary process somewhat.

Answer 9

There is no evolution, as taught in public schools. Cats have always been cats, dogs have always been dogs; people were never monkeys.
So, fast and abrupt, as creation is still going on.

Answer 10

Time will only tell ;-) !!! Seriously though, I truly do not know. What happens tomorrow can be a total surprise. That would be a shocker to so many, don't you think?