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Basic Questions in Paleontology: Geologic Time, Organic Evolution, and Biological Systematics

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Otto Schindewolf (1896-1971) was a German paleontologist, also famous as a "saltationist" (i.e., the idea that evolution can proceed in "leaps," and not only gradually, as Darwin had suggested). In this famous work (not translated until this 1993 edition), he states that "The gaps that exist in the continuity of forms, which we always encounter at those very points, are not to be blamed on the fossil record; they are not illusions but the expression of a natural, primary absence of transitional forms." He then adds, "in spite of tireless search, the hoped-for series of connecting forms---the 'missing links' of the cliche---have never been found ... the closed evolutionary lineages we have before us regularly break off as we near their roots. Nothing in the future will change this."

The "poverty of the fossil record" cannot be blamed for this; "there is no longer any reason to resign outselves to some perceived insufficiency of fossil material; rather, we see in the regularly recurring pattern of the fossil record a reflection, incomplete in detail yet on the whole faithful, of the actual situation: a natural lack of intermediate forms and the existence of real gaps between individual types."

The problem is greater than this: "there is no way that there could be transitional forms as they have often been envisaged and required, namely, forms that are intermediate in every aspect. A placenta cannot be absent and present simultaneously; the two circulatory systems leading from the heart cannot be both separate and non-separate ... Intermediate forms in the true sense cannot be expected in these cases; the most one will find are composite types, which combine features of one group with those of another..." and "Gradual, smooth transitions between these two different developmental types are unknown and scarcely even imaginable."

Schindewolf is not a creationist, however: "there is no doubt that the supposition of a bridging between those designs by some kind of evolutionary process presents far fewer intellectual difficulties than does he claim for independent creation of an entire new type." Instead, he proposes that "Evolutionary development is episodic---it proceeds in phases, or in quantum leaps," and that "Macromutations are the determining factors of evolution."

Schindewolf suggests that genetic "monstrosities"---such as the "hopeful monsters" proposed in Goldschmidt's work The Material Basis of Evolution: Reissued (Silliman Milestones in Science)---are a possible solution. Schindewolf supports Goldschmidt's work: "Goldschmidt's inferences completely meet the challenge that fossil material appears to me to pose, and that he, a leading geneticist, has presented a complete interpretation that does justice to the tangible, historical phylogenetic data."

Stephen Jay Gould wrote the introduction to this edition.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in evolutionary theory.

This book is a great introduction to paleontology. My 14 year old daughter is reading it, but it is good for any person who is interested in learning more at the beginning level.