Much of my forthcoming book is steeped in insights about evolution that have been derived from the new paleobiological synthesis, and in doing a bit a background reading I came across an interesting tidbit.

In 1980 numerous authorities on evolutionary science converged in Chicago for a conference on macroevolution. Spurred by the work of paleontologists such as Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, David Raup, and Steven Stanley, the meeting’s goal was to assess whether the traditional slow-and-steady model of evolution preferred by geneticists fit what paleontologists saw in the fossil record. The general feeling among paleontologists, at least, was that there was more to evolutionary change than what lab workers were seeing in fly bottles. The fossil record