A heated debate has enlivened recent studies of evolution. Darwin's original thesis, and the viewpoint supported by evolutionary gradualists, is that species change continuously but slowly and in small increments. Such changes are all but invisible over the short time scale of modern observations, and, it is argued, they are usually obscured by innumerable gaps in the imperfect fossil record. Gradualism, with its stress on the slow pace of change, is a comforting position, repeated over and over again in generations of textbooks. By the early twentieth century, the question about the rate of evolution had been answered in favor of gradualism to most biologists' satisfaction.
Sometimes a closed question must be reopened as new evidence or new arguments based on old evidence come to light. In 1972 paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge challenged conventional wisdom with an opposing viewpoint, the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis, which posits that species give rise to new species in relatively sudden bursts, without a lengthy transition period. These episodes of rapid evolution are separated by relatively long static spans during which a species may hardly change at all.
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According to paragraphs 1 and 2, the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis and the gradualism hypothesis differed about
A. whether the fossil record is complete
B. whether all species undergo change
C. whether evolution proceeds at a constant rate
D. how many new species occur over long periods of time
1.渐进主义关于物种进化争论——species change continuously but slowly and in small increments
2.与渐进主义相反的假设——突然的进化——species in relatively sudden bursts, without a lengthy transition period