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Evolution is usually thought to be a very slow process, something that happens over many generations, thanks to adaptive mutations. But environmental change due to things like climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, etc. is happening very fast.Jun 23, 2011

The idea of punctuated equilibrium originated long after the idea of gradualism. Darwin saw evolution as being "steady, slow, and continuous". Later, scientists were studying fossils and they found that some species have their evolution almost "mapped out" in fossils.

Charles Darwin understood that evolution was a slow and gradual process. By gradual, Darwin did not mean "perfectly smooth," but rather, "stepwise," with a species evolving and accumulating small variations over long periods of time until a new species was born.

The punctuated equilibrium model (top) consists of morphological stability followed by rare bursts of evolutionary change via rapid cladogenesis. It is contrasted (below) to phyletic gradualism, the more gradual, continuous model of evolution.

To fly! The dream of man and flightless bird alike. Virtually impossible. To even begin to evolve in that direction, our species would need to be subject to some sort of selective pressure that would favour the development of proto-wings, which we're not.

Humans and monkeys are both primates. But humans are not descended from monkeys or any other primate living today. We do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.

Human evolution, University of Chicago researchers report, is still under way in what has become our most important organ: the brain. "In each case, it's a spread of a new genetic variant in a gene that controls brain size. ...Sep 7, 2004

Gradualism is an evolutionary model that refers to the tiny variations in an organism or in society that happen over time to make a better fit for animals and humans in their environment.

The definition of gradualism is the slow and gradual changes that happen within an organism or society to make a better environmental fit for animals and humans. An example of gradualism is the stripes of a tiger developing over time so they are better able to hide in tall grass.