The Daily Mail has picked up on a story I meant to post but never did. Gary Gilligan has forwarded the links at www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2389820/Planktonic-foraminifera-… … and in the style of said newspaper has the headline, 'Did evolution happen in a rapid burst?' – note the use of singular rather then the plural. Are they aiming the story at anyone in particular? In this instance, one such burst of evolution is exposed and this is not really as 'earth shattering' as the Daily Maill would have its readers believe as punctuated evolution has been around for yonks. It does question the dogma though – and this is what the Daily Mail wants to get across.
The choice of foraminifere as a study area is interesting in itself as the shells of these tiny creatures have been used to promulgate the uniformitarian scenario of repeated Ice Ages at 100,000 year intervals. In a way it is nice these same shells may dramatically overturn some prized assumptions of consensus science.