"What this fossil discovery shows is that, if ecological conditions are just right and there's a certain amount of environmental stability, evolution can proceed remarkably quickly."
Boy, that sounds counter intuitive. Evolution should proceed faster in poor or at least unstable conditions where the current model doesn't do very well and new genetics have a chance to take over. Otherwise, rather than seeing straight evolution, we should simply see a less distinct species with wildly varying genetics. While evolution in people's minds is an overall improvement over time, in reality it is an improvement subjective to whatever conditions the species is dealing with.
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