<Of course, there are no hard fast boundaries between these, one leads to
and blends with another. Small changes lead to great changes. *But
phenomena like speciation and extinction do not occur overnight*.>

Even this isn't true all the time I'm afraid.  In the case of double
nondisjunction in plants (both the ovule and pollen grain fail to separate
chromosomes), you can literally get a new species over night.  many plants
can survive a doubling of chromosomes just fine (a apparently is the case
with many of our cereal grains).  These plants are overnight incompatible
with the parent species because the resultant offspring would have an odd
number of chromosomes and thus be infertile.  But since plants are often
self fertile they can perpetuate themselves.  If I wanted to quibble I
could say extinction happens just as fast, because if a bird eats the seed
formed or a cow munches the plant, bam extinction in seconds, new species
no more.

So I've said it before, but time is not an appropriate argument to use.
Any timescale assigned to it is merely a somewhat likely trend and the
exceptions are the rule.  Evolution is ongoing and continuous, by it's very
random nature it occurs at irregular rates.

Jeremy
West Michigan

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