GDR
I have no background in biology but I've never completely bought the explanations of why the evolutionary process has seemed so erratic. From a strictly common sense point of view it would seem to me that evolution would occur gradually and evenly throughout time if it was stictly a natural process with no external intervention.
Well there are always random chemical and other effects that can render new complexities in the function of a given process in any animal. That a single gene expression can produce a profoundly different outcome is not that surprising since it does not take much to change the properties of things at the smallest scales of life any more than it does with the difference in properties of atoms being so diverse when they are essentially made of of the same 3 basic parts.
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