Question

Which of the following scenarios best represents an example of punctuated equilibrium?

Which of the following scenarios best represents an example of punctuated equilibrium? Fossils of a marine snail lineage from the New England rocky intertidal zone reveal a slow and consistent elongation in shell shape over 200 million years, from an early species bearing a rounded shell to a more modern species with a cone-shaped shell. O Fossil evidence uncovered in a New Hampshire revealed that a species of Trilobite rapidly evolved into a new species that had an additional lens in the eye, and then this species did not change morphologically for millions of years. O Fossils from Ammonites, a marine cephalopod, were very common in geological rock formations from 400 million years ago, but all evidence of the Ammonites disappeared entirely from the fossil record about 66 million years ago. O In a species of Arctic fish, a random mutation in a gene promoted anti-freeze proteins in O the blood that allowed the species to inhabit a new environment with freezing water temperatures

Answer 1

Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that once species appear in fossil record,the population will become stable showing no or little evolutionary change over time.

The scenario that best describes punctuated equilibrium is " Fossil evidence uncovered in New Hampshire revealed that a species of trilobite rapidly evolved into a new species that had an additional lens in the eye and then the species didn't changed for millions of years".