1993 Answers to selected questions may be previewed by clicking on the underlined numbers. The Quicktime movie will autostart once a sufficient portion of the file has downloaded. Darwin believed that the increasing diversity of species would gradually lead to the disparity of the higher taxa. The fossil record appears to contradict Darwinian theory.
Disparity precedes diversity.
The focus of your research has been origins of animals and of the major animal groups, the phyla. Eldredge and Gould have claimed that the two key features of the fossil record are sudden appearance and stasis. As species diversify, new genera, families, orders, classes, and ultimately new phyla should be generated. From what we see in the fossil record, natural history looks more like a forest than a tree of life.