This method of learning about nature continues to be under challenge in America from fundamentalist groups, for example in school boards and state legislatures. In 1999 the Kansas state school board dropped evolution and the Big Being theory of the universe's origin from the subjects tested in their school system. Several other state school boards subsequently followed in their footsteps. The breaks in the fossil record play a role in this ongoing story, because many fundamentalists used to argue that the breaks disproved the idea of slow, gradual evolution. Today, the evidence points in a different direction.
Evolution typically takes a few million years to alter species dramatically.
If an asteroid impact, massive volcanic eruptions, or other major events cause drastic climate changes on a very short time scale, such as 1000 years or less, evolution cannot keep up. Species ill-adapted to the new conditions may die out, and previously obscure species may fill the empty niche. One minute before the impact. Two seconds before the impact. In the late 1970s, a team of geochemists headed by Lewis Alvarez of Berkeley was studying chemical changes in soil layers corresponding to breaks in the fossil record.