Rate changes for evolution

Gould's idea that practically all morphological change happened during the punctuations of PE is the really controversial part of Punctuated Equilibria. It's also been rejected as an absolute because of contrary evidence. For instance the oldest remains of Homo sapiens have smaller braincases and are referred to as "archaic Homo sapiens" - and in that feature at least they are intermediate between modern Homo sapiens and Homo erectus.The generally accepted view is that speciation is important but that morphological changes can occur in a more gradualistic way.

I'm not sure what the consensus is - or if there is a consensus - on which is most important. I would tend to the view that speciation is more important because the same forces that cause speciation promote evolutionary change. Gradual change still happens but there don't seem to be that many definite examples.Of course in human timescales even the fastest evolutionary change is not that quick. The highest recorded rates of physical change through evolution come from laboratory experiments.

I think you may be being a little hard on Eldredge and Gould's original version of PE. From my reading there Gould probably would not have argued that the shortage of transitionals was due to the resolution of the fossil record - the core of PE is that speciation is allopatric and that the descendents can eventually return and replace the parent stock. That was probably how Gould would have interpreted the sanil.

Well how fast is "rapid" ? Eldredge and Gould were reacting to a fairly extreme gradualism which was apparently common amongst paleontologists at the time. If most evolution happens during relatively short intervals then it has to be rapid during those periods - in relative terms. Gould is fairly clear that he is talking of periods of centuries - perhaps a thousand years to get something different enough to be classified as a new species by paleontologists.That's not fast in human terms. But it is the "rapid" evolution of PE.

Can you elaborate ? 100ky (i assume that's 100,000 years) for how much change ? If that's the time taken for speciation (even in the paleontological sense) it really doesn't sound like it's anything objectionable.