It brings up two issues. First, living fossils, where a species appears in the fossil record millions of years ago, dissapears, and is found alive and almost identical today.
I think if you check into this you will find that these examples of living fossils are not the same species as the original fossils. For example, the fossil record for Coelacanth includes eight
families of extinct critters and one family that is mostly extinct (six separate genera are extinct). A single new genus within that family has two separate species, both attributed to modern specimens. All in all, about 25 genera and a whole lot of species of Coelacanth are extinct, and one genus and two species are still holding on. The modern ones are not even in the same genus as the others, and most aren't even in the same family.
See the Wiki article
Second, one of the two great trends in the fossil record, according to Gould, is stasis (the other being the sudden appearance of new species). Meaning that once species appear in the fossil record, they remina largely unchanged until they dissapear.
This is not an accurate description of Gould's position. Species remain largely unchanged for long periods of time when there is little change in their environment. When their environment changes they either adapt to it or go extinct. The faster the environment changes the more pressure there is for species to change, and the greater chance for either 1) change that we later classify as a new species, or 2) extinction. (Lots of species have "disappeared" by changing to a new species.)
So what I'm asking is: Is this even possible if Neo-Darwinism is the mechanism of evolution ?
As your examples are incorrect, this is moot.
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