STILT FLY

. . . There seems to have been almost no change in any part we can compare between the living organism and its fossilized progenitors of the remote geological past. Living fossils embody the theme of evolutionary stability to an extreme degree. . . We have not completely solved the riddle of living to an extreme degree. . . (Niles Eldredge, Fossils, 1991, pp. 101, 108.) These are the words of Niles Eldredge, a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History and an advocate of punctuated equilibrium. He posited this thesis in the face of the desperate situation of the gradual evolution theory developed by Darwin"s leadership. Eldredge manifests the fact that 45-million-year-old fossils like the stilt fly pictured here place evolutionists in a deadlock.