Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 14 October 1983:
Vol. 222. no. 4620, pp. 159 - 161
DOI: 10.1126/science.222.4620.159
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Rates of Evolution: Effects of Time and Temporal Scaling

PHILIP D. GINGERICH 1

1 Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109

Rates of morphological evolution documented in laboratory selection experiments, historical colonization events, and the fossil record are inversely related to the interval of time over which they are measured. This inverse relationship is an artifact of comparing a narrow range of morphological variation over a wide range of time intervals, and it is also a product of time averaging. Rates measured over different intervals of time must be scaled against interval length before they can be compared.

Submitted on January 27, 1983
Revised on April 4, 1983

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)