Researchers Publish New Data Backing Darwinian Evolution

A Harvard scientist and three other researchers yesterday released evidence supporting the theory of gradual evolution first expounded by Charles Darwin and T.H. Huxley.

The study, featured in the current issue of the British scientific journal. Nature, directly challenges a theory which has become increasingly popular in recent years, asserting that evolution occurs in short, rapid "bursts" of change.

John E. Cronin, associate professor of Anthropology, said in a statement to reporters. "What we think we've done is to confirm Darwin's and Huxley's views on evolution."

Cronin, who is currently on leave and conducting research at the University of California at Berkeley, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Because of the scarcity of fossil records to prove gradual evolutionary change, many scientists have become convinced that evolution instead occurs in brief spurts, followed by long periods of inactivity.

But Cronin, in collaboration with Noel Boaz, professor of anthropology at New York University. Christopher B. Stringer, professor of paleontology at the British Museum, and Yoel Rak, professor of anatoms and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, has contended that, at least for human evolution, fossil records do in fact indicate gradual evolution.

The researchers cited as an example a fossil from Kenya, called KNM-ER 1470, which displays a transition stage between the australopithecines to Homo habilis, the earliest human species.

The study also cites a Greek tossil known as Petrilona, which the scientists say is a link between the species Homo erectus and the modern Homo sapiens.

"We believe that human evolution supports the case for gradual change with periods of varying rates of evolution," Cronin said in the statement.