Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface to the First Edition -- Preface to the Second Edition -- CHAPTER 1 Macroevolution: The Problem and the Field -- The Process and the Field of Macroevolution -- Definition of the Process of Macroevolution -- The Scope of Macroevolution -- The Role of Type in Evolutionary Concepts -- Macroevolution and the Fall of Goldschmidt -- Goldschmidt's Useful Developmental Approach -- Macroevolution and Paleontology -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 2 Genealogy, Systematics, and Macroevolution -- Systematics and Macroevolutionary Hypotheses -- Advantages of the Genealogical Approach -- Constructing an Evolutionary Tree: A Cladistic Approach -- Cladograms and phylogenies -- Homoplasy: the fundamental problem -- Phenetics -- Molecular Approaches to Genealogy Construction -- Direct nucleotide sequences -- General Features and Problems in Tree Construction -- The Evolutionist-Phylogeneticist Conflict and Classification -- The Value of the Fossil Record -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 3 Genetics, Speciation, and Transspecific Evolution -- Why Worry about Species? -- Speciation: Process and Product -- Intraspecific Variation -- The Link between Intraspecific and Interspecific Differentiation -- The genetic transition in speciation -- Intraspecific and interspecific chromosomal variation -- Speciation Mechanisms -- The models -- Transspecific Stasis -- Are New Species Accidents or Adaptations? -- The Species Selection Model -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 4 Development and Evolution -- Constraint and Saltation -- The Holy Grail: Connecting an Understanding of Genes and Development -- Phylogeneticists and Developmentalists -- The Nature of Gene Activation in Development -- Gene function, development, and evolutionary change -- Switching on Developmental Events.

Organization, Compartmentalization, and Restriction in Development -- Morphological Gradients, Units, and Discontinuities -- Development, Genes, and Selection: The Evolutionary Ratchet -- Critique of the ratchet theory -- Developmental Organization and Macromutations -- Change of Developmental Programs: Heterochrony and Joint Responses -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 5 The Constructional and Functional Aspects of Form -- Performance of Organisms and Adaptation -- Optimality: The Direction Adaptation Takes? -- The Study of Form -- Allometry and developmental constraint -- Other approaches to the comparisons of forms -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 6 Patterns of Morphological Change in Fossil Lineages -- The Taxic Approach to Measuring Evolutionary Rates -- The Stratigraphic Record: How Much Do We Have? -- What Is The Rate of Evolution in Fossil Lineages? -- Phenotypes, Genetic Variation, and Phenotypic Evolution -- Variation of the Rate of Evolution -- Testing for Punctuated Equilibrium -- Stasis -- Phyletic Gradualism: The Making of a Straw Man -- The Assembly of a Complex Bauplan -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 7 Patterns of Diversity, Origination, and Extinction -- Introduction -- The Quality of the Data -- The Overall Pattern -- Taxon Longevity and Lyellian Curves -- Stochastic Models of Appearance and Taxon Longevity -- Regulation of Diversity -- Biogeography, Provinciality, Diversity, and Diversification -- Extinction and Mass Extinction -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 8 A Cambrian Explosion? -- Introduction -- Origins of the Problem -- The Early Cambrian Is Established as the Cornucopia of Animal Life -- The Ediacaran Challenge -- The Burgess Shale and Charles D. Walcott -- The Cambrian Diversity Trap -- Higher Categories Come First -- Recapitulation: The Cambrian Catechism -- "Oddballs from the Cambrian Start to Get Even".

Precambrian Whisperings of the Rise of Animal Life? -- Precambrian Fossils Reconsidered -- So Why Not More, Where Are They, and Where Did They Come From? -- And Did They Come Only Once? -- What Was the Cambrian Explosion, and What Did Cause It? -- The Main Points -- CHAPTER 9 Coda: Ten Theses -- I. The Stabilization of Form -- II. No Evidence for the Sudden and Nearly Simultaneous Rise of Basic Body Plans -- III. Fundamental Aspects of the Evolution of Development Are Plastic -- IV. Adaptive Evolution Has Centrifugal and Centripetal Components -- V.The Fossil Record Is Readily Extrapolated from Population Variation, Genetic Determination, and Natural Selection -- No… -- VI. Saltation Is a Nonproblem in Evolution -- VII. Character Evolution is Strongly Affected by Organismic Integration and Compartmentalization -- VIII. We Still Do Not Understand the Beginning, or What Controls the Rate of the Beginning -- IX. The Hierarchical Structure of Life Eludes Us as A Successful Framework within Which to Discover Evolutionary Change and… -- X. The Unexpected Will Overwhelm Our Preconceived Notions -- Glossary of Macroevolution -- References -- AUTHOR INDEX -- SUBJECT INDEX.