"Hyper-Speed" Evolution Discovered?

Yep, and as a result of rapid environmental changes these morphological changes can take on a pallette of new forms many of which are not compatible with the new environment and may last but a few generations. The genome then "catches up" within the survivors.
This isnt exactly punctuated equilibrium but it draws upon the proposed mechanisms of both punctuated equilibrium and the concept of the accumulation of small morph changes.

The Ornithology lab of Princeton has had a 40+ year study on one of the smaller islands of the GAlapogos. This island has a naturally introduced population of finches that have compiled small morphological changes over the same time period.(35 + years)

Yes, I thought that was interesting. Most people think variation is driven by mutation, but it seems more strongly driven by disproportionate mixing of existing genes, which then amplifies the effect of eventual mutation.

Once again, no matter how convoluted his language, once again Steven Gould is ahead of the game.

The statement about being genetically identical is obviously an error?

The statement is inaccurate to a degree, but taken in context I think its point was the the lizards are not hybrids between different species. They all retain the original species genome, just in different arrangements.

Fascinatin' thread, Rowell . . . thanks ! ! !

Being genetically identical does not mean being identical in appearance--witness the wide variety of "breeds" of dogs.

genetic variation is as simple as that imposed by the heritability of parental variation among siblings. The differences may be less than a percent or two but each descendent has the possibility of being the founder unit of a new species.

I always like the example of the birds of the Ostrich ,cassowary, emu,kiwi,etc family. The only thing they had imposed upon them was to be rafted away from each other as the continental landmass of Gondwana broke up and drifted.

The advent of sexual reproduction among different individuals was a huge boost to variation.

And yet, not all organisms became bisexual. The benefits of variation must be counter balanced by the benefits of spontaneous reproduction (budding or splitting); A battle of probabilistic forces in the scheme of biological dominance, playing out to this day.

And parthenogenesis suggests that some evolutionary lines intended to keep their options open.

Parthenogenesis . . . does that mean those ancient jokers, the Parthians, took the Romans at their word when they told them to go f*ck themselves?