Natura non facit saltum.  "Nature does not make sudden leaps."  That statement is among the most sacred scriptures of Darwinism.  But during the first half of the 20^th century, a large group of evolutionists adopted a theory named after the word saltum, meaning "sudden leaps."  Called "Saltationists," they defied Darwin, asserting that Natura facit saltum – "Nature does make sudden leaps."  An evolutionist named Schindewolf was among their proponents.  Schindewolf expressed the conviction that gaps in the fossil record would remain regardless of whatever new discoveries are made:

 

The missing links of the cliché have never been found… the closed evolutionary lineages which we have before us regularly break off as we near their roots.  Nothing in the future will change this.[1] 

 

Schindewolf pointed out that when dramatically different life forms first appear in the fossil record, they cannot be traced to known ancestors by small incremental steps of evolutionary change.  Rather, they appear suddenly, as "large evolutionary steps, without connecting transitional links."[2]  The clean break in the traceability of ancestry is most acute at the root of the higher taxa:

 

All decisive transformations of the basic structures of the higher-ranking types are brought about in large, individual steps with far-reaching consequences, without links or transitions, in early ontogenetic stages.[3]

 

     The beginnings of Saltationism can be traced to Hugo DeVries who lived at the turn of the 20^th century.[4]  At the core of Saltationist theory is the notion that sudden macro-mutational events can radically alter the DNA sequences of reproductive cells, thus causing a very speedy injection of new genetic material, the result of which is a new species.  In other words, your sperm 'n' eggs get zapped so hard by some sort of excessive radiation that your kids are born as mutants.  Then, by means of multi-generational inbreeding, your kids procreate a new and better species.  Another Saltationist, Goldschmidt, dubbed these hypothetical mutants "hopeful monsters."  The idea is that a macro-mutation, which is not immediately lethal, could conceivably be tweaked by natural selection over a few generations into something useful.

     Saltationism is so reviled among some evolutionists that it is called "heresy."  It is now dead and buried somewhere in the intellectual trash pile of the scientific community, mostly on account of its genetic impossibilities.  The large-scale genetic mutations it requires are too harmful for the production of viable mutants.  Evolutionary genetics favors slight mutations, not macro-mutations. 

     Yet despite the collapse of Saltationism, the paleontological observations which originally constituted the basis for it have not gone away.

 

Punctuated Equilibrium

          After the conventional wisdom of the Darwinists had silenced the Saltationists, it was just a matter of time before a new theory of rapid evolution was formulated to explain the sudden appearance of new forms.  In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published such a theory.  It has gone down in history as Punctuated Equilibrium, and it remains the most widely held theory of rapid evolution today.