".."the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.the evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches...its ancesters;it appears all at once and fully formed"

Pete... that is NOT a reasonable comment. "rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record" is an inconvenience, not a criticism! Did you read my comment earlier that if we DID have all those "transitional forms" there would not be enough space on Earth to study and catalogue them? Those forms are 'rare', not totally missing. The rare ones can be dated...and the dates show a gradual transition(in most species!) from one form to another. They do NOT "ave data only at the tips and nodes of their branches."...they do NOT "appear all at once and fully formed".
Once again, you choose only comments and analyses from sources you already agree with. The "punctuated branch of evolutionary thought" advanced by Gould is ONE attempt to explain what we see in the fossil record and relate it to the geologic record. Many changes in the Earth required adaptation...or rather, allowed 'lucky' organisms to survive & adapt because they already HAD some features that fit the new situation. Big changes in geology didn't happen very often...crocodiles, which live & breed in water, can remain nearly the same for millions of years. 'Jerks' happen to animals which get shocked by continents shifting, weather changes, meteors landing,...etc. But even 'jerks' as they are called are not overnight changes....they may take thousands of years themselves to play out....and sometimes entire lines of beings disappear when they weren't adapted. Read more about the Burgess shale I mentioned.