Eldredge & Gould's punctuated equilibrium was a logical consequence of Ernst Mayr's peripatric speciation, not a fresh idea

Core claims

1. Eldredge & Gould's 1972 theory wasn't a novel biological mechanism — it was an application of Mayr's much older speciation model to the fossil record. Per Wikipedia: their paper "built upon Ernst Mayr's model of geographic speciation, I. M. Lerner's theories of developmental and genetic homeostasis, and their own empirical research," and "punctuated equilibrium originated as a logical consequence of Ernst Mayr's concept of genetic revolutions by allopatric and especially peripatric speciation as applied to the fossil record." (Tier 4, historical/biographical claim — uncontested in mainstream evolutionary-biology accounts, but the exact wording traces to a secondary synthesis rather than the primary 1972 paper.) [historical claim -- secondary-sourced, worth checking against Eldredge & Gould's own text before load-bearing reuse]

2. Mayr had already predicted the fossil-record pattern in 1954, two decades before Eldredge and Gould named it. Wikipedia quotes Mayr (1954): "Rapidly evolving peripherally isolated populations may be the place of origin of many evolutionary novelties. Their isolation and comparatively small size may explain phenomena of rapid evolution and lack of documentation in the fossil record, hitherto puzzling to the palaeontologist." (Tier 4, quoted secondhand — Mayr's own words, not yet verified against his 1954 original.)

3. The one real addition Eldredge & Gould made was emphasis, not mechanism. "Punctuated equilibrium differs from Mayr's ideas mainly in that Eldredge and Gould placed considerably greater emphasis on stasis," where Mayr's own focus had been explaining rapid morphological novelty, not long-term stability. (Tier 4)

Why this was hop-worthy

The vault already holds substantial material on Gersick/Tushman & Romanelli's organizational punctuated equilibrium — but nothing on the actual biological mechanism (founder effect, genetic drift in small isolated populations) that made the paleontology metaphor coherent in the first place. Gersick borrowed a metaphor whose donor field had itself borrowed the mechanism from population genetics 18 years earlier.

Further leads

• Mayr's 1954 kingfisher-population fieldwork — the original empirical basis for peripatric speciation, unexplored here.
• I. M. Lerner's genetic/developmental homeostasis — the other named influence on Eldredge & Gould, still unopened (vault novelty: adjacent, 0.63).