---
title: "Gene Hunt"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Gene Hunt"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["punctuated equilibrium","stasis (paleoTS model selection)","random walk (evolutionary mode)","Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process (mean-reversion)","phyletic gradualism"]
---


Paleobiologist (Smithsonian) who built the maximum-likelihood `paleoTS` framework for fitting directional, random-walk, stasis, and Ornstein–Uhlenbeck models to fossil trait time-series, then used it himself to produce the field's central quantitative estimates of how often each mode wins — first in his own 2007 PNAS survey, later in a 2025 reassessment of the aggregate record co-authored with Kjetil Lysne Voje and Lee Hsiang Liow. The vault's quantitative-paleobiology and punctuated-equilibrium-evidence threads run almost entirely through his work.

## References
- [[claim-paleots-fits-fossil-stasis-as-a-selected-stochastic-model]] · [[claim-ou-model-recasts-stasis-as-active-mean-reversion-to-an-optimum]] · [[claim-hunt-2007-directional-evolution-rare-stasis-and-random-walk-split-evenly]] · [[claim-hunt-2007-framed-directional-rarity-as-corroborating-punctuated-equilibrium]] · [[claim-hunt-voje-liow-2025-stasis-common-but-not-dominant]] · [[claim-fossil-stasis-studies-test-only-punctuated-equilibriums-tempo-claim-not-its-speciational-claim]]
- Related hubs: [[entity-punctuated-equilibrium]] · [[entity-phyletic-gradualism]] · [[entity-random-walk-evolutionary-mode]]
- Captures: 2026-07-11-hop-stasis-is-an-ou-process, 2026-07-16-does-gene-hunts-2007-survey-of-250-fossil