Many critics of punctuated equilibrium have noted this problem. As Richard Dawkins wrote in 1986: “What I mainly want a theory of evolution to do is explain complex, well-designed mechanisms like hearts, hands, eyes and echolocation. Nobody, not even the most ardent species selectionist, thinks that species selection can do this.”31 Or as paleontologist Jeffrey Levinton argued in 1988, “It is inconceivable how selection among species can produce the evolution of detailed morphological structures. . . . Species selection did not form an eye.”32
