The Island Effect

It's common knowledge the evolution happens at a quicker rate in isolated locations (in my country alone we have many examples of this like the giant weta and the moa).

In fact it's what sparked Darwin to theorize evolution in the first place, seeing the giant tortoises and iguanas of the Galápagos Islands.

Now data has been collected and published by Virginie Millien. She calculated 826 evolutionary rates for 170 populations representing 88 species. She of course found that evolution had accelerated in island species. This data also relates directly to why intermediate fossils are much more abundant for mainland species, because they exist longer.