The fossil record shows long stretches where species barely change, then rapid shifts. The interesting question is not why change happens in bursts — it is what holds things still for so long.
Species with identical needs cannot coexist — a small consistent advantage compounds until one is gone. Which means anything living side by side must differ, and finding how is informative.
Your eye has a blind spot no engineer would design. That flaw reveals the process that built it — a process that governs markets and ideas as strictly as it governs retinas.
Species that have survived for ten million years go extinct at about the same rate as new ones. That surprising fact explains why your improvements so often buy you nothing.