Branches Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.

— Soren Kierkegaard

Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this…

— Ernst Mayr

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I…

— Stephen Jay Gould

Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual…

— Ernst Mayr

A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more…

— David M. Raup

There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No paleontologist..denies that…

— David Berlinski

Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have…

— Richard Dawkins

We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields…

— Michael Shermer

“The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families,…

— Gareth J. Nelson

It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families,…

— George Gaylord Simpson

“In most people's minds, fossils and Evolution go hand in hand. In reality, fossils are a great embarrassment to Evolutionary theory and offer strong…

— Gary Parker

Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record…

— Anonymous