Absence Quote by William Buckland

There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest…

— Charles Lyell

All geologic history is full of the beginning and the ends of species-of their first and last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of…

— Hugh Miller

Moreover, all our knowledge of organic remains teaches us, that species have a definite existence, and a centralization in geological time as well as…

— Edward Forbes

It is a strange fact, characteristic of the incomplete state of our current knowledge, that totally opposite conclusions are drawn about prehistoric conditions on…

— Alfred Wegener

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.

— Charles Darwin

It is to them [fossils] alone that we owe the commencement of even a Theory of the Earth ... By them we are enabled…

— Georges Cuvier

Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely.

— George Gaylord Simpson

One must believe that every living thing whatsoever must change insensibly in its organization and in its form... One must therefore never expect to…

— Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

The several difficulties here discussed, namely our not finding in the successive formations infinitely numerous transitional links between the many species which now exist…

— Charles Darwin

Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was…

— Richard Dawkins

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 have altered the physical, chemical and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. We have left no part of the globe…

— David Suzuki