Paleontology Quotes

• The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of Paleontology. Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Data, Tree, Secret

  69 Copy quote

• 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 findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record.

  Ernst Mayr

  Long, Population, Different

  Ernst Mayr (1991). “One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought”, p.138, Harvard University Press

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.

  David M. Raup

  Thinking, Years, Ideas

  55 Copy quote

• Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems.

  Pierre-Paul Grasse

  Knowledge, Objectivity, Agreement

  "Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation" by Pierre-Paul Grasse, Academic Press, (p. 7), 1977.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Groups, Earth, Fossils

  16 Copy quote

• The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Imagination, Design, Fossils

  17 Copy quote

• Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Groups, Levels, Fossils

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.260, W. W. Norton & Company

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Stupidity, Design, Religion

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.260, W. W. Norton & Company

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

  Charles Darwin

  Lying, Believe, Theory Of Evolution

  Charles Darwin (2012). “On the Origin of the Species and The Voyage of the Beagle”, p.162, Graphic Arts Books

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based upon faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion....The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but irrational.

  Louis T. Moore

  Special, Alternatives, May

  10 Copy quote

• The facts of paleontology seem to support creation and the flood rather than evolution. For instance, all the major groups of invertebrates appear "suddenly" in the first fossil ferrous strata (Cambrian) of the earth with their distinct specializations indicating that they were all created almost at the same time.

  Enoch

  Support, Groups, Earth

  7 Copy quote

• In vertebrate paleontology, increasing knowledge leads to triumphant loss of clarity.

  Alfred Romer

  Knowledge, Loss, Science

  7 Copy quote

• I also discovered the only complete Brontosaurus skull.

  Robert T. Bakker

  Discovery, Skulls, Dinosaurs

  24 Copy quote

• My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Generations, Fields, Tiny

  4 Copy quote

• The once rather old-fashioned science of paleontology finds itself in a maelstrom of excitement and controversy. Astrophysicists, atmospheric scientists, geochemists, geophysicists, and statisticians are all contributing to the extinction problem. And the general public is taking part through television talk shows, magazine cover stories, newspaper editorials, and even the occasional mention in gossip columns.

  David M. Raup

  Gossip, Television, Maelstrom

  7 Copy quote

• Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Important, Force

  8 Copy quote

• Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleontology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about, but that is heresy.

  David Pilbeam

  Dark, Past, Data

  7 Copy quote

• Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Writing, Exercise, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

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

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Secret, Records, Creation Science

  73 Copy quote

• Human paleontology shares a peculiar trait with such disparate subjects as theology and extraterrestrial biology: it contains more practitioners than objects for study.

  David Pilbeam

  Peculiar, Study, Biology

  4 Copy quote

• One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Law, Extinction

  4 Copy quote

• We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make further progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology or biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters by jumping up and down shrilling, `Darwin is god and I, So-and-so, am his prophet'

  Errol White

  Jumping, Progress, Matter

  4 Copy quote

• On the first page of the Bible there is an instance of how literalism is but an invitation to transcend the image to which literalism points. That first page is not geology, biology or paleontology; it is high religion. For there we are told who we are in terms of our constititutive text. And if we could understand that, we would worrying about whether the antelopes or the cantaloupes came in a certain order.

  Joseph Sittler

  Order, Worry, Firsts

  6 Copy quote

• We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more.

  Michael Shermer

  Anatomy And Physiology, Molecular Biology, Fields

  Michael Shermer (2007). “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design”, p.51, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have this amateur side attraction to, and interest in, the sciences and biology and physics and evolution. Paleontology is of interest to me. I'm interested in the way these fields have helped us understand how we are human and why we are human. I'm also from the area that is considered to be the cradle of mankind.

  Wangechi Mutu

  Way, Fields, Sides

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source