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Evidence Quotes

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Evidence 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.”

Form Secret Records Tree Evolution Evidence Trade Extremes Data Branches Reasonable Persist Fossils Textbooks Inference Rarity Paleontology Creation Science Creation And Evolution

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Evolution is a large political controversy as to what should be taught in the schools. But there is no scientific controversy that we evolved when we talk about evidence from fossils and DNA.”

Should School Political Taught Evolution Evidence Dna Fossils Controversy

Author:Carl Zimmer

“We don't need fossils - the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution”

Needs Use Cases Records Evolution Evidence Gaps Fossils Paradoxical

Book:The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Source: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

“Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

Ifs Common Study Doubt Records Evolution Evidence Proof Strongest Ancestor Dna Fossils Living Things Descent Lingering Dna Evidence

Author:Francis Collins

“The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man.”

“I am not a global warming sceptic. I accept that rising human-caused CO2 from fossil sources could 'change the climate'. The basic physics is there to support this view. But where is the evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging?”

Humans Would Be Views Accepting Support Source Evidence Climate Physics Rising Global Warming Fossils Co2 Sceptic

Author:Chris de Freitas

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

Ifs Stills Found Force Animal Evidence Conclusion Fossils Surviving

Book:The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Source: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

“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.”

Source: One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought

“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.”

Has Beens Problem Imagination Cases Stage Design Evolution Majors Evidence Accounts Absence Transition Constructs Inability Fossils Persistent Creationism Nagging Paleontology

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.”

Ifs Stills Hands Would Be Religion Strong Water Theory Source Evolution Lucky Evidence Tiny Predictions Distribution Fossils Corpses Genetics Fractions

Book:The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion