Best evolution & fossils Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“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

“It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student....have now been debunked.”

Stories Students Evolution Significant Fossils

Author:D. V. Ager

“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.”

“In fact, books are still being published by the lunatic fringe with the same explanation. In case this book should be read by some fundamentalist searching for straws to prop up his prejudices, let me state categorically that all my experience (such as it is) has led me to an unqualified acceptance of evolution by natural selection as a sufficient explanation for what I have seen in the fossil record.”

“I will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.”

Ifs Giving Belief Evolution Giving Up Fossils Rabbits

Author:John B. S. Haldane

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

Form Secret Records Evolution Trade Extremes Persist Fossils Rarity Paleontology Creation Science Creation And Evolution Gradualism

Author:Soren Kierkegaard

“They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. Look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines.”

Knows Way Looks Shows Body Natural Answers Records Happened Design Evolution Machines Scientist Miracle Your Body Pretending Selection Fossils Natural Selection

Author:Kurt Vonnegut

“The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.”

Needs Years Humans Shows Courses Belief Understanding Human Beings Animal Existence Millions Records Evolution Contrary Fossils Primates

Author:Peter Singer

“Not to take this web of dualities as a sign we are on the right track would be a bit like believing that God put fossils into the rocks in order to mislead Darwin about the evolution of life.”

Believe Would Be Order Bits Rocks Evolution Track Fossils Mislead Duality Right Track Evolution Of Life

Author:Stephen Hawking

“Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”

Ifs Order Evolution Tests Flying Colour Fossils

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

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

“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.”

Source: On the Origin of the Species and The Voyage of the Beagle

“Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory.”

Records Theory Evolution Aids Fossils Embarrassment

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“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.”

Source: Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History

“If evolution almost always occurs by rapid speciation in small, peripheral isolates, then what should the fossil record look like? We are not likely to detect the event of speciation itself. It happens too fast, in too small a group, isolated too far from the ancestral range.”

Ifs Should Looks Happens Records Groups Events Evolution Range Isolated Fossils Rapids Speciation

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. It in fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism.”

Should Doe Facts Process Records Modern Theory Evolution Operations Rejects Yield Fossils Darwinism Theory Of Evolution Gradualism Gradual Change

Book:The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Source: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

“One must believe that every living thing whatsoever must change insensibly in its organization and in its form... One must therefore never expect to find among living species all those which are found in the fossil state, and yet one may not assume that any species has really been lost or rendered extinct.”

Believe May States Form Science Found Lost Evolution Organization Assuming Species Fossils Living Things Never Expect

Author:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

“I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind?”

“The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.”

Ifs World Facts Religion Space Millions Atheism Evolution Species Islands Continents Distribution Fossils Pointing Wrong Direction

Author:Richard Dawkins

“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

“Neo-Darwinian language and conceptual structure itself ensures scientific failure: Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, 'How do new structures arise in evolution?' 'Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?' 'How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?' The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their resuppositions, cannot answer them.”

Source: Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and Evolution

“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

“It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual completely continuous transitional sequences.”

Knows Levels Known Records Evolution Remains Species Categories Fossils Sequence Stasis

Author:George Gaylord Simpson

“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

“I shall discuss the broad patterns of hominoid evolution, an exercise made enjoyable by the need to integrate diverse kinds of information, and use that as a vehicle to speculate about hominoid origins, an event for which there is no recognized fossil record. Hence, an opportunity to exercise some imagination.”

Needs Kind Made Use Opportunity Imagination Records Events Information Evolution Exercise Patterns Broads Vehicle Diverse Fossils Enjoyable Integrating

Author:David Pilbeam

“Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.”

Process Natural Views Study Students Evolution Argument Accounts Paid Data Preserves Experts Fancy Selection Fossils Natural Selection Stasis

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“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 this is so. It is simply a fact, Darwin's theory and the fossil record are in conflict.”

Should Facts Form Records Theory Evolution Conflict Deny Gaps Fossils Graveyard

Author:David Berlinski

“Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters!”

Years Business Race Four Imagine Creation Produce Evolution Bed Ocean Productions Spending Billions Finance Fuel Honey Bees Fossils Filling Fossil Fuel Seafood Stockings Drilling

Book:WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Source: WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

“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.”

Firsts Facts Seems Earth Support Groups Creation Evolution Majors Instance Flood Fossils Specialization Paleontology Invertebrates

Author:Enoch

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