George Gaylord Simpson Quotes
Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms.
The fact -- not theory -- that evolution has occurred and the Darwinian theory as to how it occurred have become so confused in popular opinion that the distinction must be stressed.
I have a debt, a loyalty to the museum; the best place for me to do what I wanted to do.
I don't know where to put whales. I'm sticking them here, but I don't have any reason for it.
Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind
Species evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.
...the argument from absence of transitional types boils down to the striking fact that such types are always lacking unless they have been found.
It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.
The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.
Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely.
A rill in a barnyard and the Grand Canyon represent, in the main, stages of valley erosion that began some millions of years apart.
Human judgment is notoriously fallible and perhaps seldom more so than in facile decisions that a character has no adaptive significance because we do not know the use of it.
To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.