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The following are previously unclassified quotes about the fossil record, now classified under that heading, and under subheadings alphabetically by author and date, as a temporary intermediate step towards integrating them into my quotes pages proper.
"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion, with ongoing but slow and gradual change accruing over long periods of time, it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to the more evolved. Not only had Darwin put these thoughts into words but he had also illustrated them in a diagram that consisted of hypothesized ancestors giving rise over time to hypothesized lineages of descendant organisms. In various places in this diagram, Darwin indicated the extinctions of hypothetical lineages as well as the origins of a multiplicity of species from the same ancestor. In words and in illustration-the only illustration in On the Origin of Species-Darwin breathed new life into the discipline of paleontology which was the only field of study that could provide the scientific world with an actual picture of his view of evolution. Fueled in no small way by the role that paleontology could assume-reconstructing and also demonstrating the course of evolution-the world's leading museums of natural history focused on fossil collecting. ... Now, armed with the possibility of being able to exhibit not just an array of fossils but the drama of evolution itself, museums vied with one another to secure the best fossil localities and discover increasingly older representatives of the lineages of now-extinct animals. .... But when the dust settled, and the fossils were assessed in terms of whether they validated Darwin's evolutionary predictions, a clear picture of slow, gradual evolution, with smooth transitions and transformations from fossils of one period to another, was not forthcoming. Instead of filling in the gaps in the fossil record with socalled missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz Jeffrey H. [Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, USA], "Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, p.89. Ellipses mine)
"Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. A knowledge of paleontology is, therefore, a prerequisite; only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms. Neither the examination of present beings, nor imagination, nor theories can serve as a substitute for paleontological documents. If they ignore them, biologists, the philosophers of nature, indulge in numerous commentaries and can only come up with hypotheses. This is why we constantly have recourse to paleontology, the only true science of evolution. From it we learn how to interpret present occurrences cautiously; it reveals that certain hypotheses considered certainties by their authors are in fact questionable or even illegitimate." (Grasse, Pierre-P. [editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie," holder of Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.4)
"Assuming homogeneous preservation, even under pessimistic assumptions regarding the completeness of the fossil record, the probability of finding fossil ancestor-descendant pairs is not negligible. Even if all species of Phanerozoic marine invertebrates in the paleontologically important taxa had the same probability of preservation, on the order of 1%-10% or more of the known fossil species would be directly ancestral to other known fossil species. However, this is likely to be an underestimate, since the probability of finding ancestor-descendant pairs is enhanced by taxonomic, temporal, and spatial heterogeneities in preservation-probability. Moreover, indirect genealogical relationships substantially increase the probability of finding ancestor-descendant pairs. The model of budding, the only one in which an ancestor can persist after a branching event, predicts that half or more of extant species have ancestors that are also extant. Thus, the question of how to recognize ancestor-descendant pairs must be carefully considered." (Foote M., "On the probability of ancestors in the fossil record," Paleobiology, Vol. 22, No. 2,1996, pp.141-151, p.141)
"Unfortunately, the greater part of the fundamental types in the animal realm are disconnected from a paleontological point of view. In spite of the fact that it is undeniably related to the two classes of reptiles and birds (a relation which the anatomy and physiology of actually living specimens demonstrates), we are not even authorized to consider the exceptional case of the Archaeopteryx as a true link. By link, we mean a necessary stage of transition between classes such as reptiles and birds, or between smaller groups. An animal displaying characters belonging to two different groups cannot be treated as a true link as long as the intermediary stages have not been found, and as long as the mechanisms of transition remain unknown." (du Nouy L., "Human Destiny," Longmans, Green & Co: New York NY, 1947, Seventeenth Printing, pp.71-72)
"Seventy years after quantum theory revolutionized physics, an oddly analogous change has occurred in the theory of evolution and it is just beginning to filter down to wider public understanding. Evidence from the fossil record now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school: that new species evolve out of existing ones by the gradual accumulation of small changes, each of which helps the organism survive and compete in the environment. Increasingly, scientists now believe that species change little for millions of years and then evolve quickly, in a kind of quantum leap-not necessarily in a direction that represents an obvious improvement in fitness. The theory is still being worked out. Among other points of contention, it is uncertain whether the leaps take place in a few generations or over tens of thousands of years. But at a conference in mid-October at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, the majority of 160 of the world's top paleontologists, anatomists, evolutionary geneticists and developmental biologists supported some form of this new theory of `punctuated equilibria.'" (Adler, Jerry & Carey, John [journalists], "Is Man a Subtle Accident?," Newsweek, November 3, 1980, pp.54-55, p.54)
"The missing link between man and the apes, whose absence has comforted religious fundamentalists since the days of Darwin, is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule: the story of life is as disjointed as a silent newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated. Paleontologist Patricia Kelley has traced the development of a burrowing mollusk-Anadara staminea- over 2 million years of the Miocene Epoch, during which time the position of one muscle gradually shifted by 1.5 millimeters. Abruptly, A. staminea disappears, to be succeeded by the closely related species A. chesapeakensa-in which the muscle has suddenly shifted by 1.5 millimeters in the opposite direction. What kind of evolution is this, which seems to stand on its head the notion of gradual progress from primitive to more advanced species?" (Adler, Jerry & Carey, John [journalists], "Is Man a Subtle Accident?," Newsweek, November 3, 1980, pp.54-55, p.54)
"The several difficulties here discussed, namely-that, though we find in our geological formations many links between the species which now exist and which formerly existed, we do not find infinitely numerous fine transitional forms closely joining them all together;-the sudden manner in which several groups of species first appear in our European formations;- the almost entire absence, as at present known, of formations rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian strata,-are all undoubtedly of the most serious nature. We see this in the fact that the most eminent palaeontologists, namely, Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability of species. (Darwin, Charles R. [English naturalist and co-founder of the modern theory of evolution], "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.318)
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Created: 27 November, 2002. Updated: 7 July, 2005.