Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned.
George Gaylord Simpson
Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely.
Darwin recognized the fact that paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather for evolution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic categories in particular.
Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms.
I don't know where to put whales. I'm sticking them here, but I don't have any reason for it.
I have a debt, a loyalty to the museum; the best place for me to do what I wanted to do.
Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man.
Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.
Now we do have many examples of transitional sequences.
Of course the orders all converge backward in time, to different degrees.
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.
He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.
Recognition of this kinship with the rest of the universe is necessary for understanding him, but his essential nature is defined by qualities found nowhere else, not by those he has in common with apes, fishes, trees, fire, or anything other than himself.
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.
