“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.”

— Stephen Jay Gould, book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Evolution as Fact and Theory", p. 260
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

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Stephen Jay Gould274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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“I've been looking into the issue for more than thirty years, and I have never seen a hint of genuine evidence of species-to-species transitional forms in the fossil record. The theory stands or falls on the supposed links between species. Even if you came up with what you believe is evidence, time would prove it to be another hoax, as it has so often in the past.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

“Many people think there are no transitional species because the only fossil forms they’re aware of at all are a handful of plastic pieces in a prehistoric play set. They’ve no idea how rich the fossil record is! We know of several hundred species just within dinosaurs, to say nothing of the thousands of examples of each of hundreds more taxa apart from that. Experts estimate that all the collective genera still roaming around now only amount to about 1% of all the species that have ever lived. Practically everything there ever was ain’t no more. Every species living today has definite relatives both extant and extinct, and evident in the fossil record. And in one sense, all of them, even the things still alive, count as transitional species.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008) <br class="br">Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

“When something dies, it is usually disassembled, digested, and decomposed. Only rarely is anything ever fossilized, and even fewer things are very well-preserved. Because the conditions required for that process are so particular, the fossil record can only represent a tiny fraction of everything that has ever lived. Darwin provided many environmental dynamics explaining why no single quarry could ever provide a continuous record of biological events, and why it would be impossible to find all the fossilized ancestors of every lineage. But despite this, he predicted that future generations, -having the benefit of better understanding- would discover a substantial number of fossil species which he called “intermediate” or “transitional” between what we see alive today and their taxonomic ancestors at successive levels in paleontological history. In fact, in the century-and-a-half since then, we’ve found millions of evolutionary intermediaries in the fossil record, much more than Darwin said he could reasonably hope for. There are three different types of transitional forms and we have ample examples of each. But creationists still insist that we’ve never found a single one, because what they usually ask us to present are impossible parodies which evolution would neither produce nor permit.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008) <br class="br">Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

“We are approaching a more fluid state. I have talked about cultural boiling. The idea of the phase-transition period which, in fractal mathematics, is the chaotic flux between one state and another. …Culturally, and as a species, we are approaching a phase-transition. I don’t know quite what that means, on a human level.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

“Any friend of fossil is a friend of mine. … We've got to do everything we can to get people out of their automobiles and into mass transit.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://uk.reuters.com/article/motoringNews/idUKNOA53343620070615
Energy Reform

“I wasn't very happy with the way the music for Battra turned out. It was hard to tell whether it was a motif or just transitional material. So, I tried to avoid having that happen again.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

“The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.””

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change", p. 182
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

“A little after I started to do sculpture, I painted some of them, and then I destroyed them all. I've begun again several times. In 1951, I painted a whole series of sculptures. But in painting them, you see what the form lacks. And it's useless to paint over something that you don't believe in. I tried again a month ago. In painting them, the deficiencies of form came through.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti in: Paul Auster (trans.) " My life is reduced to nothing: David Sylvester talks to Alberto Giacometti about his struggle with proportion and the difficulties of making an eye https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/jun/21/art.artsfeatures1," theguardian.com, 21 June 2003.

“Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through… the transitive nightfall of diamonds”

Robert Hunter (1941–2019) American musician

"Dark Star"
Song lyrics, (1969)

“I published that theory [of speciational evolution] in a 1954 paper…and I clearly related it to paleontology. Darwin argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others… I noted that you are never going to find evidence of a small local populatlon that changed very rapidly in the fossil record… Gould was my course assistant at Harvard where I presented this theory again and again for three years. So he knew it thoroughly. So did Eldredge. In fact, in his 1971 paper Eldredge credited me with it. But that was lost over time.”

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) German-American Evolutionary Biologist

Ernst Mayr (2000) " The Grand old Man of Evolution" interview by Michael Shermer and Frank Sulloway http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/mayr_interview.html, Skeptic 8 (1): 79; As cited in: Quotations Ernst Mayr on Gould http://www.stephenjaygould.org/people/mayr_quotations.html, Stephen Jay Gould Archive, 2013

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