#fossils

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #fossils




The phrase 'the fossil record' sounds impressive and authoritative. As used by some persons it becomes, as intended, intimidating, taking on the aura of esoteric truth as expounded by an elite class of specialists. But what is it, really, this fossil record? Only data in search of interpretation. All claims to the contrary that I know, and I know of several, are so much superstition.


Gareth J. Nelson


#darwin #darwinism #evolution #fossil-record #fossils

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.


George G. Simpson


#earth #even #expect #extinct #extremely

The worse the country, the more tortured it is by water and wind, the more broken and carved, the more it attracts fossil hunters, who depend on the planet to open itself to us. We can only scratch away at what natural forces have brought to the surface.


Jack Horner


#earth #fossils #geology #paleontology #nature

If death petrifies you, do something to ensure your likeness will survive in more than just photographs. Drown yourself in a swamp.


Bauvard


#fossils #funny #humor #death

The sand stones had fragments of charcoal on some surfaces but found no recognisable fossils.


George Mercer Dawson


#fossils #found #fragments #had #recognisable

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.


Donald Johanson


#africa #anthropology #around #began #biology

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.


Georges Cuvier


#alone #anyone #birth #dreamed #earth

The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.


Gareth J. Nelson


#darwin #darwinism #evolution #fossil-record #fossils