George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpsonwas an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution, The meaning of evolutionand The major features of evolution. He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibriumand dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth16 June 1902
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
Of course the orders all converge backward in time, to different degrees.
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.
Now we do have many examples of transitional sequences.
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.
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.
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.
I have a debt, a loyalty to the museum; the best place for me to do what I wanted to do.
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.
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.
If a sect does officially insist that its structure of belief demands that evolution be false, then no compromise is possible. An honest and competent biology teacher can only conclude that the sect's beliefs are wrong and that its religion is a false one.