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
I don't know where to put whales. I'm sticking them here, but I don't have any reason for it.
The opposition to teaching evolution is, of course, almost always given a religious reason. That may usually be its real basis, but I think it is often a mask, perhaps unconscious, for underlying anti-intellectualism or antiscientism.
It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.
I have a debt, a loyalty to the museum; the best place for me to do what I wanted to do.
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.
Splitting and gradual divergence of genera is exemplified very well and in a large variety of organisms.
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.