David M. Raup Quotes

• Lamentablemente, un gran número de científicos bien formados ajenos a la biología evolutiva y la paleontología se han hecho a la idea de que el registro fósil es mucho más darwinista de lo que es. Esto se debe probablemente a la simplificación excesiva inevitable en las fuentes secundarias: libros de texto de bajo nivel, artículos semipopulares, etcétera. También es probable que haya algo de ilusiones. En los años posteriores a Darwin, sus defensores esperaban encontrar progresiones predecibles. En general, no se han encontrado, pero el optimismo se ha desvanecido y la fantasía se ha colado en los libros de texto.

  David M. Raup

  Pensar, Años, Ideas

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• Ahora tenemos un cuarto de millón de especies fósiles, pero la situación no ha cambiado mucho... Tenemos incluso menos ejemplos de transición evolutiva que en la época de Darwin.

  David M. Raup

  Example, Transition, Fossils

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• 250,000 species of plants and animals recorded and deposited in museums throughout the world did not support the gradual unfolding hoped for by Darwin.

  David M. Raup

  Animal, Museums, Support

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• Irónicamente, tenemos aún menos ejemplos de transiciones evolutivas que en la época de Darwin.

  David M. Raup

  Example, Transition, Fossils

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• There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth--possibly as many as forty million. But somewhere between five and fifty BILLION species have existed at one time or another. Thus, only about one in a thousand species is still alive--a truly lousy survival record: 99.9 percent failure!

  David M. Raup

  Animal, Survival, Earth

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• A new theory is guilty until proven innocent, and the pre-existing theory innocent until proven guilty ... Continental drift was guilty until proven innocent.

  David M. Raup

  Science, Guilty, Innocent

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• Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works.

  David M. Raup

  Thinking, Mountain, Doe

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• I doubt if there is any single individual within the scientific community who could cope with the full range of [creationist] arguments without the help of an army of consultants in special fields.

  David M. Raup

  Army, Community, Doubt

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• There are about 250,000 different species of fossil plants and animals known . . In spite of this large quantity of information, it is but a tiny fraction of the diversity that [according to the theory] actually lived in the past. There are well over a million species living today and . . [it is] possible to predict how many species ought to be in our fossil record. That number is at least 100 times the number we have found.

  David M. Raup

  Animal, Past, Numbers

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• Quizá lo único que salva a la ciencia de una sabiduría convencional inválida que se convierte en permanente sea la presencia de inconformistas en cada generación, personas que siguen desafiando las convenciones y concibiendo nuevas ideas por puro placer o por una contrariedad innata.

  David M. Raup

  Wisdom, Science, Thinking

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• It has been argued that dinosaurs did not die out, but just evolved wings and flew away. At a certain level, this reasoning is sound.... Birds, as a group, did descend from dinosaurs and ... all 8,600 species of birds living today carry some inheritance from their reptilian ancestors.

  David M. Raup

  Wings, Bird, Today

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• In the beginning, there were bacteria.... [A] nearly universal assumption is that all subsequent life descended from the original life form through a continuous chain of ancestor-descendant pairs. This assumption looks good because all living organisms share biochemical traits. It is conceivable, of course, that life originated more than once on the early earth but that all except one life form died out early, leaving a single lineage as the ancestor of life as we know it. If this did happen, it was the first important species extinction.

  David M. Raup

  Leaving, Important, Earth

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• The once rather old-fashioned science of paleontology finds itself in a maelstrom of excitement and controversy. Astrophysicists, atmospheric scientists, geochemists, geophysicists, and statisticians are all contributing to the extinction problem. And the general public is taking part through television talk shows, magazine cover stories, newspaper editorials, and even the occasional mention in gossip columns.

  David M. Raup

  Gossip, Television, Maelstrom

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• The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity. ...Thus, the procedure is far from ideal and the geologic ranges are constantly being revised (usually extended) as new occurrences are found.

  David M. Raup

  Circularity, Construction, Range

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