Quotes About Paleontology

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.

Dr. Osgood began at once to chip out another fossil. This time it was a fern, an important find. The fern told him how old the cave was.

I've loved dinosaurs since I was teeny tiny.

Evo Devo has not just provided a critical missing piece of the Modern Synthesis - embryology - and integrated it with molecular genetics and traditional elements such as paleontology. The wholly unexpected nature of some of its key discoveries and the unprecedented quality and depth of evidence it has provided toward settling previously unresolved questions bestow it with a revolutionary character.

In 1941 Richard Owen said that the dinosaurs were almost hot blooded.

I want to be a paleontologist, whether it's amateur or professional. And I want to be a humanitarian.

That Mesozoic mama's boy wouldn't have lasted five seconds in the Cretaceous period.

As a paleontologist, [...] I ask the question--why weren't there humans here earlier? I mean, we have dispersal of Eurasian animal species into North America and dispersal of North American species into Eurasia at earlier times. So why shouldn't humans have been here as well? [Quoting Tom Deméré]

it is particularly striking that no less than thirty-five genera of mammals (with each genus consisting of several species) became extinct in North America between 12,900 and 11,600 years ago, i.e. precisely during the mysterious Younger Dryas cold

One should not forget that there are very few surviving items from this period, often just single, small bones, a tooth, a sliver of the skull. Categorizing these pieces can be very difficult.

This flying reptile lived in the Cretaceous period. It vanished 65 million years ago.

I was very fortunate, during my early years as a paleontologist, in that my field crews and I made some remarkable discoveries indicating dinosaurs to have been extremely social.

I don't think we should have a dinosaur that poops kids.

Habían llegado a una cueva. Tras los primeros sondeos, la arenisca había dado paso a una vena caliza comanchiense llena de diminutos fósiles de cefalópodos, corales, equinoideos y spirifera, con indicios ocasionales de esponjas silíceas y huesos de vertebrados marinos —probablemente de teleósteos, tiburones y ganoideos—

before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born.

Fossil remains attest to the presence of prehistoric protohorses on the North American prairie until the end of the Pleistocene epoch, 10,000 years ago. The earliest of these animals had toes instead of hooves and were the size of foxes.

All the fossils that we have ever found have always been found in the appropriate place in the time sequence. There are no fossils in the wrong place.

As a kid, I knew all of the dinosaurs. It's one of those tragedies that I've forgotten what dinosaurs are cool.

My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection.

Hammond turned to Gennaro. You know, of course, what Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler do. They are paleontologists. They dig up dinosaurs. And then he began to laugh, as if he found the idea very funny.

We are finding wonderful dinosaurs!' Exulted Cope. 'Wonderful, marvelous dinosaurs

1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards.

A sign that read WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH dangled from one hinge

Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.