I dreamed of becoming a scientist, in general, and a paleontologist, in particular, ever since the Tyrannosaurus skeleton awed and scared me.

Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.

Something deep within us drives accurate messiness into the neat channels of canonical stories.

All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned.

Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidedly unpleasant for species caught up in the throes of their power.

Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.

Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.