Nothing matches the holiness and fascination of accurate and intricate detail.

A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.

Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die.

Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory.

I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam - I break in order to reveal.