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{{cquote|"[Darwin] was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would .... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. ... [W]e have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time." - David M. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," ''Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin'' 50 (January 1979): 22-23, 24-25.}}

{{cquote|"[Darwin] was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would .... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. ... [W]e have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time." - David M. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," ''Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin'' 50 (January 1979): 22-23, 24-25.}}

One of the most famous proponents of the theory of evolution was the late [[Harvard]] paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. But Gould admitted:

One of the most famous proponents of the theory of evolution was the late [[Harvard]] paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Embarrassed with the lack of the fossil record, Gould explained away the lack of transitional fossils with punctuated equilibrium:

{{cquote|The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils...We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.<ref>Dr. [[Walt Brown]], Center For Scientific Creationism, [http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ReferencesandNotes23.html References and Notes: Fossil Gaps]</ref>}}

{{cquote|The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

 

The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.

 

 

Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.

 

For several years, Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History and I have been advocating a resolution to this uncomfortable paradox. We believe that Huxley was right in his warning . The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. <ref>Gould, S. J. 1977. "Evolution's Erratic Pace" in Natural History 86(5):12-16.</ref>}}

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