Simon Conway Morris Quotes

We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.

I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork.

Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely.

Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.

Palaeontologists use fiction all the time.

Fossils have richer stories to tell - about the lub-dub of dinosaur life - than we have been willing to listen to.

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.

The fossil record is incredible when it preserves things, but it's not a complete record.

If we could magically transport ourselves back to the young Earth, when it was only a billion years old or two billion years old or three billion years old or four billion years old, we wouldn't be able to survive. We would have a hard time surviving if we were transported to the time when dinosaurs were around.

Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it.

I think most of the dinosaur specimens we find represent subadult sizes.

When I was about ten, I discovered evolution by reading a book by Wilhelm Boelsche and seeing a picture of Archaeopteryx.

We have fossils... We win!

I encourage people who don't believe in evolution to look for horses in Jurassic Solenhofen limestone.

For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.

No one knows exactly when or where the redwood entered the history of life on earth, though it is an ancient kind of tree and has come down to our world as an inheritance out of deep time.

The existence of common features in different forms of life indicates some relationship between the different organisms, and according to the concept of evolution, these relations stem from the circumstance that the higher organisms, in the course of millions of years, have gradually evolved from simpler ones.

I don't like to say bad things about paleontologists, but they're not very good scientists. They're more like stamp collectors.

The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all these other missing links to connect to the new discovery. The gaps and questions actually increase - it's extraordinary.

The Burgess Shale is not unique, but for those who study evolution and fossils it has become something of an icon. It provides a reference point and a benchmark, a point of common discussion and an issue of universal scientific interest.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance.

One of the things that I first remember wanting to be was a 'geolisty' - that was the best I could say when I was a kid. That was right after I stopped wanting to be a fireman or a truck driver. Because my dad is a paleontologist who worked with the Smithsonian, I got to see the bones up close and the exhibits behind the scenes there.

But it really wasn't until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor.

By the age of 11, I was no longer going to Sunday Mass, and going on birdwatching walks with my father. So early on, I heard of Charles Darwin. I guess, you know, he was the big hero. And, you know, you understand life as it now exists through evolution.