Theories rarely arise as patient inferences forced by accumulated facts. Theories are mental constructs potentiated by complex external prods (including, in idealized cases, a commanding push from empirical reality). But the prods often include dreams, quirks, and errors-just as we may obtain crucial bursts of energy from foodstuffs or pharmaceuticals of no objective or enduring value. Great truth can emerge from small error. Evolution is thrilling, liberating, and correct. And Macrauchenia is a litoptern.

[T]ruly grand and powerful theories [:] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the o…

Each and every loss becomes an instance of ultimate tragedy-something that once was, but shall never be known to us. The hump of the giant deer-as a nonfossili…

I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a…

All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths that come on high and are contained in the sacred wr…

Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, bu…