Saturday, July 19, 2014

My Year of Darwin: 7/17/2014 Known unknowns from geology

 Charles Darwin


"It would take a chapter to argue, how probably it is that Geology has never revealed & never will reveal, more than one out a million forms, which have existed" Charles Darwin, letter to George Robert Waterhouse,  26 July 1843


Darwin is explaining that so few organisms become fossilized that we should expect gaps. He uses the simple fact that the most abundant types of fish alive today are not the most common type of fossils... as one might expect if fossils are recent. 

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