"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."
"If new species arise very rapidly in small, peripherally isolated local populations, then the great expectation of insensibly graded fossil sequences is a chimera. A new species does not evolve in the area of its ancestors; it does not arise from the slow transformation of all its forbears. co-author with Niles Eldridge"
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Source: Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.69, W. W. Norton & Company
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