Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Gould , Stephen Jay (2011-10-01), Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Belknap Press, Retrieved on 2012-05-30Source Material [books.google.com]
Memes
30 MAY 2012
The Chain of Chance to Homo Sapiens
If one small and odd lineage of fishes had not evolved fins capable of bearing weight on land (though evolved for different reasons in lakes and seas,) terrestrial vertebrates would never have arisen. If a large extraterrestrial object—the ultimate random bolt from the blue—had not triggered the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals would still be small creatures, confined to the nooks and crannies of a dinosaur's world, and incapable of evolving the larger size that brains bi...Gould lists the improbable events that had to happen in order for us to be here today.