[Liberal Classic]

You wrote:
Far be it for me to interrupt, but I thought you mind find this quote interesting.

Then you gave this citation:
I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would have certainly included them....” Dr. Colin Paterson, British Museum of Natural History

Quote-mining alert!

This is yet another quote ripped out of context and used to bolster an argument 180 degrees from the author's intent.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else." Dr. Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History

It is actually this (the above) statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Lionel Thevnissen of Talk Origins.

The alleged out of context quote.

"I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would have certainly included them....". Dr. Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History.

The Patterson quote was not taken out of contest. And with the "it is not possible to say for certain" quote from Thevnissen you end up with "transitional forms" being nothing but SWAGs.