Two bambiraptors battle over territory.
That's not the context of Patterson's alledged out of context quote. It's about the gaps in the fossil record. Those pesky gaps that prompted Gould and Eldredge to advance the theory of "Punctuated Equilibrium".
---excerpt Talk Origins ----
"Anyone who has actually read the book can hardly say that Patterson believed in the absence of transitional forms". Lionel Thevnissen.
----excerpt Talk Origins------
"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument." -- Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.
From the Talk Origin article it becomes clear that the "out of context" controversy is animated by comparing apples with oranges.
"Patterson believed" and "There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument." are the giveaway phrases in Thevnissen's Talk Origins argument.
Sunderland doesn't question Patterson's belief in Darwin's theory of gradual change over long time spans. He asks for hard evidence. Patterson says he has none. In addition Patterson speculates that there may be a problem with the fossil record. That's in understatement IMO.
This problem was pointed out by Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in a paper initiated some years ago. It was also pointed out by Darwin himself.
Sorry, I don't agree. Suggesting Patterson believes there is no hard evidence is a misuse of the quote, contradicted by both Patterson's general scholarly work as well as his specific response to the quote given in the talk.origins file.
Two bambiraptors battle over territory.