"I state that the invertebrates of the Burgess Shale, found high in the Canadian Rockies in Yoho National Park, on the eastern border of British Columbia, are the world's most important animal fossils." (23)

"It [the book] is, first and foremost, a chronicle of the intense intellectual drama behind the outward serenity of this reinterpretation." (24)

"As a third theme, I grapple with the enigma of why such a fundamental program of research has been permitted to pass so invisibly before the public gaze." (24)

"The march of progress is the canonical representation of evolution ..." (31)

"Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress." (35)

"We then view this twig as the acme of upward achievement, rather than the probable last gasp of a richer ancestry." (35)

"Why did life remain at stage 1 for two-thirds of its history if complexity offers such...