# Quote — Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life

> The legends of fieldwork locate all important sites deep in inaccessible jungles inhabited by fierce beasts and restless natives, and surrounded by miasmas of putrefaction and swarms of tsetse flies. (Alternative models include the hundredth dune after the death of all camels, or the thousandth crevasse following the demise of all sled dogs.)

- Author: [Stephen Jay Gould](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould.md)
- Book: [Wonderful Life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life.md)
- Page: 65
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Wonderful_Life_(1989)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/the-legends-of-fieldwork

## More from this book

> An old paleontological in joke proclaims that mammalian evolution is a tale told by teeth mating to produce slightly altered descendant teeth.

p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/an-old-paleontological.md)

> The beauty of nature lies in detail; the message, in generality.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/the-beauty-of-nature.md)

> The divine tape player holds a million scenarios, each perfectly sensible. Little quirks at the outset, occurring for no particular reason, unleash cascades of consequences that make a particular future seem inevitable in retrospect. But the slightest early nudge contacts a different groove, and history veers into another plausible channel, diverging continually from its original pathway. The end results are so different, the initial perturbation so apparently trivial.

p. 320 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-jay-gould/wonderful-life/the-divine-tape.md)