well bill-i was not referring to you as being insulting.i dont know what you think of the punctuated branch of evolutionary thought[sometimes unkindly called "evolution by jerks"]but maybe thats goulds reasoning?
"the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.the evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches...its ancesters;it appears all at once and fully formed"
creation.com/pattquote-which discusses criticism of a patterson quote.