It Has Taken Biologists Some 230 Years To Identify And Describe Three Quarters Of A Million Insects; If There Are Indeed At Least Thirty Million, As Erwin (terry Erwin, The Smithsonian Institute) Estimates, Then, Working As They Have In The Past, Insect Taxonomists Have Ten Thousand Years Of Employment Ahead Of Them. Ghilean Prance, Director Of The Botanical Gardens In Kew, Estimates That A Complete List Of Plants In The Americas Would Occupy Taxonomists For Four Centuries, Again Working At Historical Rates.

-Richard Leakey

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It Has Taken Biologists Some 230 Years

Richard Leakey

It Has Taken Biologists Some 230 Years To Identify And Describe Three Quarters Of A Million Insects; If There Are Indeed At Least Thirty Million, As Erwin (terry Erwin, The Smithsonian Institute) Estimates, Then, Working As They Have In The Past, Insect Taxonomists Have Ten Thousand Years Of Employment Ahead Of Them. Ghilean Prance, Director Of The Botanical Gardens In Kew, Estimates That A Complete List Of Plants In The Americas Would Occupy Taxonomists For Four Centuries, Again Working At Historical Rates.

Topic

Taken

Past

Garden

Natural Selection Operates According To Immediate Cirumstances And Not Toward A Long-term Goal. Homo Sapiens Did Eventually Evolve As A Descendant Of The First Humans, But There Was Nothing Inevitable About It.

Long

Goal

Firsts