Writing in the journal Evolution, Dawkins attacked Gould's assertions that "evolution in the Cambrian was a different kind of process from today" and expressed exasperation at Gould's repeated suggestions that "the Cambrian was a period of evolutionary 'experiment,' evolutionary 'trial and error,' evolutionary 'false starts.'...It was the fertile time when all the great 'fundamental body plans' were invented. Nowadays, evolution just tinkers with old body plans. Back in the Cambrian, new phyla and new classes arose. Nowadays we only get new species!"
道金斯在《進化》雜志上的文章里，攻擊古爾德關于“寒武紀的進化不同于今天的進化”的觀點，對古爾德反復認為的“寒武紀是個進化‘嘗試’、進化‘試錯法’、進化‘起步錯誤’……的時期”表示極大的不滿，“那是個發明了所有重大‘基本體形橫剖面’的豐產時期。如今，進化只是按照老的體形橫剖面修修補補。而在寒武紀，新的門和新的綱不斷產生。如今我們只有新的種！”
Noting how often this idea—that there are no new body plans—is picked up, Dawkins says: "It is as though a gardener looked at an oak tree and remarked, wonderingly: 'Isn't it strange that no major new boughs have appeared on this tree for many years? These days, all the new growth appears to be at the twig level.' "
道金斯注意到，經常有人談論沒有新的體形橫剖面，便說：“這就好像有一名園丁望著一棵櫟樹，驚訝地說：‘真怪呀，這棵樹怎么多年來長不出一根新主干？如今，新長出來的都是一些細枝。’”
It was a strange time, Fortey says now, "especially when you reflected that this was all about something that happened five hundred million years ago, but feelings really did run quite high. I joked in one of my books that I felt as if I ought to put a safety helmet on before writing about the Cambrian period, but it did actually feel a bit like that."
“這真是個古怪的時代，”福泰這時候說，“尤其是你想到這一切都發生在5億年以前，而人們的情緒卻如此之大。我在一本書里開玩笑說。我覺得在寫到寒武紀的事之前應當先戴個安全帽，不過我就是有點兒這樣的感覺。”
Strangest of all was the response of one of the heroes of Wonderful Life, Simon Conway Morris, who startled many in the paleontological community by rounding abruptly on Gould in a book of his own, The Crucible of Creation.
最古怪的反應來自《奇異的生命》中的一位英雄西蒙·康韋·莫里斯。他在自己的一本書《創造的熔爐》里突然對吉爾德翻臉，令古生物學界的許多人大吃一驚。
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