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《进化》杂志上的文章里，攻击古尔德关于“寒武纪的进化不同于今天的进化”的观点，对古尔德反复认为的“寒武纪是个进化‘尝试’、进化‘试错法’、进化‘起步错误’……的时期”表示极大的不满，“那是个发明了所有重大‘基本体形横剖面’的丰产时期。如今，进化只是按照老的体形横剖面修修补补。而在寒武纪，新的门和新的纲不断产生。如今我们只有新的种！”
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，经常有人谈论没有新的体形横剖面，便说：“这就好像有一名园丁望着一棵栎树，惊讶地说：‘真怪呀，这棵树怎么多年来长不出一根新主干？如今，新长出来的都是一些细枝。’”
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."
“这真是个古怪的时代，”福泰这时候说，“尤其是你想到这一切都发生在5亿年以前，而人们的情绪却如此之大。我在一本书里开玩笑说。我觉得在写到寒武纪的事之前应当先戴个安全帽，不过我就是有点儿这样的感觉。”
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.
最古怪的反应来自《奇异的生命》中的一位英雄西蒙·康韦·莫里斯。他在自己的一本书《创造的熔炉》里突然对吉尔德翻脸，令古生物学界的许多人大吃一惊。
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