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The fossil record is incredible when it preserves things, but it's not a complete record.

What the fossil record does do is to force us to contemplate our place on the planet. We are but one species of several hominids that inhabited Planet Earth, and like our distant cousins who went extinct fairly recently, our time on Planet Earth is also finite.

When we find a fossil, we mark it. Today, we've got great technology: we have GPS. We mark it with a GPS fix, and we also take a digital photograph of the specimen, so we could essentially put it back on the surface, exactly where we found it.

A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.

As you know, the fossil record includes not only the ancestors of crocodiles and whales, but also the ancestors of human beings. And this, of course, is why evolution remains controversial.

I've got nothing against records - I've spent my life making them - but they are a kind of historical blip.

If you look at my record, I have a clean record.

90 percent of the records I make are spontaneous.

I have a relatively good track record.

I don't quite know what a record is anymore. I don't quite know how to describe it. Don't know how to define it yet, so I'm just letting it gestate, and grow and see if maybe I'll get a better sense of what a record is.