Colin Patterson (biologist)

Colin Patterson FRS (1933–1998), was a British paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London from 1962 to his official retirement in 1993 who specialised in fossil fish and systematics, advocating the transformed cladistics school.

Colin Patterson was born on 13 October 1933 in Hammersmith, London, the son of Maurice William Patterson (1908–1991) and Norah Joan (née Elliott) (1907–1984).

After National Service in the Royal Engineers, Patterson studied zoology at Imperial College, London (1954–57). He undertook postgraduate research into fossil fishes at University College London and obtained a PhD in 1961.

In 1978, he authored a general textbook on evolution, Evolution, and edited Molecules and Morphology in Evolution: Conflict or Compromise? (1987), a book on the use of molecular and morphological evidence for inferring phylogenies.

Although Patterson did not support creationism, his work has been cited by creationists as evidence of the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. In the second edition of Evolution (1999), Patterson stated that his remarks had been taken out of context:

Because creationists lack scientific research to support such theories as a young earth ... a world-wide flood ... or separate ancestry for humans and apes, their common tactic is to attack evolution by hunting out debate or dissent among evolutionary biologists. ... I learned that one should think carefully about candour in argument (in publications, lectures, or correspondence) in case one was furnishing creationist campaigners with ammunition in the form of 'quotable quotes', often taken out of context.

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