translation: Tuy nhiên, điều đáng ngạc nhiên nhất là trong số này có nhiều loài không để lại bất kỳ hậu duệ nào. tổng cộng, theo lời gould, ít nhất mười lăm hoặc hai mươi loài trong số này không thuộc bất kỳ hệ sinh vật nào. (về sau các nhà khoa học đại học cambridge xác định con số này lên đến hàng trăm).
translation: What was most surprising, however, was that there were so many body designs that had failed to make the cut, so to speak, and left no descendants. altogether, according to gould, at least fifteen and perhaps as many as twenty of the burgess animals belonged to no recognized phylum. (the number soon grew in some popular accounts to as many as one hundredfar more than the cambridge scientists ever actually claimed.) the history of life,  wrote gould, is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity.  evolutionary success, it appeared, was a lottery.