What Patterson says is by looking at a fossil it is not possibe to determine if you are looking at a direct ancestor, or a some sort of branch or offshoot. Direct ancestry cannot be determined from fossil evidence; that's for comparitive genomics. We're not going to find direct transitions because in order for this to occur we would need fossils every parent, child, and subsequent descendent. Of course, such a thing is impossible. However, this is convienent for the supporters of creationism to latch on to, because they get to imply evolution is impossible and they get to quote a palaeontologist as saying something that sounds like transitions don't exist. By reading Patterson's actual work it is clear he doesn't believe this. Also, if you read the statement by Patterson, he explains himself how his words were surreptitious record and twisted against his will.
That's not the context of Patterson's alledged out of context quote. It's about the gaps in the fossil record. Those pesky gaps that prompted Gould and Eldredge to advance the theory of "Punctuated Equilibrium".
---excerpt Talk Origins ----
"Anyone who has actually read the book can hardly say that Patterson believed in the absence of transitional forms". Lionel Thevnissen.
----excerpt Talk Origins------
"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument." -- Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.
From the Talk Origin article it becomes clear that the "out of context" controversy is animated by comparing apples with oranges.
"Patterson believed" and "There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument." are the giveaway phrases in Thevnissen's Talk Origins argument.
Sunderland doesn't question Patterson's belief in Darwin's theory of gradual change over long time spans. He asks for hard evidence. Patterson says he has none. In addition Patterson speculates that there may be a problem with the fossil record. That's in understatement IMO.
This problem was pointed out by Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in a paper initiated some years ago. It was also pointed out by Darwin himself.