I published that theory [of speciational evolution] in a 1954 paper…and I clearly related it to paleontology. Darwin argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others... I noted that you are never going to find evidence of a small local populatlon that changed very rapidly in the fossil record... Gould was my course assistant at Harvard where I presented this theory again and again for three years. So he knew it thoroughly. So did Eldredge. In fact, in his 1971 paper Eldredge credited me with it. But that was lost over time.

Ernst Mayr (2000) "The Grand old Man of Evolution" interview by Michael Shermer and Frank Sulloway, Skeptic 8 (1): 79; As cited in: Quotations Ernst Mayr on Gould, Stephen Jay Gould Archive, 2013