There were many examples in the history of life so show that precisely the most perfectly adapted, the physically biggest and strongest, the most numerous creatures, the lords of whole periods of life, died out in the end with monotonous regularity leaving the torch of life to be carried forward by smaller, more modest and often previously almost unnoticed forms of life, until they too fell into the trap of all too perfect adaptation.

Sheltering Desert; Union Deutsche Verlangsgesellschaft Ulm (1958)