John Maynard Smith
Several authors have written that J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) said that the discovery of a fossil rabbit in Precambrian rocks would be enough to destroy his belief in evolution. However these references date from the 1990s or later. In 1996 Michael J. Benton cited the 1993 edition of Mark Ridley's book "Evolution", Richard Dawkins wrote in 2005 that Haldane was responding to a challenge by a "Popperian zealot". In 2004 Richa Arora wrote that the story was told by John Maynard Smith (1920–2004) in a television programme. John Maynard Smith attributed the phrase to Haldane in a conversation with Paul Harvey in the early 1970s.