Editing Stephen Jay Gould (section)

===Technical work on land snails===
[[File:Cerion_watlingense_land_snail_shells_(modern%3B_northeastern_San_Salvador_Island,_eastern_Bahamas)_(15043406837).jpg|thumb|right|305px|''Cerion'' shells from [[San Salvador Island]], [[the Bahamas]]]]
Most of Gould's empirical research pertained to [[land snails]]. He focused his early work on the [[Bermuda|Bermudian]] genus [[Bermuda Land Snail|''Poecilozonites'']], while his later work concentrated on the [[Caribbean|West Indian]] genus ''[[Cerion (gastropod)|Cerion]]''. According to Gould "''Cerion'' is the land snail of maximal diversity in form throughout the entire world. There are 600 described species of this single genus. In fact, they're not really species, they all interbreed, but the names exist to express a real phenomenon which is this incredible morphological diversity. Some are shaped like golf balls, some are shaped like pencils. ... Now my main subject is the evolution of form, and the problem of how it is that you can get this diversity amid so little genetic difference, so far as we can tell, is a very interesting one. And if we could solve this we'd learn something general about the evolution of form."<ref>Wolpert, Lewis and Alison Richards (1998). ''A Passion For Science''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, [http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/wolpert_sjg-interview.html pp. 139–152.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924110401/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/wolpert_sjg-interview.html |date=September 24, 2015 }} {{ISBN|0-19-854212-7}}.</ref>

Given ''Cerion''{{'s}} extensive geographic diversity, Gould later lamented that if [[Christopher Columbus]] had only catalogued a single ''Cerion'' it would have ended the scholarly debate about which island Columbus had first set foot on in America.<ref>Gould, S. J. (1996). "A Cerion for Christopher". ''Natural History'' 105 (Oct.): 22–29, 78—79.</ref>