Stephen Gould is a peer-reviewed scientist that has his work in many peer reviewed journals.
Indeed he was. He also accepted an ancient earth, ancient life, evolution according to Darwin generally, humans as apes - taxonomically - and decried Creationism. Everything he said supports evolution, not Creationism, so why would you cite him at all?
We were not always apes according to ToE. We went through fish, reptile,dino, before even getting to a warm blooded ancestor.
Uhm..Ignoring for a moment the names are not correct.
We still are all of those, we never stopped being them.
we're still 'fish' we're also 'reptile' and 'dino' then finally we added 'ape' to it.
(Keep in mind the names are wrong, but I am too lazy to go look up the proper names right now so I'll use them as placeholders to explain the concept. we sure as heck were never dino's for example xD)
Od, Eds, here's the Reader's Digest evolutionary progression.
Vertebrta (beings with backbones including fish)
Sarcopterygii (lobe finned fishes)
Reptile is an anachronistic clade so Amniota (terrestrial vertetrates with amniotic eggs)
Sinapsidia (the amniote lineage that separates "reptiles" {turtles, crocs, dinosaurs and birds} from our mammal progenators
Mammalia (devided into Protheria - Monotremes and Theria subdivided into Metatheria - Marsupials and Eutheria - placental mammals)
Euarchontoglires (rodents, rabbits and primates)
Primata, Catarrhinies, Hominidae, Hominines, Homo
Od, this isn't some fantasy created by "evolutionists". It's based on evidence - 150 years worth at this point.