Nice to see the Panda’s thumb and Stephen Jay Gould mentioned again. It really does boggle my mind that the Creationists and ID proponents don’t get the message. One slight concern:

In The Panda’s Thumb, a book of essays, Gould explained that the
so-called thumb that allows the panda to strip the leaves off bamboo is
really part of the wrist (the sesamoid bone) and evolved for this use
because the panda lacks an opposable digit.

Obviously a failing memory on my part as I thought it was the radial ursoid (the connection being with bears or ursus) but that’s a minor point. More important is "evolved for this use". Err, no. Things evolve and are then put to certain uses but the entire point is that the appearance of the characteristics is not driven by their use. Whether they survive and pass to latter generations is driven by whether those changes are indeed useful, but that’s a rather different point.

Still, and yes, I’m aware that Gould was considered a little extreme in some of his assertions (perhaps a litte too much emphasis on the punctuated or catastrophic part of evolution and his views on the Burgess Shales) but as I remember it this is indeed the core of his argument in the book and one well worth remembering:

He noted that "odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of
evolution – paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a
natural process. . . follows perforce."