Writing this history of paleontology has revived vivid fossil-related memories from my past. Ever since childhood I have been fascinated and inspired by the fragmentary vestiges of ancient creatures, the rubble of once great nations of animals.
Every birthday I would plead with my parents to be taken to the Natural History Museum in London, in a more naive era when a small boy could be set free to explore the terracotta halls of this Romanesque “cathedral of life.” I loved the grand dinosaur skeletons, of course, although I was already aware that some of them were made of plaster, but it was the unfrequented gallery of ancient fish that I remember most. Even more than their spectacular land-living descendants, this gallery’s inhabitants looked intriguingly, overwhelmingly old—crushed and mangled messengers from an alien era before feet trod the Earth. Many appeared timid and harmless, yet some were heavily armored, hinting that some awful threat was abroad in those days. <...>
