Fossil hunting is by far the most fascinating of all sports. It has some dangers, enough to give it zest and probably about as much as in the average modern engineered big-game hunt, and danger is wholly to the hunter. It has uncertainty and excitement and all the thrills of gambling with none of the vicious features. The hunter never knows what his bag may be, perhaps nothing, perhaps a creature never before seen by human eyes. It requires knowledge, skill, and some degree of hardihood. And its results are so much more important, more worthwhile, and more enduring than those of any other sport! The fossil hunter does not kill, he resurrects. And the result of this sport is to add to the sum of human pleasure and to the treasure of human knowledge.

— George Gaylord Simpson (1934)
(via my sister Kit)