April 7, 2026
Why do we care so much about paleontology? Is it the adventure, since the best fossils so often seem to be found in the least welcoming terrain? Is it the thrill of discovery, the uncovering of something that has slept for millions of years? Is it the hope of making a find so remarkable, so new, that it is entirely unknown to science and adds another entry to the literature of all paleontology? For our active commercial members is it the hope that one decent find might generate enough income to help cover the cost of next year’s field season?
At the end of the day (or dig), is it not truthfully a reverence, an admiration, a fascination that drives us — a respect for the strange, wonderful, lost creatures who once felt the warmth of the same sun that we do and were, at least in part, our very own ancestors? Doesn’t the recovery of fossils grant a kind of immortality; they lie in darkness for eons waiting to be uncovered by someone like you or me, and are then studied, or placed in a museum or a private collection, perhaps in a carefully-polished glass cabinet alongside a dedicated identification card. Admired, curated, cared for, photographed, written about, adored. It’s not exactly a life, but collected fossils are brought back into the world for a second time.
And for me, and many of you too I am sure, there is a wistfulness, a wish to connect — if only from an immense distance — with a world long gone and never to be seen again except in the footprints (literal and figurative) of the plant and animal fossils left behind.
When I was a little boy of six years old, it so happened that when my parents rented a fallen-down summer vacation home, our immediate neighbor was an elderly but vigorous retired geologist, with a love of fossils. His name was Wally Robbins. He took me under his wing and, many days that summer, he also took me out, with his rock hammer, and taught me how to look for hidden things. We did discover micro-treasures which enthralled a little boy (including a very rare salamander who we did not try to catch, but admired from a respectful distance), but the best “finds” came on the last morning, as I said goodbye to my first — but definitely not my last — field mentor. Wally gave me my very own trilobite, an Elrathia kingii from Utah, and a gorgeous multi-colored fossil fern plate. Nearly sixty years later I still have them both and I still cherish them. Yes, I have bigger and better trilobites in my collection now and, yes I have myself found comparable plant fossils while collecting in Pennsylvania. But nothing can compete with the magic inside those two gifts.
I have tried to pay Wally’s kindness forward. A few hours spent with an intrigued child can plant a seed that will grow into a paleontologist, or a geologist, or a botanist, or physicist, doctor, astronaut, park ranger, or potentially anything at all that is good in the next generation … or the generation after that.
In recent years, educators have come to understand the lasting value of out-of-classroom learning experiences. Those memories stay with us and they help build the adults we will become. The message here is simple: walking in the wild places as a child and finding invertebrate fossils of my own was a key moment in my life, as it has been in the lives of so many others. That is one of the reasons why responsible fossil collecting is a critical part of the journey that we make from child to scientist, enthusiast, collector, or commercial vendor.
Some feel that all fossil collecting should be regulated; some feel there should be no regulation at all. I see a middle place, an exciting place, and hopefully not an imaginary one — perhaps it looks a little like the vibrant lagoon-shore environment where Archaeopteryx lived. Archaeopteryx who was, himself, the bridge between worlds. I want to live there, in that place, where cooperation is the norm, where important finds and data are shared, relationships are built, lasting friendships are made. And, between us, we keep learning, find by find and bit by bit, about the world that once was.
Because, ultimately we — the casual collector, the little boy walking with his mentor, the fossil dealer, the expert academic specialist —all of us, want exactly the same thing: more and better fossils.
Geoffrey Notkin
President, Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences