"I give up! We're not going to find any fossils here."

Cartoon by Bill Proud, Private Eye cartoonist, drawn especially for the website.

Last week, while the operations were proceeding, the scene was animating, and to the uninitiated, perhaps a little ludicrous. Here were grave savans watching every stroke of the pick and hammer, - there, in the most unmasonic manner, they were wielding the hammer itself; here were men very learned in science giving awkward directions to quarrymen, - there were others on their knees scrutinising with the glass every scale and fragment that was exhumed. At length, from under eight feet of debris and stone, the sward was covered with many slabs, bearing the black enameled creatures that human eyes had not looked upon before.

Fifeshire Journal, August 1861

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