Dear Log,
«While stratigraphy is a relatively low academic calling, it pays rather well because of its obvious real-world commercial value. By contrast, vertebrate paleontology has always been a useless, but popular and respected pursuit, although the pay ranges from the execrable to the non-existent. Imagine, then, the dismay of all concerned when conodonts were discovered to be vertebrates. Suddenly, conodont workers were dragged from the oil-stained proletarian legions of Houston and Riyadh petro-imperialism and thrust into the rarified, if ragged, intellectual circles of vertebrate paleontologists.»
... would be little point in recapitulating this excellent and very readable review. However, we shall do so anyway on the theory that, if the reader had ready access to such materials, he or she would not be spending valuable time on this web site in the first instance.
