«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.»
Zing! (Score:1)