Paleontologists

"We already have some ideas there. And the connection to CeNak and the partnership between the cities of Hamburg and Dar es Salaam can help."

"We all love a good fictional superhero, but real scientists, real people, have just as amazing powers!"

"Just take that first leap of faith and trust the process! All whilst working hard and intentionally at achieving the goal."

"Trust the process, and if you don’t like it or it’s not working for you, change it. Be the change instead of waiting for change."

"For as long as there's people around asking questions, exploration isn't dead. Once we accept that, new and exciting things will come to light that will add to the story of our deep human journey."

"Be true to yourself. The dreams that you had as a child were real and pure. With sheer determination, those dreams can come true."

"We were really put in very extreme situations, crawling through very tight tunnels, i've had my butt stuck, I've had my head stuck and it's a challenge not to panic -- but also, you learn a lot about yourself and inner strength in those conditions."

"I am fortunate to be able to work within this fossil-rich reserve. It’s been fun to share my excitement with the women who will become South Africa’s ambassadors, taking part of the story of human origins with them and raising critical interest in our globally shared heritage."

"Imposter syndrome. My insecurities regarding not being good enough at times lead to self-sabotage."

"This position is significant, since the low- lands of north-western Asia were almost certainly populated by wild horses. It is conceivable that domestication may have begun in such an area."

"With the introduction of the horse into Mesopotamia, early in the second millennium B.C., the onager disappears from the list of animals in the service of man."

"In the past 50 years, hundreds of foreign scientists have earned their doctorates using the fossilized dinosaur discoveries found in the Mongolian Gobi. Today, all these findings have become the main marketing highlights of many museums around the world, continuing to attract streams of tourists."

"People often think that science is far removed from everyday life. But in reality, science is one of the foundations of our existence. For example, birds are a type of dinosaur. Only through detailed research can we determine the causes of climate change, the frequency of natural disasters, and changes in animals’ habitats. When a lake dries up, the mud at the bottom hardens, and the animals living there die off."

"Millions of years later, science proves from those rocks that a lake once existed there. Therefore, science is not about memorizing facts, but rather a path of discovery that begins with the question “why.” While people applaud the results, understanding the methodology that produced them is even more valuable."

"Anuran fossils are extremely rare in Morocco. All known specimens discovered to date belong to the Middle Miocene-Holocene periods. These fossils have been recovered from ten distinct deposits located across various regions of the Kingdom. Due to their scattered distribution, it is not possible to trace the evolutionary development of Anurans within a single area."

"Despite this limitation, the available fossils provide a broad view of faunal changes that have occurred since the Middle Miocene and form a foundation for hypotheses regarding the origins of modern species. The evolution of Anuran fauna in Morocco appears to be closely linked to climatic variations and paleogeographic transformations."

"Morocco’s geographic proximity to southwestern Europe likely influenced the composition of its Anuran fauna through historical paleogeographic connections. Understanding the origins of Moroccan Anurans, therefore, requires consideration of the evolutionary history of those from southwestern Europe."

"suffers from the drawback that it cannot with certainty distinguish between resemblances due to genetic affinity, on the other hand, and those which are the results of convergence or parallelism, on the other, and it possesses no trustworthy criterion, by which it can test the taxonomic significance of structural characters."

"The day has gone forever gone by when any one mind, however profound and comprehensive, can take all knowledge for its province. Increase of knowledge, like advance of civilization, necessarily brings with it a division of labor, and each of the great branches of science becomes more and more minutely divided and subdivided for the purposes of investigation. Such subdivision greatly enhances the efficiency of the individual worker, enabling him to concentrate his attention upon some problem of more or less limited scope, and, so far, it is advantageous. On the other hand, like most human devices, it has its drawbacks, and what is gained in one direction is apt to be lost in another. One great and growing evil is the subdiviision of knowledge which accompanies specialization of research."

"Only two or three years ago an expedition from the discovered a place in Wyoming where the lie directly upon those of the , thus fully confirming the inference as to the relative age of the two s which had long ago been drawn from the comparative study of their fossil mammals. The palæontological method of determining the geological date of the stratified rocks is thus an indispensable means of correlating the scattered exposures of the strata in widely separated regions and in different continents, it may be with thousands of miles of intervening ocean. The general principle employed is that close similarity of fossils in the rocks of the regions compared points to an approximately contemporaneous date of formation of those rocks. The principal must not, however, be applied in an offhand or uncritical manner, or it will lead to serious error."

"Among Scott's outstanding contributions to the study of evolution were two memoirs, both published in 1891, the first on ' and the second on ' and '. Besides the descriptive parts of these papers, the first included a list of what Scott considered the most important questions regarding evolution and the second attempted to answer these questions from the paleontological point of view."

"This, then, was the yeast on which Barad-Dur rose six centuries ago, that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle Earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic. The shining tower of the Barad-Dur citadel rose over the plains of Mordor almost as high as Orodruin like a monument to Man – free Man who had politely but firmly declined the guardianship of the Dwellers on High and started living by his own reason. It was a challenge to the bone-headed aggressive West, which was still picking lice in its log ‘castles’ to the monotonous chanting of scalds extolling the wonders of never-existing Númenor."

"“What are we wizards but consumers of that which our predecessors have created, while they are creators of new knowledge? We face the Past, they face the Future. You have once chosen magic, and therefore will never cross the boundaries set by the Valar, whereas in their science the growth of knowledge – and hence, power – is truly unlimited. You are consumed by the worst kind of envy – that of a craftsman for an artist.”"

"“You know, those who are motivated by greed, lust for power, or wounded pride are half-way tolerable, at least they feel pangs of conscience sometimes. But there is nothing more fearsome than a bright-eyed enthusiast who’d decided to benefit mankind; such a one can drown the world in blood without hesitation. Those people’s favorite saying is: ‘There are things more important than peace and more terrible than war.’”"

"“Craft the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem, sure, but when it’s time to implement it, you always hide in the bushes. It’s executioners you need, so that you can later point at them in disgust: it’s all their excesses.”"

"“In two or three decades the Elves will turn Middle Earth into a well-tended tidy lawn, and Men into cute pets; they will deprive Man of a very small thing – his right to Create, and grant him a myriad of plain and simple pleasures instead.”"

"I have filled the gaps in Tzerlag’s story at my own discretion. The old soldier bears no responsibility for my inventions, especially since many will now passionately charge the storyteller – who else? – with deviating from the mainstream version of the events of the end of the Third Age. One has to note that the public’s knowledge of these events is mostly derived from the adapted Western epos, The Lord of the Rings, at best, and often from the Sword of Isildur TV series and the Galleries of Moria first-person shooter game."

"I have to sonorously remind those critics that The Lord of the Rings is the historiography of the victors, who have a clear interest in presenting the vanquished in a certain way. Had genocide taken place back then (where did those peoples vanish if it hadn’t?), then it’s doubly important to convince everybody, including oneself, that those had been orcs and trolls rather than people. Or I could ask them: how often do we find in human history rulers that would relinquish their power, for free, to some nobody from nowhere (pardon me — a Dúnadan from the North)? Yet another subject of immodest curiosity might be the actual payment Elessar Elfstone had to make to the wonderful companions he had acquired on the Paths of the Dead. I mean, summoning the powers of Absolute Evil (for a noble cause, of course) is totally commonplace, he’s neither the first nor the last; but for those powers to meekly revert back to nothingness after doing their job without asking anything in return sounds highly doubtful."