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The Life of a Fossil Hunter

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By Charles H. Sternberg
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About This Book

The author recounts a lifetime of fossil-hunting fieldwork across western fossil provinces, describing seasonal expeditions, camps, and the practical skills needed to locate, excavate, and transport large fossil-bearing slabs. He narrates work in chalk beds, badlands, river basins, and desert formations, records notable discoveries of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, fossil plants, and Ice Age mammals, and explains quarrying, preparation, and shipment techniques. Interwoven are accounts of scientific collaboration and correspondence with museums and researchers, plus personal reflections on the hardships, rewards, and enduring fascination of recovering ancient life.

PREFACE

I wish to call the attention of the reader of my story “The Life of a Fossil Hunter” to the fact that I am under obligations especially to Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, President and Curator of Paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He has supplied me with many of the most beautiful of the illustrations that illumine these pages and has assisted the work in many ways.

I would also express my gratitude to Miss Margaret Wagenalls of New York, who edited the manuscript; to Prof. Dunlap of the Kansas State University, for his kindly criticisms; and to Dr. W. K. Gregory, Lecturer on Zoology at Columbia University, whose untiring efforts have brought the book to its present form.

I hope it may awaken a wide interest in the study of ancient life, and I thank my friends everywhere who are contributing to that end.

Charles H. Sternberg.
Lawrence, Kansas,
January, 1909.