Othniel Charles Marsh Quote

It is certainly within the domain of science to determine when the earth was first fitted to receive life, and in what form the earliest life began. To trace that life in its manifold changes through past ages to the present is a more difficult task, but one from which modern science does not shrink.

Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate Life in America, Introduction (p. 3), Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, Printers. 1877