We don't need paleontological perspective to regard 30 years as a short time. Many in this audience, and several speakers in this symposium (but not yours truly, who was busy celebrating the Yankees' unprecedented fifth consecutive world series victory and wondering how a 12-year old boy could turn into a paleontologist), were already practicing our profession when the Paleontological Society marked the beginning of its great Treatise project with a symposium at the 1953 G.S.A. meeting on the status of our field (Kummel, 1954).