- Gerry Standing: Excuse my ignorance but what does the keeper of paleontology actualy do?
- Brian Lane: Oh, a very important job, Gerry. He's responsible for a world class collection of fossils.
- Superintendent Sandra Pullman: Just like me.
- [Gerry and Brian are about to break into Gerry's ex-wife's house so Gerry can retrieve what he thinks is a valuable fossil]
- Brian Lane: You can't just walk into someone's house in the middle of the night when they're away. Gerry, this is illegal entry.
- Gerry Standing: [smirking] All my wives have said that to me at one time or another!
- [Brian and Gerry are chasing Mark Slater around the laboratory. When it looks as if Mark will escape, Brian takes a holdall from Barry Drake and skims it along the floor as if it was a bowling ball, causing Mark to trip over it and fall]
- Gerry Standing: Strike!
- [last lines]
- [Gerry has asked Madeleine Simmonds to identify a fossil that he has "borrowed" from one of his ex-wives, hoping that it will be worth a lot of money]
- Madeleine Simmonds: It's coprolite.
- Madeleine Simmonds: [excited] Is it?
- Brian Lane: Coprolite.
- Gerry Standing: Yeah, I own a coprolite. So between ourselves, could you give me a rough, ball-park figure of what I might hope to get for it?
- Madeleine Simmonds: Well, someone with a scatological sense of humour might offer you a few quid to have it as a conversation piece.
- Gerry Standing: [horrified] A few quid? But it's thousands of years old!
- Madeleine Simmonds: Oh yes, it's old all right, but it's not all that uncommon. Coprolite is fossilised animal dung.
- Gerry Standing: Shit!
- Madeleine Simmonds: Precisely.
- Gerry Standing: I don't want it.
- [Gerry hands the coprolite to Brian who sniffs it]
- [first lines]
- Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: [Brian opens a storage locker] Brian!
- Jack Halford: Well, say what you like about Bob Ruxton, but he never kept you waiting.
- Brian Lane: Aye, he was a good man. Always had time for a chat.
- Gerry Standing: And he always pulled the rounds. The nights I've been on the hit-and-miss with Doc Ruxton...
- Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: Yeah, well, that kind of behaviour might account for his having been suspended, mightn't it?
- Jack Halford: It's a hard thing for a man to be publicly pilloried after a long and distinguished career.
- Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: He's not being pilloried, Jack. He's facing charges of negligence and incompetence.
- Brian Lane: Nobody's perfect, Sandra.
- Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: I'll fix us up a meeting with the Keeper of Palaeontology, who's the head of Fletcher's old department.
- Gerry Standing: Excuse my ignorance, but what does the Keeper of Palaeontology actually do?
- Brian Lane: Oh, a very important job, Jerry. He's responsible for a world-class collection of fossils.
- Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: [mutters] Just like me.