Toroca, son of Afsan and Novato, is now head of the Geological Survey of Land, meant to take a global inventory of the resources available for the Exodus project.

The world appears to be much older than five thousand kilodays, due to the rate of erosion being too slow, and during an expedition to the South Pole, he finds that it is inhabited entirely by many unique types of Wingfingers.

To ensure that the Exodus continues, Afsan suggests that Dybo can win the battle Rodlox is asking for if he involves all eight royal children with a Blackdeath playing the role of a Bloodpriest.

Returning to the original site, the team looks for another artifact in the cliff face but finds an enormous blue building containing the mummified remains of extinct or alien creatures.

Also complementing the main plot are the "Musings of the Watcher", interspersed through the book and told in flashback from the first person perspective of a god-like entity whose consciousness has survived from the previous cycle of creation in which life was more abundant.

His discovery of unique Pterosaur species at the South Pole parallels the exotic flora and fauna Darwin encountered on the Galapagos Islands, and Toroca likewise comes up with a theory of natural selection to explain their specialised features.

However, Robert J. Sawyer alters the situation for the Quintaglios slightly by making it appear as if their fossil record supports creationism, due to the transplant of life from Earth millions of years earlier.

[2] Compared to Far-Seer, however, the science vs. religion angle has been downplayed slightly, and rather than following a single, linear narrative as the previous book did, Fossil Hunter has several plot threads which tie into and complement one another.

[3] Fossil Hunter was met with similar critical acclaim as Far-Seer, with the Science Fiction Chronicle calling it "every bit as good as its excellent precessor.