Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be paleontologists...

Just like Willie Nelson's cowboy song, the life of a paleontologist is a rough one, and the pursuit of earning an income is being pitched out by smaller science budgets. Roy Plotnick, published a study of paleontology employment in the latest issue of Palaeontologia Electronica. What is most striking about his study is the high numbers of students and retired paleontologists in the United States and the small number of fully employed paleontologists. This study is a follow up study to the Flessa and Smith's (1997) study, which noticed a remarkable trend among major Universities and Colleges to staff only a single paleontologist, required to teach everything from the micro-fossils of the oceans, past climate change, the diversification of fossil plants, and the biology of dinosaurs in an ever more specializing scientific world. The prestige of these Universities and Colleges has fallen, but this lost of revenue is absorbed by the expanding "patentable" sciences, such as molecular biology, nanotechnology, engineering, and chemistry where industries maybe spawned in the local community. Plotnick's (2008) study reveals that there are only 56 full professors specialized in vertebrate paleontology teaching in the United States today. While this number is based on memberships to scientific societies, it does point to a failing view in society about the importance of paleontology to address scientific questions.

Plotnick, R. 2008. A somewhat fuzzy snapshot of employment in paleontology in the United States. Paleontologia Electronica Vol. 11 issue 1

The importance of fossil evidence

I pity the fool who does not realize the incredible record of past life that exists on this planet of ours. Or views that vast record as coming from a microscopic moment in time. It really does not matter what people think. It just pains me that they never learned to read the pages of the rock record in school. Like someone who never looked up at the sky to see the stars. There are those that get angry at such ignorance, others that entrench themselves in into a particular view. Debating like lawyers in front of a nonexistent jury and judge. All this bickering gets recorded in nauseating detail, such that someone who is slightly interest in the evolutionary history of the word, gets a heavy dose of this stupid squabbling. As if evolution is even up to be debated! I believe acting against us, is the ever growing departure from the natural world around us. We step through life seeing only a narrow strip of highway, the florescent light of a cubical office building, and the processed air and food that flows through our veins. Only a few fortunate souls go out and explore the world. They can see deep beyond our times into the deepest of moments in the past. If you are lucky enough to experience it, it has a mind dizzying effect. We are only a tiny pin-prick in the vastness of time. There is so much more! I implore you go out and explore! Find out what fossils have been found in your area, go to your local natural history museum and see what has been found. Mount your own trips to collect fossils, prove it to yourself that fossils exist and support an ever changing world!