Paleontology: The Profession
Voynick, Steve, The World and I
In just the last three years, paleontologists have made front-page news by recovering South American fossils of Gigantosaurus carolinii, an eight-ton predator even larger than the familiar Tyrannosaurus rex; extremely rare soft-tissue fossils of the organs of a baby dinosaur in China; and the fossilized remains of the smallest mammal yet found, a five-gram, tree-dwelling creature in Wyoming.
These and other recent new discoveries and developments in paleontology belie a surprisingly small professional field. In the United States, there are only about 1,200 active, professional paleontologists. Jere Lipps, professor and curator of the University of California's Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley, estimates the number of active paleontologists worldwide at no more than 15,000, with the greatest number now working in Russia and China.
A career in paleontology demands a strong and unusually varied background in the sciences, with special emphasis on biology and geology. Undergraduate training ideally includes a solid foundation in chemistry, physics, calculus-level mathematics, statistical analysis, and computer use, along with courses in mineralogy, stratigraphy, sedimentary petrology, invertebrate paleontology, ecology, invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, evolutionary biology, and genetics.
But a bachelor of science degree is merely an academic starting point in the field of paleontology. …