Serendipity (was Re: Papers,Reports,etc)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 03:55 PM 11/15/98 -0500, Chris Brochu wrote:

>>Go to university library or museum library. And know what you want, or you'll
>>waste time.
>
>
>I respectfully disagree.  Some of my most valuable discoveries have come
>from blindly flipping through journals in a library.

Seconded.  The biomechanical part of my disseratation (and 1995 paper on the
arctometatarsus) began while I was bored out of my gourd while the Mac II I
was running at the U.S. Geological Survey was chugging away at yet another
ostracod faunal analysis.  I went to the shelves of the library, started
looking through past issues of Paleobiology, and came across Jeff Thomason's
paper on biomechanics of tridactyl horse feet...

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:tholtz@geol.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661