Re: on being a paleontologist

[Michael Habib <habib@jhmi.edu>]

While my PhD work is in paleontology, much of my MS was actually 
conservation bio oriented (there are in fact several connections 
between the two, but that's another story).  In line with Jaime's 
comments, it was the conservation work that became depressing at times, 
 rather than the paleo work.

Cheers,
--Mike Habib

On Sunday, April 10, 2005, at 03:27 PM, Jaime A. Headden wrote:

> Ian Paulsen (birdbooker@zipcon.net) wrote:
>
> <One question I have wondered about recently about being a 
> paleontologist is
> doesn't it get depressing after awhile? After all you are studying 
> species that
> for the most part are no longer around! Isn't dealing with extinction/ 
> extinct
> species depressing?>
>
>   I think any attachment to the dead is a recent thing, in that those 
> who work
> with what can be referred to as "preventable" dead are faced with the
> "futility" of their work as it continues. Police, forensics, etc., 
> deal with
> this quite literally daily. The idea is that you get into this process 
> to learn
> how to stop this from continuing, but you keep seeing the dead roll in.
>
>   Paleontology is VERY different in that there is no mental 
> preventability
> involved. There is no way to stop this fossil from being formed and in 
> fact
> some wish that MORE were being formed so as to increase knowledge. 
> Studying
> animals killed by man (passenger pigeons, tasmanian wolves, various 
> Hawai'ian
> birds, dugong and dod, etc.) and those NOT killed by man (trilobites,
> ammonites, La Brea tar pits fauna, dinosaurs, etc.) I think are two 
> different
> things.
>
>   Cheers,
>
> Jaime A. Headden