Re: The (long) future of paleontology

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Dann Pigdon wrote-

> That's assuming of course that digging will still be required in the
> future. Subsurface remote sensing techniques may well become accurate
> and precise enough to never have to get your hands dirty (or bloody)
> ever again.

I agree not excavating will be the future of paleontology.  Just think of 
the benefits of using an extremely large number of self-replicating 
nanoprobes to catalogue the ground.  They could make a precise 
three-dimensional map of every fossil and compositional change in the rock.  
We could even link this data to a database of known fossils for automatic 
identification.  None of this would be possible for a few hundred years or 
so, but we have a long future ahead of us.

Mickey Mortimer