Dream de la paleontology

dream and career as dead as the animals you are working with

>>2437783
did you apply there at DMNS?
They get thousands of volunteer applications.

If you want to be a paleontologist you go to college for it, you don't volunteer at a museum. That'll just make you a museum volunteer. Becoming a paleontologist does require you to volunteer, but volunteering doesn't make you a paleontologist.

>>2437783
Dude, go to college. Is that not an option for you?

Btw I live in the Springs and have been to the museum a few dozen times at least. I guarantee you that you know more than the dumbfucks reading of a script about arctodus or whatever.

>>2437805
they don't have a script to read off of.
Most of them are retired, have worked there for years, and have all kinds of dinosaur trivia memorized. Getting a spot working with the public in Prehistoric Journey is near impossible, there's very few positions and tons of people already filling them.

It used to be fairly easy to volunteer in the fossil prep lab, but now I think they're using paleontology students for that work. You're right, OP needs to go to school.

>>2437796
>>2437805
>>2437812
I'd be happy to do a lot of different things for the museum if it's going to help further my working experience with paleontology and to figure out if it's really what I want to go with in life.
I have actual working experience in paleontology. I worked on that site over the summer and I went back in autumn to haul the skull out of there so it could be taken to the campus in Craig, CO.
>I probably should've just found a site to work on but I didn't know wtf I was going to do this summer desu

>>2437805
>>2437812
I'm a member at the museum. I go there often enough lowkey hoping somehow they'll tag me in to do something for them.
Denver, CO actually doesn't have any paleontology colleges very close at all. Most of the volunteers I see in Prehistoric Journey are kids younger than me (21) or retirees.
They gotta have something I can do.

>>2437783
>willing to do work for free
>turned down
>because no experience
>how to get experience?
>volunteer

Fucking assholes, I'm sorry OP but I go through this shit all the time. I've never heard of being turned down for a volunteer gig though. That's pretty fucked but don't take it personally.

It used to be you could just get a job and they would train you. Then you couldn't get the job without volunteering first. Now you can't even volunteer at all. This world is beyond fucked.

>>2438312
My life currently revolves around volunteering one place so I can have the experience to go do another thing as a volunteer.
For no real compensation except experience.

>>2438318
Yeah that's fucked. Back in the 50s you could get most jobs with just a high school degree. Now even a master's isn't enough unless you consent to being a slave and working god knows how many years for free.

>>2438159
>I'm a member at the museum. I go there often enough lowkey hoping somehow they'll tag me in to do something for them
buddy, I've been a Family Plus member for 20 years now. I was a research assistant under Dr. Carpenter when I was in school. I volunteered on the Snowmastodon Project and I'm personal friends with the curator of paleoecology. On top of that I've been a corporate donor for the last 15 years and have given the museum tens of thousands of dollars in donation. I visit there about once a month.

they have NEVER tapped me to volunteer and they never will. You have to apply to do that shit. Even then you probably won't get a position. As a member they want your money, not your time.
>Denver, CO actually doesn't have any paleontology colleges very close at all
yeah, you'd have to go clear to Golden or Boulder or Morrison. Clear across town. Personally I went to Golden, but you could do the Mines track at Red Rocks CC which guarantees you admission to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden upon completion.

You are very literally surrounded by schools with paleontology tracks.

>>2438336
>they have NEVER tapped me to volunteer
It's a joke, brothar. You don't have to impress me.
>Golden or Boulder or Morrison
>schools with paleontology tracks
Those are schools with ENGINEERING tracks. I know Mines. I have friends that play there. I'd rather go out of state to find a better paleontology school.
>But I don't even know if that's what I really want to do yet.
I wish someone would just tell me I made the right move by pursuing some actual experience in paleontology before I applied again, but I guess I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

>>2438484
>Cont.
That might not actually be bad if I end up deciding I want to do engineering, TOO, but fuck man I wouldn't even have time to volunteer. I wouldn't have time for anything, and I'm not even convinced I'm interested in engineering.
>>2438322
Tons of jobs that require a bachelors degree today could be had after high school in the 80s ffs. And those same fucks own the motherfucker own.

>>2438484
>Those are schools with ENGINEERING tracks
Mines is the only one that's primarily an engineering school, and it also offers straight geo degrees including paleontology.

Others, (CU, CSU) have dedicated paleontology programs as well.

Hell, even Denver colleges will give you a paleo degree if you design a curriculum and get it approved for independent and online study.

You're doing fine in getting your feet wet, it's not a bad idea at all. The problem is digs aren't a particularly important part of the thing. Neither is fossil prep.

Most of paleontology is actually either sophisticated chemistry (geology) or straight up anatomy and cladistics. You aren't going to learn if you like that stuff from going on digs or volunteering at museums. You literally need to enroll in a geology or paleontology or biology program and find out if this stuff appeals to you by doing it.

>>2438484
The other thing you can do is buy paleo textbooks and read them. If you love reading that stuff and find yourself wanting to write about it you may have picked the right discipline.

Because tbqh most of what paleontologists do consists of reading and writing.

>>2438484
>>2438510
The other thing to ask yourself is did you enjoy dissecting frogs in school?

because if you choose to study paleontology you will be dissecting frogs, lizards, birds, fish, rats, pigs, sheep, and humans. Lots of them. Over and over again. Then you'll spend weeks writing about what you found when you cut them up. Then you'll teach what you learned to others. Anatomy is learnt primarily by taking animals apart.

>>2438533
>>2438510
Ya I love that shit.
>>2438507
>Hell, even Denver colleges will give you a paleo degree if you design a curriculum and get it approved for independent and online study.
Shit, I forgot about that. Idk about CU/CSU, though. I've asked the students and they all tell me it's better suited for engineering.
What other jobs are there for paleontologists besides the obvious? I've heard they've been teaching in medical schools and acting as anatomy consultants for surgeons now.

>>2438593
By obvious I assume you mean research, teaching, and museum curation.

You could be the county coroner I guess. Maybe do autopsies in some rural area where they don't require a medical doctor. You could pretty easily get into med or vet school, but that's not really the most direct route to that career.

other jobs you'd be way overqualified for would be zoology, wildlife management, any lab work, most geology, environmental industry, mining, oil and gas exploration, writing children's books, waiting tables, flipping burgers, driving busses, whatever.

In real life if you get a paleontology degree you want to work in paleontology though. Which means research, teaching, curation.

>>2438605
By obvious I meant dinosaurs and shit.
>other jobs you'd be way overqualified for would be zoology, wildlife management, any lab work, most geology, environmental industry, mining, oil and gas exploration, writing children's books, waiting tables, flipping burgers, driving busses, whatever.
I meant that.
Thank you, anon. I'm having my young man's crisis where I don't know what to do and you made an idea of what to do a little clearer.

>>2438593
>I've heard they've been teaching in medical schools
We have always taught in medical schools. It's part of the anatomy coursework. We teach anatomy to med students. We have done since the 1800's.

>>2438611
Most paleontologists are actually invertebrate paleontologists that study things like plankton and algae and pollen for identifying strata for oil and gas companies.

this particular type of work pays fairly well, but I find it boring. Years and years of peering into a microscope all day every day.

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All the people ITT bitching about needing experience in order to volunteer need to fuck off. Do you really think we should hire someone who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing just because they're free? Like the idiot in Florida who forgot Manatees were mammals and needed to breath air? He probably had years of experience and he still killed the world's oldest water potato!

>>2438612
>be me, a med student from the 1800s
>"and now, an anatomy lesson from someone who literally put the head of a plesiosaur on its tail"
Hardy kek

>>2438611
The other obvious job track is resource management for the state or the feds. The feds employ less than 100 paleontologists, primarily in the USGS but also for resource management in National Forests and Parks.

the private sector equivalent is the industrial paleontologist that does NEPA paperwork for industrial clients doing work on public lands. Oil and mining mostly, but sometimes water, construction, or timber companies. Most companies don't need a full-time NEPA paleontologist on staff though, so that sort of work would likely be done as a consultant or private contractor. Basically just going to construction sites on public land looking for fossils and hopefully not finding anything of interest.

>>2438621
OP's problem isn't that the position he wants requires any particular experience- it's that thousands of other people volunteer for the position so the museum only takes those with experience. They have to sort the applicants somehow.

>>2438621
Who is we and wtf happened how do you kill a manatee besides from just flooring over the fucker

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>>2438638
>name and describe over 1000 new species
>fill several museums with your collections
>revolutionize our understanding of evolution
>remembered primarily for your blunders
Those guys really don't get enough credit :)

>>2438640
>tfw such a slow bro that algae will kill you
I love animals but sometimes I wish they weren't so goddamned retarded

>>2438644
I literally had to know this to even think of that sort of joke, you daft punk.

>>2438644
>romanticizing criminals
This is unironically only okay when white people do it.

>>2438647
did you think I didn't know you knew? Ah, but you didn't know I knew you knew, did you?

I wasn't correcting you, I was joking with you.
You're right, the idea of him teaching anatomy after that is funny. Just like I think it's funny that out of his huge body of work he's primarily remembered for fucking things up.

>>2438644
>destroyed several thousand fossils out of literal jealousy
>inaccurately describes various growth stages of the same dinosaur species as different species out of literal ego
I'm also sure you meant EVILution. ',:^)

>>2438648
Lots of great scientists have been criminals. I think that's how the US and Russia got their space and nuclear programs.

>>2438653
US and Russia didn't have space programs, only Germans.

>>2438651
>I'm also sure you meant EVILution. ',:^)
kek
the both of them were pretty evil
>>2438654
>US and Russia didn't have space programs, only Germans.
exactly.
we convicted their scientists of war crimes and then used those convictions to get them to work for us.

>>2438653
>>2438654
We literally just imported the best space Nazis to do space shit for us post-WWII with haste.
>lots of great scientists have been criminals
Nigga Peter Larson got sent to federal prison for some genuine bs and he's still not pardoned from being a felon

>>2438656
>Nigga Peter Larson got sent to federal prison for some genuine bs and he's still not pardoned from being a felon
Yep, while people that actually did the crimes he was accused of have since gotten off without even a slap on the wrist. Or in one case (the dude that poached the first Falcarius) got one year of probation on a misdemeanor charge.

it is genuine bs

>>2438656
>>2438657
I know Pete. The only reason they nailed him for it was because he had stirred up such a huge shitshow in South Dakota about the feds seizing Sue. Failing to declare traveler's checks has a recommended sentencing of 6 months probation. Larson got two fucking years in Florence.

>>2438665
>I know Pete
I know, Daniel.
Like how he told you that he was publishing a paper shortly that would prove you right about it having feathers and then a month later published the exact opposite.

You seem to know him very well indeed.

>>2438657
>>2438665
I didn't hear about this shit on Dinosaur 13 holy kek

>>2438668
Why are some paleontologists so anal about selling fossils? Ya bro some things belong in a museum, but there's literally millions of fossils that are just going to weather back into dust.
>you technically can't be a member of SVP if you buy any of those little fish fossils at a Wyoming truck stop

>>2438668
What?

>>2438670
First there's priorities. The commercial or amateur fossil hunter harvests them for money or for decoration- scientists are of course going to see either use as inferior to science. And perhaps the fossils being collected have no obvious scientific value, but scientists are also aware that they MIGHT have scientific value to someone in the future. And once a fossil is removed from its context and placed in a private collection that data point is lost to science forever.

The second reason has to do with the meaning of "people." In the US fossils and artifacts on public land belong to the people. Prior to the 1970's this meant whoever found them. You find a dinosaur on public land, it's yours to keep or sell. Now "people" is interpreted to mean ALL US citizens, so fossils and artifacts on public land are placed on display where everyone can see them (for a fee ironically enough). So scientists saw a shift in the law removing fossils on public land from private ownership to public. This made many hungry to see that same shift expanded to fossils on private land. The Sue case was a major loss for them in that regard- it upheld private property owners' rights to own fossils found on their own land. This still pisses off paleontologists, and in time I expect we'll see this right also stripped from the American public as the voting populace continues to move to the economic left.

>you technically can't be a member of SVP if you buy any of those little fish fossils at a Wyoming truck stop
"technically" is the key word, though I don't know why a fossil collector would want to donate upwards of $400 per year to an organization that actively works to destroy their hobby.

I do, as do some commercial fossil collectors I know, but that's just because I don't really care about the law or the opinion one way or the other. In my mind amateur fossil collecting helps paleo-science by getting the public interested. Tomorrow's paleontologists are today's fossil collectors.

>>2438674
I also know Peter Larson and have over the years encouraged one anon that liked to ask me about "Wyrex" to email him for details.

Apparently that anon, named Daniel, eventually did. He showed me an email from Larson a few months ago mentioning an upcoming publication and claimed that publication would show that T. rex was feathered.

A month later Larson published that paper claiming that rex was entirely scaled.
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/6/20170092

This is of course the opposite of what Daniel told me, and perhaps the opposite of what Larson told him.

If you're not Daniel then there's 3 anons on /an/ that know Larson personally, which is an extraordinarily high number.

>>2438680
My name is definitely not Daniel, and I really do not have a clue what you're talking about.

>>2438683
Interesting. Like I said that's an extraordinarily large number of Larson's friends and acquaintances here.

I wonder what other not-particularly-famous scientists might have such a large fan base on 4chan?

>>2438687
>3 people
>2 of them might be the same as far as I know
Larson's a friendly guy.

>>2438706
>2 of them might be the same as far as I know
That would imply I told the truth about my communications with Larson and lied about the other anon. This is an irrational assumption, it's more likely I either told the truth about both or lied about both.

I know this Daniel communicated with Larson though because while his report of the contents of Larson's most recent paper was incorrect, the report of the timing of it was not.
>Larson's a friendly guy.
as are most paleontologists.

>>2438711
Oh, I didn't know that you knew him too. Most people in the paleo community I know have met the guy before from SVP meetings and what not.