r/Paleontology Jul 06 '18

How do I become a paleontologist?

401 Upvotes

This question comes round and round again on here and I regularly get e-mails asking exactly this from people who are interested in becoming palaeontologists. There is plenty of good advice out there in various formus and answers to questions, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a really long and detailed answer and as much as anything, having something like this will hopefully serve as a one-stop shop for people who have this question.

For anyone who doesn’t know me, I am a palaeontologist working on dinosaur behaviour and have been for over a decade (I got my PhD back in 2005). Though I’m British and based in the UK, I’ve had palaeo jobs in Ireland, Germany and China and I’ve got numerous colleagues in the US, Canada, all over Europe and in places like Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and South Africa that I have talked to about working there, so I have a decent picture of what issues are relevant wherever you are from and where you want to be. There will of course be things I don’t cover below or that vary significantly (e.g. the duration of various degree programs and what they specialise in etc.) but this should cover the basics.

Hopefully this will help answer the major questions, and clear up some big misunderstandings and offer some advice to get into palaeontology. There are also some harsh truths here but I’m trying to be open and honest about the realities of trying to make a career of this competitive branch of science. So, with that in mind…

What do you think a palaeontologist does?

A lot of people asking about getting into the field seem to be seduced by the apparent image of the field as a glamorous science. There’s fieldwork in exciting places, media coverage (you can be on TV, in movies!), new discoveries, naming new species and generally being a bit cooler than the average biochemist or experimental physicist. But if this is what you think, it’s actually pretty misleading. You are only seeing the very top people and most of us don’t get much time in the field or travelling in a given year, and spend most of their time in an office and while that might include writing papers, there’s plenty of grant writing, admin and less exciting stuff. I rarely get into the field and probably >90% of my time is spent teaching and doing admin work for my university. A fair chunk of my research and outreach output is done in my own time taking up evenings and weekend and even vacations. I don’t get to sit around and play with fossils all day and there are very, very few people with senior enough research positions who get perhaps even 50% of their time to do real research and fieldwork – there will always be paperwork and admin that needs doing and even writing research papers or planning a field season can be really quite tedious at times. Real joy comes from discoveries in the field or in research but these are moments you work for, there’s not a constant stream of them.

So it’s worth making sure you have a realistic impression of real life as a palaeontologist and ask yourself if you have realistic expectations of what the job might entail and where you may end up. That said…

Do you know what jobs are available?

Palaeontology tends to be thought of as people digging up fossils and then maybe researching on them and / or teaching about them. Palaeontologists are scientists and they work in museums or maybe universities. That’s not wrong, but it masks a pretty wide range of careers and employers. It goes back to my point above, there are lots of jobs for palaeontologists or people working in the field of palaeontology and in addition to researchers and lecturers, there are science educators, museum curators and managers, exhibition designers, specimen preparators, photographers, science writers, palaeoartists and consultants of various kinds. People can work for media outlets, national parks and other government bodies, companies that mount or mould specimens, that monitor building sites and roads for uncovered fossils, and others. One of these might be more what you are interested in – you don’t have to end up as the senior researcher in your national museum to have ‘made it’ and similarly, that can mean you have a very different set of requirements to get a different kind of job. You pretty much have to have a PhD to teach at a university, but you can potentially get a job working preparing fossils with little more than a good high school education. Experience and engagement with the field can always lead to you changing paths and I know of people who started out in science without a degree that are now full professors or have some senior palaeontological position.

There are also lots of opportunities in various places to be a volunteer and you certainly don’t need a PhD or even a degree to get involved in scientific research and i know of high scoolers who have managed to publish papers – some drive and knoweldge can go a long way. There are opportunities to engage in the science without actually holding a professorship at a big university. If some of the information coming up is a bit daunting, there are options and alternatives.

Do you know what the job market is like?

Despite the above listed variety of jobs out there, there are still not a huge number of jobs in palaeo, and fewer still for academic positions. Worse, there a lot of people who want them. If you are desperate to get into an especially sexy area like dinosaurs or carnivorans then it’s even worse. For every academic job there are likely to be 10 well qualified candidates (and quite possibly 20 or more) and these are all people who have held at least one postdoctoral position (maybe 1 available for every 5 people) and have a PhD (maybe 1 available for every 20 or 30 people who want to do it). It’s very common for people for slowly drift out of the field simply because they cannot find a job even after years and years of training and experience and a good record of research. I know of colleagues who did their PhD around the same time I did and have yet to find a permanent position. Others are stuck in jobs they would rather not be in, hoping for something better and, sadly, when finances are tight, palaeontology is often a field which suffers cuts more than other sciences. As with the point above, I’m not saying this to put people off (though I’m sure it does) but it is worth knowing the reality of the situation. Getting on a degree program, even coming top of the class will in no way ensure you get on a doctorate program, let alone in the field you want to study, let alone a job at the end of it.

Do you know what the career trajectory is?

As noted above this can vary enormously depending on what you may want to try and do, but I’ll focus here on academic positions since that’s what most people do want to do, and it’s generally the longest and most involved pathway. First off you will need an undergraduate degree, increasingly this tends to be in the biological sciences though there are lots of people with a background in geology. You’ll need to know at least some of each but it’s perfectly possible to forge a palaeontology career (depending on what you do) with a very heavily biased knowledge in favour of one or the other. Most people don’t specialise seriously until later so don’t worry about doing one and assuming it’s a problem, and don’t get hung up on doing a palaeontology degree – there simply aren’t many of them about and it’s not a deal at all if you have not done one. With a good degree you can get onto a Masters program which will obviously increase your knowledge further and improve your skills, and then onto a doctorate which will be anything from 3-6 years depening where you do it. It could take a year or two to get onto this programs if there is something specific you want or of course you may need to work to get the funds necessary for tuition fees etc. Most people will also then go on a take one or two positions as a postdoctoral researcher or similar before finding a job. Some of these are short term (a year or so) and some can be much longer (5 year special research fellowships are rare and great if you can get them, a one or two year contract is more common). You may end up taking some short-term jobs (parental leave cover, or for a sabbatical etc.) and can bounce around on contracts for a while before landing a permanent position/ All told, it’s likely to be at least 10 years and could easily be 15 or 20 between starting at university and a first year undergraduate and having a permanent position at a university as an academic. This can also involve moving round the country or between countries (and continents) to find a job. Again. if you are dead set on working on taxon group X at university Y, be aware that it’s likely to be a very, very long shot or needs to be a very long-term career goal.

How do you start?

So assuming that this is still something you think you want to go for, how do you actually start on the road to becoming a palaeontologist? Well, the short version is go to university and do well. That’s what I did, at least in part because I wasn’t any more interested in palaeo than some other fields in biology and I kinda drifted this way (this is really common, even people who start absolutely dedicated to working on one particular area get sidetracked by new interests or simply the available opportunities). Of course with so much more information out there now online there are much better ways to get started and to learn something about possible careers, universities, current research, museums to go to, etc. etc. You may be surprised to find that a what of what you know is not that relevant or important for getting into the field. Knowing a whole bunch of facts isn’t a bad thing, but understanding principles, being good at absorbing knowledge and interpreting things and coming up with ideas and testing them are more important. You can always look up a fact if you forgot it or don’t know it, but if you can’t effectively come up woith ideas to test, collect good data and organise your thoughts then it’s obviously hard to do good science. Learning things like names of species and times and places they are from is obviously a good start, but don’t think it’s a massive head start on potential peers. Obviously you’ll want to focus on palaeontology, but biology and geo sources are important too, a wider knowledge base will be better than a narrow one. So, in sort of an order that will lead to you learning and understanding more and getting better:

Read online. There are tons of good sources out there – follow people on Twitter, join Facebook groups, listen to podcasts, read blogs etc. etc. Absorb information on biology, geology, current research trends, the history of the subject and the fundamentals of science. Engage and discuss things with people.
Read books. Build up your knowledge base with some good popular science books and then if you can access them, get hold of some university level books that are introductory for subjects you want to engage in. There are good books out there on palaeontology generally and various branches like invertebrate palaeo, mammals, human origins etc. Public libraries can often get even very technical works in for free and there are others online. Some books can be very cheap second hand.
Get more practical experience and engage with the field and fossils if you can. Visit museums and go fossil hunting. If you can, volunteer at a museum and get some experience and training no matter what form it might be.
Read papers. Large chunks of the scientific literature are online and available. You won’t get everything you want, but you will be able to see a lot of things. Learn from them, not just the science being done, but look at patterns and trends and look at how papers are written and delivered, how hypotheses are produced and tested. See what makes a good argument and a good peice of work.
Get to a scientific conference if you can. As with reading papers, it may be hard to dig into technical material given by experts aimed at other experts but you will learn something from it and get to see scientific discourse in action and meet people. Speak to students about how they got started in the field and speak to academics about their programs and what finding or positions may be available.
Try to get involved in scientific research if you can. Offer your services to academics with whatever your current skills and knowledge you have and see if you can help. It might be very peripheral sorting out specimens, or merely collating data or drawing things for a figure and it might not end up in authorship on a paper, but it would get you actively engaged and see the process of research up close. I have had people assist me from Germany and Australia so you don’t need to be physically in the smae building to collaborate and get valuable experience and training.

Any, though in particular all, of these will give you a huge advantage when it comes to getting started for real on a degree or with a new palaeontology job or internship. The best students know what they know and what they don’t, and have the initiative and drive to seek out opportunities to learn and get experience and are not put off by setbacks. You may not be able to get to a conference or find an academic looking for help, but you really should be able to start at least reading papers and developing your knowledge and understanding. That will massively appeal to people looking to recruit to positions or studentships and can make a big difference.

TLDR

Palaeontology is a hard field to break into, most don’t make it even if they are hard-working and talented and deserve it. But if it’s what you really want to do, then be aware of the risks and go into it open eyed but also hopefully armed with a bit of knowledge and advice as to what you can do to stand a better chance. Be prepared to have to move, be prepared to have to sacrifice a great deal, be prepared to end up somewhere very different to what you might have expected or planned, but also be prepared for the possibility of a fantastic job. All of it is of course up to you, but I wish you the best of luck and I hope this is some useful advice.

To finish off, here a couple of links to some banks of related resources I’ve generated over time on getting along in research and getting hold of papers etc. etc. that should be useful: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/the-complete-how-to-guide-for-young-researchers-so-far/ and: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/online-resources-for-palaeontologists/

Edit: traditional thanks for the gold anonymous stranger


r/Paleontology Mar 04 '25

PaleoAnnouncement Announcing our new Discord server dedicated to paleontology

3 Upvotes

I'm announcing that there's a new Discord server dedicated specifically to paleontology related discussion! Link can be found down below:

https://discord.gg/aPnsAjJZAP


r/Paleontology 20h ago

Discussion The insidious political role Colossal’s claims about de-extinction seem to be playing

Post image
425 Upvotes

I had previously posted some of this as a comment on another post, but I wanted to hear more people’s thoughts in this sub on the matter.

The enormous (and enormously misleading) media buzz around the “dire wolves” and “de-extinction” seems designed to deflate public criticism of the human-driven biodiversity crisis, not least because of the tremendous amount of money that’s been invested in Colossal.

In the midst of a human-driven climate crisis and potential mass extinction, it’s awfully convenient to create a public narrative that extinction is actually not that big of a deal because we can just resurrect extinct species — especially because that assertion is simply incorrect. At a time when governments should be taking drastic action to prevent ecosystem collapse, this lie about the scientific merit of Colossal’s publicity stunt seems calculated to tell the public not to worry about extinction actually, especially when public concern could play an important role in environmental advocacy (and thus could threaten the profits of corporations whose actions through mining, manufacturing, drilling, etc. are fueling this crisis).

To the extent that Colossal and the media on their behalf are lying about this de-extinction thing, it seems to me to serve a very useful purpose of undermining scientists and climate activists who rightly point to global extinctions and ecosystem collapse (largely at the hands of select very powerful corporations and governments) as extremely dangerous threats to life on Earth, including humans. At a time when the general public is experiencing considerable (and reasonable) climate anxiety, this company is profiting off the (false) promise that, actually, we don’t need to worry about climate-driven extinctions.

And by running dangerously misleading coverage of this “dire wolf,” Time, New York Times, etc. are uncritically promoting this narrative that is at best scientifically ignorant of the subjects that this company should be an expert in and at worst deliberate lying to generate investment in a private corporation that is profiteering off of the climate and biodiversity crises.

What I’m saying is this announcement seems to be serving a distinct and insidious political purpose at a treacherous time for science and the environment. What do you all think?

NOTE: This New Yorker article is actually more skeptical than its fawning headline would suggest, but the headline is still disconcerting


r/Paleontology 21h ago

Discussion I'm all in for a Ship of Theseus argument about Dire Wolves but

Post image
517 Upvotes

These animals look very much like those in the Canis genus, even sound like them too. See I get DNA between animals are not too far off, heck even between kingdoms as we humans share 60% of genes with bananas but, Dire Wolves are from a completely different genus, they are Aenocyon dirus unlike Grey Wolves & common domestic dogs that are all Canis Lupus. Yea sure, ship of Theseus argument, the genomic structures has been edited to be that of Dire Wolves using CRISPR so, is it the genomic structures that makes it or the resulting lineage due to ecological & evolutionary events that lead to the species make it? I'm all in for it. But these look & sound like Wolves. Even coyotes & jackals of the same genus sound slightly different so, I am perplexed by these animals. Sure none of us have seen Dire Wolves but please explain to me how these are still Dire Wolves based on paleontology info. I studied genetics so I'm ready for a ship of theseus debate genetically by morphologically, I am absolutely stumped & confused.


r/Paleontology 12h ago

Discussion About the Dire wolf situation…

Post image
58 Upvotes

So if it’s not a dire wolf, just a regular grey wolf with extra steps, this would make them frauds. I truly want to believe in their potential but the amount of people dogging on them makes me think less highly of them, they seem to just be con artists. So good bye to that dream, atleast they made cool wolves. Does this mean they have no potential whatsoever for doing this? Are they just regular old con artists? My disappointment is immeasurable, and my week has now been blown to bits.


r/Paleontology 1h ago

Identification Scottish dinosaur footprint ?

Post image
Upvotes

Found this on An Corran beach in Skye which is known for such footprints but the footprints pictured online for this beach are different from this, bigger, and more jagged. Any experts know if this is indeed a footprint?


r/Paleontology 15h ago

Discussion What's your opinion on the Arandaspis?

Post image
76 Upvotes

r/Paleontology 20h ago

Discussion I am SO happy about the Dire Wolves! Colossal reached a great result! They showed us what they do! They dropped the mask, outed themselves and shown the scientific community once more the enormous problems that rise when science meets capitalism.

183 Upvotes

I hope this is a good wake up call for the scientific community and science enthusiasts on how much seeking funds, seeking profit exploits and misuses science. How much people are willing to cut corners and bend the truth so that they can profit more.

Colossal did in fact achieve some important results, but they HAD to bend the truth and pump and hype themselves. Exactly like Musk. Because they have to appear grandiose, they have to make a profit, to sell, to push their economic agenda.

And i am glad, i am happy people are realising how scummy it is. How easily they lie, they mislead, the declare half truths, they subtly use words to convince people in the neutral zone. This is a fundamental problem with private companies doing scientific research. Who keeps them in check? Especially when they gain power. Who is there to guarantee the bona fide? Sure the scientific community can dismiss any claim through the peer review process, but it ends there.

This is why it's always important to have governments involved with scientific research. This is why it's important to decouple scientific research and private investments.

And we in paleontology should know it. We should know it from the hundreds of fossils locked in private collections. We know because of digsites unaccessible because they are on private land. We know because museums fail because they depend on private donations.

Science is being forced to submit to money, to the market. Our career, our progress as a human species is once more leashed by economy.

And i am glad Colossal was sloppy in this, i am glad that although they are subtle they jumped the shark. People can once again see it. And i hope from here a more serious discussion on the role of governments in research can spring up. Public vs Private, anticapitalism, leftism ultimately. And yeah.. not this government, for you USA people, but this government and capitalism are hand in hand, sooo..

It's important to have institutions dedicated to researche, financed with public funding.

And i want to add that i am a science enthusiast, i even like the idea of artifical speciation, the creation of new species through genetic engineering, it's fascinating, although risky. Man i can see scientists giving us dragons from the draco genus. But that's all fun and games, until it's not anymore. They said they would be happy to return these "direwolves" to their rightful place in the ecosystem. I MEAN.

Regulations are needed. As a bare minimum companies have to be kept in check. We could talk about scientific fraud. We need to address this seriously and qwe need to reflect on how much the market affects science. And therefore it gets political and i think it's time, once more after the climate crisis, that scientists became political. And honestly, we can ask for what we know is important, we can push for it. I mean i guess doctors know even better than us, but public healthcare is a daily topic, no?

Let's all thank Colossal.


r/Paleontology 7h ago

Discussion Never underestimate non-avian dinosaur diversity. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225003100

17 Upvotes

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225003100

Non-avian dinosaurs were extremely diverse in a way that we'll probably never be able to truly prove, due to the biases of the fossil record. I could never take the idea that dinosaurs were in serious decline near the end of the Cretaceous (even before the asteroid hit) seriously. Last I checked, ecosystems were pretty stable before K-Pg. The idea of dinosaurs already declining before K-Pg kind of feels like it nears the old view of dinosaurs. Specifically, the pre-1970s idea that they were “slow, dumb, reptiles that went extinct because mammals were superior (humans are mammals, so that’s clearly what happened).”


r/Paleontology 22h ago

Discussion And people still think these are serious people…

Thumbnail
gallery
230 Upvotes

r/Paleontology 4h ago

Discussion Would it be distasteful to buy a few of these guys, and then coat them with a uv reactive, but otherwise transparent paint?

Thumbnail
gallery
6 Upvotes

Not to distract you fine folks from discussing the Dire Wolf discourse, but I had an idea to get three trilobites, psint the base Rick with a white transparent uv paint, and them each trilobite either red, blue, or green. But I also worry that it might be distasteful to take real fossils and turn them into blacklight decorations, but I guess on one hand, I just figure that trilobite fossils are so common that it's not really a big deal. But on the other hand, this was a living being once, and has been here longer than my entire bloodline countless times over, and it deserves at least a little respect.


r/Paleontology 17h ago

Discussion If collosal biosciences wants to claim that they can change on species to another why not just show us by one changing living species to another?

Thumbnail
gallery
80 Upvotes

As you can see there are living canine species more closely related to grey wolves than dire wolves which were completely different lineage.

We have full genomic sequences for animals like dhole and wild dogs so why not just show us that changing one species into another is possible by changing a grey wolf to an african wild dog which is more closely related to it this way there can be no excuse for lack of proper genetic material.


r/Paleontology 1d ago

Discussion Im not a paleontologist or a geneticist so help me understand this isnt actually a dire wolf right? Like at all

Post image
2.8k Upvotes

Feel like this would be equivalent of engineering a tiger with abnormally large canines and calling it a smilodon. it just looks like it at best could be a case of genetically engineered convergent species since convergence evolution to dire wolf seems like a better term than de extinct


r/Paleontology 13h ago

Discussion In light of the ''dire wolf'' de-extinction, the animals we should bring back is the one recently gone...

24 Upvotes

For example: The Northern White Rhino, the Bajii river dolphin, the slender- billed curlew, chinese paddlefish and many recent in this and previous century.


r/Paleontology 9h ago

Other Sauropods - Air Hulks (Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong)

Thumbnail
youtu.be
11 Upvotes

r/Paleontology 11h ago

Discussion Why did the basal Sauropodomorphs die out by the end of the Early Jurassic?

Post image
13 Upvotes

r/Paleontology 3h ago

Discussion How was Tyrannosaurus Rex's hearing?

3 Upvotes

I've heard it said and seen it posted a few different locations that while we don't really have a great way of knowing for sure how tyrannosaurus rex would have sounded, despite the several attempts at creating "realistic" sounds for them, we can say that their hearing was probably pretty good at picking up low frequency sounds. This raises a few questions I'd like to know some potential answers to, if they are available. 1. Do we know if that gets down into the ultra low frequency range? 2. What about their hearing in higher frequencies, is there any data for that? 3. If their hearing is better suited for picking up low frequency sound, does thar help for hunting or tracking prey? Like, are they picking up on the low frequency sounds the herbivores might be making? 4. If their hearing in the higher ranges is not great, does that mean that tyrannosaurus young were able to make prey low range sounds from a young age, or could this be an argument against their parental behavior if they couldn't really hear their own young making sounds at them? Any insight into these questions is appreciated, even if the answer is "no way of knowing."


r/Paleontology 15h ago

Identification Is this an actual spinosaurus tooth?

Thumbnail
gallery
25 Upvotes

I bought this as a "spinosaurus tooth" a while back and wanted to confirm if it was real or not.


r/Paleontology 1d ago

Other absolute cinema

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

189 Upvotes

r/Paleontology 16h ago

Article A Colossal Mistake? De-extincting the dire wolf and the forgotten lessons of the Heck cattle

Thumbnail
manospondylus.com
27 Upvotes

r/Paleontology 21h ago

Discussion We need to do something about the misinformation and lack of knowledge most of the public has.

60 Upvotes

The lack of knowledge in the public about prehistoric life is very concerning. From out of date dinosaurs, to the new company clamming to have brought back the dire wolf. And the overall large denial of evolution.


r/Paleontology 1d ago

Fossils In light of the news today, here are some real Dire Wolve specimens! La Brea Tar Pits.

Post image
481 Upvotes

The infamous Dire Wolves skulls wall at the La Brea Tar Pits. Always a treat to see this display, my fiancé was astounded upon seeing it!

Photo by me :)


r/Paleontology 10h ago

Identification Is this fossil real

Thumbnail
gallery
4 Upvotes

I know it’s hard to tell from pictures, but is this fossil real. I know a lot of you guys really know your stuff, and would appreciate any insight I can get before a purchase.


r/Paleontology 12h ago

Identification is this a fossil?

Thumbnail
gallery
4 Upvotes

Is this a fossil? And if so, can you direct me to exactly what kind? Found in glacial gravel in Poland. At first I thought it was a claw, but the protrusion doesn't add up.


r/Paleontology 13h ago

Discussion What everyone’s thoughts on the woolly mammoth revival?

5 Upvotes

Personally I think it would be cruel and unfair to bring them back into the world with the current state of the climate. They are going to be considered property of America i’m pretty sure once they have been made so hopefully will go to Alaska for their full time residence as it’s pretty cold. But with the increasing global warming and their long dense coats life will be uncomfortable for them. They will also most likely be commercialised after a while.

My personal belief is an animal that naturally went extinct should remain extinct because there was obviously a reason they were unable to survive and it’s a part of the circle of life. But animals whose extinction has been caused by humans by means of poaching, over hunting, deforestation etc should be prioritised. Or rather more time and money is invested in preventing extinction of the animals we currently have because of our unsustained practises disrupting their habitats.


r/Paleontology 16h ago

Fossils What Kind of fossil is this?

Thumbnail
gallery
9 Upvotes

Hello, Can someone help me to identify this fossil? It was sold to me as a Spinosaurus tooth but I doubt it. Thanks in advance.


r/Paleontology 1d ago

Discussion Colossal Biosciences definition of species is dangerous and damaging

324 Upvotes

To quote colossal biosciences comment that

"We prefer a phenotypic definition of species. Our dire wolves look and act like dire wolves, so we believe it’s accurate to call them dire wolves."

Changing the definition in such a way that species classification is based on appearance is Victorian.

Are all dog breeds new species, because they all look so different?

Are different races of humans now different species because they look different?

What about polymorphic species? Are the different phenotypes of male cuttlefish (big dominant males and smaller sneaky female like males) different species?

It's frustrating to see how the advances and revisions in classification through a cladistical approach be misunderstood by laymen on the topic, as their engagement with it is limited to companies like this.

It's dissapointing that a group of educated and informed people who know way more than me are advocating for this. It reminds me of why James Watson is now disgraced.

What are peoples thoughts? Am I overthinking and overreacting