Future of Palaeo...

[N.Monks@xxxxxxxxx (Neale Monks)]

Dear All,

I agree with Norm, Thomas and others who see Palaeoecology as a way forward
for all of us who study 'fossil life' in one form or another. As a
zoologist attracted over to palaeontology, I saw the chance to use
contemporary ecological and physiological thinking as a useful tool to
understanding how past life worked.

Although my experience of palaeontology and the people within the field is
very limited, I believe that as the older, more conservative "stratigraphy"
generation are retiring; a younger generation of active names are taking
over research projects, teaching, even museum exhibiting. These are people
in their forties and fifties, who are young enough to have experienced the
'white heat' of the scientific revolution in the 1960's and 1970's in their
formative years; but are still senior enough to have political clout.

And for the up and coming generation like me (a 24 year old graduate
student), the chance to have our curiosity encouraged by people like this
is critical. At the end of the day, palaeontology is like all sciences:
curiosity driven. We can try to justify it by industrial or ecological
worth, but the best science has been, and always will be, that which is
produced by people simply fascinated by the subject they are working on.

Bottom line: I am glad places like the Natural History Museum in London are
happy to lay on projects that won't neccessarily feed the starving hordes
or even discover new oil reserves, but are in themselves interesting. More
power to institutions with this sort of courage in our accountant driven
world!

Regards,

Neale.



>From  Neale Monks' PowerBook, at...

Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD
Internet: N.Monks@nhm.ac.uk, Telephone: 0171-938-9007

"...now Nature is having the last laugh. The freaky stuff is turning out to
be the mathematics of the natural world"

from 'Arcadia', by Tom Stoppard