Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who has complimented and made useful comments on the blog. I'm very sorry I completely ripped off Bill's blogroll.
If you really want to make a contribution to vertebrate paleontologist and be an important player in the field, it is important to specialize on something, on not just dabble a little in everything. “Jack of all trades is master of none” is very much a truism in science. It may be fun (and probably healthy) to occasionally co-author a paper on a subject outside your specialization. However, if you really want to make a contribution in science, there has to be one or two subjects that you know better than almost everyone else, and to which you devote most of your energy exploring (in my case, it is aetosaur morphology/systematics and Upper Triassic vertebrate biostratigraphy). It also means you get to be the person that everyone points to when someone has a question on a particular group; if you are just someone who dabbles a little in everything, no one needing information on a particular subject is going to be terribly interested in your opinion, because the specialists on that subject will know more.
If you want to be a real contributor to VP, you also need to pick a research subject that really needs work done on it that no one else is doing. I know, you want to work on dinosaurs. Hey, I love dinosaurs too. However, the dinosaur field is a little saturated, and you will find that you have a hard time getting your hands on a really meaty project like, say, the description of a skull or skeleton. In a way, this is good; it means that dinosaur science has enough people doing the basic descriptive work that other researchers can focus on more detailed questions regarding variation, histology etc…, but it also means that you may find yourself working on something like “The average curvature of the third maxillary tooth in Gorgosaurus libratus” for your thesis project. Blech. If you can get your hands on a good dinosaur research project that will get your foot in the door, great. Just keep in mind that there nothing to keep you from working on another group and keeping informed on dinosaur research as a side interest. Even if you get a good dinosaur project, you should be thinking in terms of what will be available for your next project…you don’t want to shingling the same paper for next ten years.
Other vertebrate groups are more neglected, and have greater opportunities for really substantial research projects that genuinely enhance our understanding of the group. For example, I have a small backlog of research projects on aetosaurs for which I have virtually no competition. I’m not talking about small papers on scrappy specimens. I’m talking about detailed cranial and postcranial descriptions, and major taxonomic revisions of the most important taxa. Don’t think you’d be interested in aetosaurs? Why don’t you try doing a little research and find out? Well, not specifically on aetosaurs (find your own poorly studied group), but the point is that if you really start digging into a group, and get to know it better than almost anyone, and you will almost certainly come to love it. Each vertebrate group is a beautiful and unique snowflake.
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4 comments:
As a corollary, I would suggest that you should work on a topic other folks care about. Every vertebrate group may be a unique snowflake, but job prospects and recognition from your professional peers are likely to be few if you specialize on a small sub-family known only from the Upper Obscurian of eastern Blechistan.
Just as it is important to pick a taxonomic specialty, it is also advisable to pick a thematic specialty. Simply cataloging the biodiversity of a fossil group is an important and honorable task, but its application is limited if you don't use the data to address broader questions in geology, paleontology, and evolution. Therefore, try to find your thematic niche, whether it be biostratigraphy, functional morphology, paleoecology, biogeography, etc.
Here I have to disagree a little with you Jeff. I am (at least in part) a jack-of-all-trades (OK, just theropods and pterosaurs mostly, it's not like I do all archosaurs, or all reptiles) and while it probably has not helped me get a job, it does allow me to act as somewhat of an intermediate with other researchers by briding gpas between otherwise disparate fields. I don't know enough about pterosaur anatomy or aeronautics to tackle pterosaur flight, but I do know expects in both fields who would not normally even think to work together (or to tackle the problem) and would probably talk past each other if they tried (a crude example but you see what I mean).
We do need some non-specialists as otherwise eventually you will have one person working on Tyrannosaurus mandible shape and another on premaxillary teeth and another on bite forces and another on tooth shape and no-one will be bringing this work together since everyone has specialised to the point where they are only an expert in one aspect of one taxon. (An extreme example this time, but again you see what I am driving at).
So specialise, yes, but don't go too far, and don't worry if you don't. There are still jobs out there for people who are working on something more diverse than third maxillary tooth curvature in tyannosauroids. And plenty of people switch along the way from one field to another.
I'm totally enjoying your blog and your dry sense of humor.
It was nice to meet you at the annual meeting.
-The girl from Vermont
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