Friday, July 22, 2011

Becoming a paleontologist?

Currently, I'm an honours anthropology student, and I've always been fascinated by paleo since I was a child. Dinosaurs, the Permian mammal-like reptiles, and the woolies of the upper Cenozoic, those three broad groups always fascinated me. And of course, human evolution. I'm extremely fascinated by primate paleontology and behavioural ecology, subjects that I am enrolled in for this up-coming year. My original goal was to pursue paleoanthropological research for my Master's and Doctoral research after completing my undergraduate degree, but the more and more I study paleoanthropology, the more I want to study just paleontology in general. But making the jump from the social science faculty to the natural science faculty is not an easy thing to do, and its pretty much set up to be that way. I have been thinking about dropping down from honours specialization in anthropology to a major in biological anthropology, and taking on a major in geology as well. My institution offers a "Major in Earth and Planetary Sciences" which requires you to take an arsenal of core courses: plate tectonics, environments, and products; structural geology; crystallography and optics; stratigraphy and sedimentology; paleobiology and paleoecology; 11 day summer field course; a course on petrology, and then several electives. If I took a double major in biological anthropology and earth and planetary sciences, would I be eligible to apply to the geology department to take a M.Sc in geology? Ultimately, I will probably end up just doing primate paleontology, but I want a broad paleontology background, so that if I want to take up research on another taxonomic group I can do so. I don't like the fact that anthropology limits one to studying the primate/prosimian group.

No comments:

Post a Comment