Re: paleontologists

["John V Jackson" <jjackson@interalpha.co.uk>]

-----Original Message-----From: Jack <jconrad@lib.drury.edu>Date: 25 April
1998 08:20


>Just a fun, hypothetical question--
>
>If there was to be a paleontologist of the century, who might it be?
>
>jc



Well, first of all, it couldn't be Cope or Marsh - not because they're not
of this century - I'm sure they must have overlapped it even though they may
have done most of their work last C. The reason is that it would be unfair
to the other one - and they're such nice chaps, we wouldn't want to offend
either of them.

Seems to me there is no obvious candidate (unless we take Uncle Bob
perhaps), so it may be possible to have one of those central european
eccentrics as being just a nose ahead of the pack.

As people are always urging us to be scientific, perhaps we should start
playing around with a few categories and criteria:  Fame/esteem (both within
field and outside), Contribution?  Far-sightedness?  Number of papers
written?  Made most dosh out of the field?  Spent longest time in prison for
it?  Found most dinos?  Had most dinos named after them?  Put forward the
most ridiculous theories while keeping reputation intact?

But of course, as posed, it doesn't have to be dinos.  But it's not right to
waste listers' time by straying off subject, so I'll stick to dinos.

One thing we can do right off is knock Greg Paul on the head - doesn't do
anything on telly, just sticks to the job at hand.  That's no way to get
elected, now is it?  Jack Horner is one of the most sought after by the
media, but since I diasagree with almost everything he says I can't give him
my vote, though I realise that rectitude of opinion will only be one
criterion, and a minor one at that.

I'll leave further specifics till later, but I would like to finish by
floating what I feel to be a concept of great importance to this question -
the number of secrets being sat on.  I for example am a "one secret" man.
Someone like Dinogeorge, I guess, would score about six.  Thom. Holtz, being
a professional, and quite famous would rate about eight to ten on the
secrets scale.  Habitual peer-reviewers based in big museums would go much
higher - Angela Milner must score a couple of dozen or more, but the
american equivalents would be even higher.  But then of course, what do we
mean by secrets?  Boring ones or interesting ones?

JJ

(I wish to retract some of the kind sentiments I expressed a few weeks ago
on the topic of birds' excretion.)