From Science News

[garrison@efn.org]

A PALEONTOLOGIST RETAINS HIS SENSE OF WONDER
"Conversation with a scientist" from The New York Times

The desk that dominates Dr. Michael J. Novacek's fifth-floor office at the
American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan broadcasts all the
contradictions of his daily life. On the table's surface are computers,
budgetary papers, administrative notices and the skeleton of a shrewlike
creature that went extinct 15 million years ago.

For Dr. Novacek, 53, paleontologist and senior vice president of the museum,

life is a constant pull between the indoor duties of a museum administrator

and the outdoor pleasures of roaming the world searching for the bones of
extinct animals.

In 1993, Dr. Novacek made history when he took a team into Mongolia's Gobi
Desert, where they fell upon one of the richest dinosaur fields on earth.
The tale of that expedition and of Dr. Novacek's extended travels to places

like Yemen and Chile are recounted in his new memoir, "Time Traveler," about

to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

"I often feel this typical wanderlust thing," he said. "When I get back from

the field, I say, `I'm not going anywhere for the next 10 years.' But then
the months go on and you find yourself jumping, ready to go. Again."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/08/science/08CONV.html