You're listening to Weird and Dead, the paleontology podcast
that tells evolution's most embarrassing and bizarre
stories. I'm Megan Weatherill.
And I'm Amy Atwater, and we're two living scientists who are
weirdly excited about dead things.
On this episode, we talk about how to get into paleontology, or
more specifically, how the two of us did.
That we talk about our various career paths, and there are a
lot of them. We also give tips on how to
follow your dreams within the science that we love.
And of course, we talk about how the two of us met to begin with.
This episode is not as gross as normal.
Yeah, we don't know how that happened either.
But yeah, enjoy a nice PG PG-13 experience for a change.
Megan, how the heck did you get into paleontology in the first
place? So when I was a little girl, I
wanted to be a flight attendant and that is because.
I'm laughing. Yeah, I would be the worst
flight attendant of all time, and that is actually because I
took an aptitude test in school that told me that I should be a
cobbler, which is not a position that exists anymore except for
possibly for elves or people who live in, I don't know, Italy.
I don't really know what I wanted to do.
I like travelling. And then I went to Outdoor
school with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and I saw
science and scientists and I realized immediately in 6th
grade that that is exactly what I wanted to do.
So yeah, I started my paleo journey there.
I wanted to be a geologist, herpetologist, paleontologist.
And I think technically speaking, I have done all three
of those things. But it did take some time.
I went to 1000 colleges. That's right.
Didn't you? Yeah.
By the time I met you, you were like, ah, yes, that's right.
How many How many undergrad institutions did you go to?
OK, get them all. I physically attended 3
undergraduate universities and it's not like they kicked me
out. I'm not like running from.
No shame if they did. I had undiagnosed ADHD.
That's true. So I I first went to University
of Lethbridge because I am Canadian and I didn't know what
a Canadian winter was like. And by the time that I
experienced one of those, I no longer wanted to engage in
MyHeritage. So I moved back to Oregon and I
went to Portland State University.
Then I realized I wanted friends, so Portland State
wasn't going to work out super well because it's a commuter
college. Or at least it was at that time
and nobody would talk to me. So then I went to Oregon State
and that's where I actually graduated from with a degree in
biology. And the way that they do it at
OSU is you have to take so many chemistry classes that it's just
like one more class to get a minor in chemistry.
So I also have a in chemistry. Yeah.
I mean good for you, I. Worked as a chemistry tutor for
a while there. Which is?
Weird to think about considering my complete inability to
comprehend any of that now. That's impressive.
Yeah, so a bachelor's degree in biology.
Then I went and did a whole bunch of other stuff and came
back. By the time I came back, I
decided that I did want to actually get my graduate degree
in paleontology, which is not where we met, but it is where we
started really hanging out was from Graduate School.
And so yeah, I have a bachelor's degree in biology with a minor
in chemistry from Oregon State. And then, like the trader I am,
I have a PhD from University of Oregon in Geological Sciences.
Because if you're not from Oregon and you don't know
anything about Oregon, those two schools are very competitive
with one another. And they're all of 45 minutes
apart, too. So I remember having cousins.
I grew up in Eugene, where the University of Oregon is, and I
have cousins who live in Corvallis, or who did at the
time. And anytime we had one of the,
you know, U of O versus OSU football games and they won,
they would call us up like angry.
Like not angry because they won. But they were just like in your
face. Suck it like.
Losers. And we were like, we don't even
really care. Like we're not really into this,
like this is OK. Congratulations.
I would occasionally go to games during undergrad because my
roommates were super, super into it, and then because the
tutoring that I was doing was for the athletes, I was part of
like the athletes tutoring program.
So it's like going and watching my children play their little
sports. Oh my gosh, that's so cute.
You did it. Now you can do this.
Past chemistry. And they're like, no, I can't.
Oh, that's so wild. I also was a tutor for student
athletes at the University of Oregon.
Can I ask, can I ask you a? Question.
Yeah. How long was your you cannot
sleep with the athletes training.
Oh yeah. I mean, like by that point I was
off the market. And yes, I do remember that.
I also remember, I mean, again, this is at the University of
Oregon, AKA the University of Nike.
And so it was just a weird place to be no matter what.
And I will tell you this, that the third floor of the building
that we worked in was off limits to like normal people.
It was only open to the student athletes and to those of us who
were tutoring them. And in the third floor women
bathroom, there was a neon outline of Phil Knight's face in
the woman's bathroom. And I remember being like, why
is there essentially an image of Phil Knight in this bathroom
where of course because that building is all glass, right?
That's the that's the building that.
Drowns all the ducklings, right? Yes, and we're the ducks.
Like this is bad. Yes, it kills.
It kills the ducks. It's it's it's a cube made of
glass. OSU does not have Phil Knight
level of money but they have like rabid level of enthusiasm.
So very passionate. Very passionate.
And our training to not fuck the athletes, which was the sole
training we received it was about 3 hours three straight
hours of like and here's how you do your paperwork don't fuck the
athletes and here's how you do this don't have sex with your
students and and so that's my educational history.
I did not sleep with any of the athletes.
What is yours? What?
How did you get into Paleo, Amy? Oh yeah, yeah.
We just did a little hint, see hint here.
Yeah, I mean very similar. I mean, especially with, you
know, Outdoor School, AKA. For me it was summer camps for
definitely. I mean, prior to that, I was
always really interested in biology.
And by that, like when I was in elementary school, I just like
tigers. I loved tigers.
I was just obsessed with tigers. Yes, tigers.
I had so many books on Tigers and I'm pretty sure I went to
one of those really sketchy, like Tiger King level places in
Southern Oregon where you could like look at the Tigers.
I never got to touch one. I was really obsessed with
Tigers. And then though, I was like,
well, they're dying. So that's not a really steady
career option. And then so then I was like,
well, what is not like, what is sciency?
But like there's always more to study and I was like the ocean,
right? We've never seen all of the
ocean. And by this time I was already
going to these Oregon Museum of Science and Industry camps based
out of Portland Omzee, and I was like, OK, I want to be a marine
biologist then that obviously makes sense.
So I went to a. So much more sustainable than
Tiger. Yeah, well, but there's so much
more to explore. It's like we we know there's
only like 20 tigers left, but at least we have no idea what's
left of the ocean. Except for it's all ruined
already. It's all wrecked.
And so, yeah, I went on 7th grade.
I went on a spring break trip to Monterey Bay, California, and it
rained the entire time, which was fine.
We were very used to that as Oregonians and we went
snorkeling in Monterey Bay and I could not do it.
I was terrified of the kelp the. Kelp I also really hate
snorkeling because I went snorkeling with OMSI so many
times. But my first experiences were
always with Salmon Camp. This is the Native American
camp, which is great. But I was like, was it full of
salmon? We snorkeled with rotten dead
salmon, like it was like snorkeling with zombies.
It was awful and it was so cold and I was the counselor, so I
had to like, pretend to think this was cool.
And it was not cool. It was gross.
It was so gross. See that?
That's a good reason to not like snorkeling.
I was in one of the best places in the world to go snorkeling
with support and I was just a camper and I was terrified.
And it's not so much the kelp. The kelp I am.
I am afraid of kelp. It's more of like what lies
beneath. What is hidden in the kelp.
I get freaked out by big fish as we get into.
The Sturgeon stuff. I don't know.
I just, I have it. I have some fun ones.
But I just remember sitting on the beach while everyone went
snorkeling because I was just like, fuck this, no fucking way.
So then I realized that I was like, Oh well, maybe if things
are already dead, they'll be fun to study and they'll already be
extinct, so I won't have to, like, have my heart broken like
the tiger situation. And then I went on.
So one of the camps that OMSI offers is PRT, which is the
paleontology research team and it is like a three-week long
intensive paleontology team. And I had essentially done all
the other camps offered because I am a privileged white girl.
And so my parents sent me to them and it was great.
So I was just like, well what's another one I can do?
And I just chose that one because I got to be in my
favorite place, the John Day Fossil beds out in Eastern
Oregon for that whole time. And I just loved every second of
it. And I knew that that was my jam.
That was my thing. I was so dirty and like sleep
deprived and I think I had three showers in that three weeks,
right? Like, you know how OMSI life was
and I just loved it. And I know I came back from camp
and I had really bad acne because I didn't bathe for three
weeks and my mother was horrified and I was just like
ecstatic and like glowing, except for my skin, which is not
great. Glowing.
It's just glowing. A different color, kind of in a
speckly sense. Exactly.
Yeah. So after that I just got real
into it and decided to go to college to pursue it and thought
I was going to go to a bunch of different fancy ass schools.
And then 2008, 2009 economic crisis happened and it became
very apparent that local was going to be a great option for
me and I'm very glad I did that. I already had some connections
to the geology department there and so I went to the University
of Oregon. Yeah, home of the Ducks and I
was in the honors college there and I ended up getting a degree
in geological sciences and I did a minor in anthropology because
I found out that anthropology offers a lot of the really fun
evolution level classes. You know like biology a lot of
times at some of these major universities is really focused
on micro aspects of biology and I'm more interested in
organismal like zoology kind of level questions.
So anthropology was actually a really fun way to talk about
like evolutionary processes and things like that on like a
larger scale. So I highly recommend Anthro
classes for folks and they're very interesting.
So yeah, and let's see my time there did some cool research
too. And I think that that's what
we're going to talk about now is some of our research interests.
And I mean again, since we have this Oregon connection, some
similar or my first ever research project was on
Oriadonts. Megan Like.
Yeah. Which is like that's essentially
what you did your dissertation on.
Do you want to tell us about what the hell an Oriadon is and
how you studied them? Sure, sure.
So Oriadonts are the world's best animal?
Well, they were. They were anyway.
So they are very dead. And the way that I like to
describe them to people is they're related to camels, but
they are shaped like pigs, and some of them had claws and could
climb trees and some of them had hooves and bit each other in the
face a lot. And some of them had trunks,
big, old, not quite elephanty level, but like tapier level
trunks. So doing all sorts of weird
stuff, the most common Organism in the North Americas for like
50 million years, hypertragulids might technically beat them, the
little mouse deer, but like, so common, so abundant.
And then they all died. And so I really kind of wanted
to know why, But I didn't get that far.
Because it turns out that they have been so screwed up because
there's so many of them, and a lot of early paleontologists
didn't seem to like, understand the scope of variation.
So like new species of Oriadonts would be named off of things
like the difference between my nose and your nose would make us
different species. And there there's a big
difference. But we are both the same
species. We are both the same species, so
yeah, So I ended up spending a lot of time trying to figure out
how to like kind of deal with some of the taxonomy problems in
Oriadonts and how to like tackle those problems in other animals
as well. So I did a lot of stuff on like
species concept and statistics Y stuff, which is why I'm now a
professor of data science, because I studied so much
statistics in order to understand Orionons.
So that's a lot of the research that I've done.
What did you do with Orionons? Cry?
Oh yeah, like most people. I love, yeah, I quickly gave up.
That's really what I did. I also love that I stuff.
I also do have a master's degree.
I kind of forgot. To mention that.
Part I That was my bad. I'll get to it with this part
too. But let's see.
In my senior year of high school, I was a part of the
International Baccalaureate program, which is like AP but
for nerdy kids who want to have a more international take on it.
And we had to do a senior project and I was already still
in connection with my instructor from the Paleo research team who
was our friend David, and he's was a student or a post back
student I think at the time at the University of Oregon.
And he decided to help. Me, if you don't know what a
post back is, it's I'm just going to stick it around for a
little bit longer. I also did that.
Yes, nothing wrong with that. It's a great way to continue to
get research opportunities and volunteer and education and just
be a part of a dope lab group. Yeah, And so he was like, Oh
well, we could do something on oridans.
So I looked at oridans and how we could use their teeth to
understand if body sizes changed over the climate change.
Because as you talked about, oridans were around for four
fucking ever. Especially compared to modern
species like get your shit together.
Like, have some respect for these oridons.
Yeah, come on. Yeah.
So essentially they persisted in Oregon for so long.
And also Oregon goes through substantial climate change
during that time, from being like a hot, moist, jungly
rainforest to drying out over time and becoming more seasonal.
And if the oridon body sizes would change in connection with
that, and if there'd be a signal in that.
So I measured a ton of their first molars to try to.
Because molar size can be used as an inference for body size.
There's some problems with that. Listen to our episode on
biological constraints to hear about that.
And then I tried to then correlate that with time and see
if there's any major changes in body sizes.
But as you said, we got fucked over.
Because their taxonomy is such a hot mess that it was almost
impossible to follow a lineage through time consistently and
accurately enough to actually be able to infer if there was a
change in body size. Because people, depending on who
they were and what they believed in, had different
interpretations on who was related to who in the Orion
world. And therefore like, it just was.
It became quick. I remember sitting down and
being like, OK, and then I'll see which species goes to the
next species. Or like I'm going to go through
this person's taxonomy and see how it connects to this.
And I just had this like, fucked up horrible diagram of just
lines to each other that I was just like, no, no, no, no, no,
never again, never again. But I did great on that paper.
I was awarded the best senior paper, actually at my high
school. So thank you Oreodonts, but
yeah, it was It convinced me I did not want to work with
Oridons and I ended. Not mammals.
Mammals. Oh, mammals are great.
And I still love oridons. They're one of my first loves,
for sure. And that's why I was so glad
when you were like, I like oridons and I was like, here you
go. I'm not that I gave you oridons,
but I was just like, have fun. I'm so glad you Someone Like You
who is smarter than me will try to work on this.
And fix these things. And I decided to actually pivot
towards my combination of my loves, which is deep time
mammals, but also anthropology, right?
So I also was really interested in human evolution.
But an undergraduate, I realized that human evolution is a toxic
wasteland of personalities and drama.
And I realized that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with
this shit show. That was the competitive world
of human evolution where you fight over 2 tiny shitty
fossils. And so I realized like, oh, you
know what, no one fights over really old primate fossils.
And I pivoted towards early primates.
So like, Eocene primates. So Eocene was from like 56 to
34,000,000 years ago. And it was when across the globe
we saw like, thanks to the PETM, we saw a spike in temperatures
and it was like lush tropical forests, like even up to the
poles. So primates just.
Flourish Paleo Seeing Thermal Maximum.
It's like a super hot. So hot.
Thank you. Yeah, and it did Primates good.
They diversified really well in that time, and we see some
really cool primate lineages. And that's what I ended up
pursuing for Graduate School, is I had already worked on them a
little bit in undergrad. I got a Goldwater research
scholarship there, which is a great opportunity for undergrad
research, and then I took a year off, so taking time off, we both
took time off between degrees, which is a great option.
I went to Denali National Park to study their dinosaur tracks,
which was cool, and there was a government shutdown, so I used
that time to apply for the National Science Foundation
graduate. Research.
Fellowship on a project looking at ESC and primate diversity,
specifically OMA Myads, and the need to do essentially an
updated family tree phylogeny for them and try to understand
what factors led to their extinction.
Possibly to use as a proxy to protect modern primate
populations from extinction. If we can understand why
primates went extinct in deep time, maybe we can apply some of
that knowledge to conserve the primate species that we have
facing extinction today. That's where I I fell in love
with primates and accepted, hey, what was supposed to be a PhD
position. At the university?
Yes, at the University of Texas at Austin.
I like to be very frank about this because I think it matters
a lot. I did not complete my PhD.
I dropped out after my masters degree was earned in process,
largely because of my mental health and the program not being
a good fit and my advisor, while being a cool enough person, not
being a great fit for my research and for my mental
health. And I dropped out of that
program to accept a job in Montana as the paleontology
collections manager at a big old museum full of dinosaurs.
So it is OK y'all to change the direction of your path.
I thought I was going to be a PhD forever.
I thought maybe I'd go back for a PhD and now I'm like, Nope.
You know what? You only changed your master's
slash graduate program once. It took me 3 separate times with
undergrad and also I had a Community College credit on
there. So at least you did one big
pivot whereas I was like 4. And that's the journey, right?
And so when folks ask us how do I become a paleontologist, I
think we both can kind of chuckle because I mean it's
really make your own adventure and there are so many different
routes to go there. I'm we both have a pet peeve on
this. We're not going to go down into
this rabbit hole right now about getting a degree in paleontology
because it really doesn't fucking exist.
Guys, like we know that you got it in a paleontology track, OK,
we all did. But your degree says geology.
Your degree says biology. Like your program, your
department is this. I'm so sorry to hate on those
people, but it's still like you there.
Like there are so many different ways.
And when you hear someone be like, well, I got a paleontology
degree, it's like, well, what is that?
There are just so many ways to get a paleo degree.
I have a PhD in paleontology, but not really because my
diploma says geological sciences, which yeah, we've
we've kind of talked about that before our blog and stuff.
But when we talk about going to become a paleontologist,
paleontologist. Paleontology is so diverse and
strange. You have to learn so many
different things you very rarely stick with one program anyways.
You know, it is great if you end up with a paleontology track or
you're doing a paleontology focused degree.
Sure, if you want to call that a degree in that, fine.
I think it's I I guess I'm just picky about splitting hairs
there because I'm like that's not what your degree says.
And I just think it can be a little bit gatekeeping for folks
who don't have that at their local university to think, oh, I
can't be a paleontologist because my school doesn't offer
a paleontology degree. And it's like, I'm sorry, but
out of all of the schools in North America known for
paleontology, I'm going to say that Oregon is, is we've got a
good program, but it's not necessarily where you're going
to be like and that's, you know, it's not like some of these
other programs. And yet you can still make it
work because anyone can make it work at any level and at any
university and at any Community College for that matter too.
So don't be intimidated by, oh, I heard that you have to get a
degree in blah, blah, blah. Now you can do, I know folks who
have degrees in, you know, social studies or in literature
and have gone on to graduate degrees in a more science
focused thing and they make it work too.
So many ways to become a paleontologist.
I do feel like you, out of the two of us, have had the most
formal paleontology jobs. I mean, I've, I've been, you
know, a professor, but I've never been, like, hired to do
Preparator stuff or so. Maybe you should talk a little
bit about all of your various paleontology.
Jobs, Oh my gosh. I think at this, this last job,
I just got a new job. And I think they looked at my
resume and were like, oh, shit, this girl never stays anywhere.
Yeah, that, Like, it's true. But that's the millennial curse.
It's not actually me. It's our generation.
Yeah. I mean, I think that it can be,
it can be so gatekeepy to even what a paleontologist is like, I
I see posts on social media all the time where it's like, you
have to either be a preparator, a professor, a curator, or, you
know, those sorts of things. And I'm like, no, there's so
many different ways to be a paleontologist, whether or not
it's in your job title. So yeah, I think I've only
actually had one position where paleontology was in my job
title. And yeah, and that was when I
was the paleontology collections manager and registrar for Museum
of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mt And
that was an awesome job. I got to oversee the largest
collection of Triceratops and T Rex fossils in the entire world.
I got to do some dope research. I was the only person there who
gave a shit about mammals. So they were like, oh, this is
yours And I was like, I'll take it and still working on that
manuscript. One of them whoops, it's going
to take a while and that was OK. So if you want to pursue
something like a museum and collection management, honestly,
I already had a background of volunteering and working with
the University of Oregon collections manager while I was
in college and it eventually turned into a very, very part
time paid position. So, so if you have any
opportunities to volunteer, I know that volunteering is a
total privilege, but it can really help with getting some of
those experiences to understand how you manage fossils, which is
honestly know how to document things properly, know how to
handle things properly, and know how to communicate with folks
who want to research these fossils.
I think those are some of the most important aspects that you
can work on. And it was a it was really, it
was a really fantastic job. I learned a ton.
Bozeman got very expensive for us.
My husband also finished his PhD right around the time of the
pandemic, and it was a good opportunity for us to pursue his
research and his job. And so we ended up moving to
Georgia, of all places, which was weird.
And I couldn't get a job at all in Georgia.
There's there is paleontology in Georgia.
There's some cool dinosaurs there, by the way.
No one knows that, but there are.
And so instead, I took a museum technician position of the John
Day Fossil Beds National Monument for four months, which
again was I was a preparator and a collections assistant.
And so I got to prep fossils, which is a really cool
opportunity. Yeah.
So using different equipment to remove the bones themselves from
their Earth's grave, it's just cleaning.
Cleaning and getting the bones out so that you can.
Yeah, Preparator, it's preparing, I guess is the long
version of the word, but we all call it prep or prepping.
You get to use like air scribes. And I mean, you use some of the
most rudimentary equipment that people have been using for
hundreds of years to clean fossils because it really hasn't
changed that much. Yeah, dental tools, really,
really cool job. I got to work on this jacket.
So a jacket is when you use burlap that's been soaked in
plaster to wrap it around like the bones.
But also you don't want to just excavate just the bones when
you're in the field because then when you transport them back to
the museum or university, like, that can fuck them up.
So you actually want to take a big chunk of the earth around
them too, out of the rock around them too.
And so you end up making these little toadstool mushroom
toadstools, essentially, that you cover with plaster and
burlap, and then you flip them and you plaster that part too.
And then you somehow carry them out or use a helicopter.
If they're really big and you have money, it's important.
It's an important. Part.
People can do a lot with just a flatbed truck though.
I've seen some impressive shit go down South and then you take
that back and then you have to open up and peel off all that
plaster and burlap and then remove all that earth and all
that rock. And I worked on an Oridon that
had been collected. Your name was written on the
Oridon jacket because it had been collected this summer
before I did PRT out at the Sore Foot site in on BLM land.
I lost skin to that Oridon. Me too.
When we were going, when we were going up to go collect it, I was
swinging a cooler like a dipshit in one hand with someone else
holding on to the other side. And I just ate shit on the trail
up to and scraped off like I want to say like 2 by two inches
of my which was just like pussy and bloody and gross for like 2
weeks. Looks fine now.
Damn. So that Orion took took.
Wow, I didn't know that part I that's sorefoot was known to be
a pretty gnarly sight. Anyway, I'm not surprised that
you tripped. It's like a good, you know, if
you're going to trip somewhere, it's going to be someplace like
sorefoot, which is really hard to.
Someplace literally called. Sore.
Exactly. So that was a that was a really
interesting position. But now we both have jobs where,
I mean, I still identify as a paleontologist.
I recently left a position as a curator with the USGS, but I
never felt like a geologist. I still feel kind of like an
imposter because even though I have a geology degree, I only
ever studied geology to understand the context of the
bones. I never really like.
And then I married one. It was a great way to get my
Mrs. too, as they would call it, which is a really fucked up,
nasty thing to say to women who happen to marry people in their
field. Yeah.
Oh God, no. I lost my train of thought.
Yeah. Anyway, geology.
I kind of identify as a geologist, kind of identified as
a curator, but I still identify as a paleontologist, even though
I haven't had a job where it's in my title for a really long
time. So how do you, how do you
grapple with all of those different things, and what's
your current job? You know since getting my PHDI
worked as a data analyst sort of job for a little while then I I
I've worked various forms of like she's called an assistant
professor she's called a lecturer she's called an
instructor like teaching style jobs but like they don't have
like an assistant professor of paleontology at most of these
places and because so much of the research I do is statistics
based, I am now teaching in a it's called the school of
information. We just became our own college
and at the University of Arizona and I teach data science classes
and science communication classes and game design classes.
It is cool and it's it's a fun kind of new Ave. to.
I just got an SF grant with a Co worker at Oregon State
University and a big part of my job on the grants is we got a
bunch of money to make a video game all about the area that
we've been working in. Which is weirdly enough an
archaeology site because I'm one of those paleontologists that
works with archaeologists so much that I am muddying the
waters between archaeology and paleo.
But I do remember that when I accepted this position, there
was a paleontologist who commented on my Facebook, Oh,
you're leaving paleontology like.
Yes, No. Man, I'm not just because of my
name doesn't have the word paleo and I'm not in a geology
department. I'm just doing the math that you
don't really seem to understand how to do, even as a person with
a PhD who is working as a professor.
There are some people who think I'm not a real paleontologist
because there's so much elitism with the weird term.
Yeah, I worked with a certain dinosaur paleontologist who I
will not name because I fucking. Cannot stand him, yeah.
He thought that unless you had a PhD in paleontology, you
couldn't call yourself a paleontologist.
Anyways, there's a there's a little bit of elitism that comes
in with with paleontology jobs. But, you know, we're both out
there doing the research, we're both writing papers.
We're but we're not just doing that.
So we talk to people, right? Like, I think that paleontology
has a huge, huge outreach component because it's one of
the sciences that get it gets people really excited about
science. It's a gateway science, as I
like to think of it. You know it is.
It is because even if you don't end up in Paleo, maybe you end
up in one of the fields that is relevant, which is stuck in
every single field. By the way.
It's so cool. It's so cool.
You have to understand it's you get to understand so many
different components to a good research project.
By the way, before we totally transition to outreach, we've
also done some cool research together.
We have a paper together. We both have multiple
publications. If you don't believe we know our
shit, just look us up on Google Scholar.
We're there. And we do have a paper together
based on some cool work in from West TX as well.
So if you're interested in beautiful paleontology, cool
Eocene sites and how people date those sites and we don't mean
wine and dine at dinner but understand how old they are,
then then you can look up. We'll have to send a put out a
link to our because it's Open Access, because it's in Paleo
electronica, which we've both worked for.
There's a lot which does tie directly into outreach, right?
I mean, it's a really fun field to be able to talk to people
about and do a bunch of different like you say you teach
classes on science communication.
What the fuck does that even mean?
Like, science communication can be so vast, right?
So what are some of the things you cover and how does that
relate to your own experiences? My science communication class,
we really focus a lot on digital media.
So we focus on things like how do you do science communication
through social media, Where, what are the advantages?
What are the disadvantages? We talk about science
communication in game design, and we actually design games
together as part of the class. We talk a lot about myth
busting, and we do because we started that class during COVID.
A lot of the myth busting has been around COVID, but we are
kind of branching out now because everybody's tired of
talking about COVID. So we're talking about like
evolution, myth busting and myth busting and climate change.
And there's there's a lot to talk about out there because
science communicators also kind of get a little bit of
disrespect on their name, considering that it's a very
difficult field to do correctly and there's a ton of research on
how to do it that people just don't read, as it turns out.
And I think a big part of it is, like a lot of things, when done
well, when it's done as well as a good science communicator
does, it looks easy. It looks fucking easy.
It's like, oh, I could do that. And we do, Yeah.
We see some of that where you're like, Oh well, what are you
doing that's not like science, it's not blah blah, blah.
And it's like, I think if you can't communicate your science
to like a 5 year old, then I don't know if you understand
your science as well as you think you do.
It's not a bad thing to be able to talk to kids about and
breakdown tough scientific concepts.
That doesn't mean you're like telling any less accurate
science. It is actually a major skill set
to be able to articulate that to a level to reach as many
different people as possible. That's beautiful.
And it's funny because I've been told multiple times, not by my
advisor, but by like other faculty members, that outreach
is not going to help my career and I should maybe not focus
quite so much on it. And it's the reason I got my
current professorship. I got my current job too.
I'm like, shit, yeah. Yeah, I'm in a department that
very much values outreach and science communication, so that's
been kind of nice. But yeah, so I've worked for PBS
eons as a scriptwriter for four years, five years, something
like that. And I'm writing for.
Your episodes are the best episodes.
Can we just talk about how your episode is the one that got how
many? Fucking.
I think. Gillian Views.
It has the most views of any PBS digital studios production.
So any of their YouTube videos? Yeah, so I wrote one about
Megalodon and it's got like 24,000,000 views or something.
But my proudest accomplishment is a different one.
I think I know what it's going to be.
I think I know what you're going to talk about.
What? About rain and dinosaurs and it
It trended very briefly for about 30 minutes above a Cardi B
music video. And that is what I want to have
written on my tombstone when I die.
It was 30 minutes. I had something more.
Video. Cardi B.
And then I've seen you on camera as well.
We're surrounded by death, which is accurate for us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So after doing working for PBS
events for a while, one of the the scripts that I wrote was
about Ash Fall Fossil Beds in Nebraska.
And someone filming a documentary for National
Geographic asked me to come out and, like, talk about that stuff
out there, which was so fun and so cool.
So I'm in a Nat Geo Special very briefly because I was there
filming for half a day, but they cut most of what I said because
I realized I kind of came off as mildly psychotic.
Which should be the tagline of this podcast.
I didn't realize that, like, the vibe of the show was going to be
like, oh, volcanoes are so big and scary and they kill people
and it's going to kill us all. And I was like, isn't this
awesome? Look at that dead baby.
That is so fun. That baby has arthritis.
Did you know that that baby suffered for days before it
died? God, science is so cool.
Let me tell you about Marie's disease.
We know this animal had a fever. So this one puked here, This one
puked there. What are the lines that they did
keep with? Something like and?
I know that most people would think that this is sad, but as a
paleontologist, this is just pretty cool, like.
Yeah, that sums up paleontology pretty well too.
It's just yeah, could be. Anyway, hire us guys, go on your
documentary. Just tell us what the vibe is.
OK, I can find. Tell us along.
I could play along. I'm not ready for a different
YouTube channel that's going to come out shortly called History
of Humankind. And it's a totally different
vibe from Eons, because Eons is kind of like fossils are fun, da
da da, a little bit of giggles, little bit of jokes.
Although I will say that the editorial staff takes out most
of my jokes and that always disappoints me.
But with this other one, it's very dramatic, it's very
serious. So it's been kind of fun writing
for them, and it's just proof that I can do both.
You just have to tell me that I have to be serious and not too
excited about dead animals. You've also done a lot of
outreach and you're very popular on Instagram.
You should definitely tell us a little bit about the ad.
Oh my God. I'm Instagram quote UN quote
famous. And I'm like, no, I'm I'm
rapidly losing followers. You losing followers still means
that you have so many more followers than I do so.
I know, But the youth can get it so fast.
And I'm like, how, how? And then I'm like, oh, maybe
you've been doing it for 10 years.
It's OK. Calm down.
Raise a baby. No, I like, I like science
communication for sure. I think when I started my
Graduate School program at UT Austin, I had access to all
sorts of amazing fossils and casts and replicas and all sorts
of, you know, I was going through, I was taking paleo
related classes, primate anatomy classes.
I was dissecting A primate like a little monkey.
It was super cool. Just lots of opportunities to
show what my life day-to-day as someone pursuing paleontology,
like what that really looks like, which resonated really
well and started to grow an audience there.
Also, the beautiful thing about Austin, TX is that you're just
surrounded by the Cretaceous chalk, which is like 100 million
year old limestone throughout the entire town and the entire
state for that matter. And I and my free time would
just go walk the dry Creek beds and look for ammonites and other
really cool fossils. And so those did really well on
social media too as they started to just feature more and more
and more and all of a sudden my audience was growing and I
recognized oh, like I can use this as a platform to actually
share information and kind of fight pseudoscience and
hopefully create or lead to a more science informed public
which will hopefully lead to smarter voters.
Yay, Maybe we'll actually pay attention to things.
And I also and we're going to probably touch on this.
I also wanted to highlight that women can be paleontologists and
I wanted to make it really clear that, you know, every single
picture I took look was, you knew that it was from a woman's
point of view and that that was really important.
And so that has grown into a good audience, which stems from
our blog. So they have the same name of
Mary Anning's Revenge. I've had some cool
opportunities, not like, not like yours with long term stuff.
I worked for Paleo Electronica for a while, which is the online
Open Access paleontology journal, peer reviewed journal.
So I was their blog and public relations editor for like 5 or
six years and that was really cool.
I know it's a really long time. I like, look at the dates and I
was like, oh shit, it's like 2013 to like 2018 or something
like that 2019. And that was really cool,
because I took all these research projects which Paleo
Electronica's dope because it's just any type of fossil animal
from any place in the fucking world.
And we're going to share it. And so I had to work with
researchers from around the world to write blog posts on
their their studies. I had to try to understand what
a blastoid was. I had to try to understand what
like skink surface traces of their body.
Movements was like fully. Understand lizards?
I don't. So it was really challenging for
me on that one. I did things like put pictures
with the tweets. They weren't doing that before I
was there. And I was like, look, guys, we
can use a picture on this tweet. Look guys, we can use this thing
called a hashtag. They're like, wow.
So that was, that was really rad.
And then, yeah, well, I was at Museum of the Rockies.
Oh my God, they they're like, what you like talking to people?
Here you go. So they put me on camera a lot.
Like we had AC Span tour at one point we had a Facebook live
tour of the entire museum through Visit Montana, which is
like the travel tourism Bureau. And so I had to do a live tour
of the entire Paleo part of the museum.
Like, without breaking, without totally fucking up and being
like. Fuck, God damn it.
Like, I had to just keep rolling with it.
And I haven't watched it back because I tried and I think I
say awesome every other word. I'm like, here's Big Al and it's
pretty awesome. It has some injuries, which is
pretty awesome that that preserved these injuries.
Here we have like an Allosaurus, a different Allosaurus.
I know, but I'm just like, it's awesome.
It's awesome. So I guess that's my like catch
my issue. Mine is.
I love dead babies and yours is. It's awesome.
Though I will say that I think
my proudest achievement in science communication to date,
besides the Insta page is that I did a comparison on Twitter when
Twitter was cool of of RuPaul's outfits compared to the
dinosaurs of Drumheller, which if you don't know about those,
go to our blog and see that and it trend.
I don't know if it was really trending or not, but it did well
on Twitter. It did well enough that I was
hit up by multiple Canadian journalism and like news
agencies that they're like, Oh my God, you compared these
dinosaurs in Canada to Drew Paul.
Tell us about it. And I just, it was super funny.
It's like is it a slow Newsday in Canada?
Right. It's just.
But that was that I I that was that was really fun.
Yeah. I think we've danced around it a
lot. So like, let's talk Mary
Anning's revenge. What is it?
How did it happen? When did we give birth?
Yeah, so we keep saying our blog because we wrote a blog called
Mary Anning's Revenge for like 456 years.
Something like that. We haven't.
We're right there occasionally now, but not.
Yeah, it's still alive. It was.
Kind of like our first joint foray into science
communication, and it was, we called it Mary Anning's revenge,
because Mary Anning is the mother of paleontology, but she
also was a woman in paleontology and she did not get her due
credit. And the two of us were both
upset about it on her behalf and also experiencing our first set
of struggles as women in science.
And so yeah, we we talk a lot about some of the stuff that we
are gonna talk about on this podcast, like just animals and
things that really excite us and that we think are really
interesting. And also a lot about like
misogyny and racism and how it plays a role in science and
won't let us get ahead. So yeah, we we talked about that
a lot on Mary Annie Revenge, and that wasn't really where we met,
but it was part of like, what really kind of brought us
together, I think, Right? Like.
But we started all of it because the the stars aligned and we
were both at the University of Oregon for one year at the same
time. I was finishing up my
undergraduate degree and it's when you had started your.
PhD. We were roommates.
Not in the making out kind of way of.
Roommates. I tried.
I tried because Megan's made out with my brother.
So I thought that that would be a way of like one person who's
made out with both Atwaters. But she wouldn't do it.
I'd be too powerful if I don't. You can't.
So I worked with Amy's brother at summer camp for like five
years or something, and I was Amy's camp counselor.
Yeah, you were. As well.
Yeah. Can I tell you the things that
you taught me that I still think about?
That I know you taught me. Well, First off, you taught me
everything I know about all the constellations.
So like the story of Cassiopeia, Delphinius, the teapot.
Like all these motherfuckers are definitely because of you at
Astro Camp. Astro Camp, which is what all
the camp the kids would go to and try to like make out with
the other campers. And I was always like, does
anyone want to make out with me? And they were all like, no.
And I was like, and so then I just listened to my instructor
tell me about the stars. Well.
That's right, yeah. And then when I was going back
to Graduate School, I was talking to Amy at a conference
and that's when we decided to be bromates.
You know what we did at that conference, right?
It was in Vegas, you and I. You and I wandered over to the
porno convention. Like, wow, how did we not know
that all of this was going to happen?
We've just been in dirt bags. Yeah, okay.
Like, we couldn't get into the porno conference, but we were
hoping we could, like, see a porn star.
Or two. When we say wandered over, we
mean that at the same time as a big paleontology conference was
being held, there was a porn conference and it was like 2
floors over or something like it was not far.
And all we did is we walked around with the scale bars we
had just gotten for free at this our conference and took pictures
of them next to the pictures of the porno conference and their
fake appendages. Yes.
So that you would have a sense of scale.
And we thought we were so funny. We were.
We were so funny. We were funny.
That was so funny. Yeah, thank you so much for
listening. This has been the last episode
of our first season of Weird and Dead, But because of the amazing
support that we've already received on Patreon, we do have
enough money that we now can hire an editor.
Which is great because Katie can edit things for us.
And instead of taking a year to produce a full season after a
brief break, we should be able to offer episodes every other
week. If you'd like to hear more in
the meantime and help support the show and help our growth,
you should follow us on Patreon for some exclusive bits.
We also have bonus episodes that we have filmed in advance that
will be going on to Patreon. In the meantime, this podcast is
part of the Geology Podcasting Network produced by the
traveling geologist Chris Spencer.
Cover art was provided by Chris Spencer and the host.
Our theme song is Unlock Me by Press Colonel.
Editing services are now provided by the amazing Katie
Bradley, and this episode was hosted and researched by us, Amy
Atwater and Megan Weatherall. Although, since I am filming
this conclusion exclusively for the About Us would be really
creepy if that was not true.