As a child – long before Stephen Spielberg popularized the field – I dreamed about becoming a famous paleontologist and discovering new and wonderful species of dinosaurs. Imagine my jealousy when I heard the news that some sewage workers from Edmonton, Alberta stumbled upon dino bones while doing their day job:
Experts from the Royal Tyrrell Museum are now working to confirm the bones’ donors but suspect that the uncovered limb and tooth bones once belonged to T. rex cousin Albertosaurus (pictured below) and duck-faced Edmontosaurus.
Andy Neuman, executive director of the museum, told the BBC he was impressed that the crews acted as “good stewards” and reported the bones found while digging a new tunnel. Workers will now try to uncover other bones from the sewer tunnel walls.
The closest thing to dinosaur bones that a software developer like me will find at work is the corpse of an old 5 1/4″ drive.
Artists’ impressions (courtesy of Planet Dinosaur) of the gargantuan critters are below:
Albertosaurus
Edmontosaurus
2 Responses to “Maybe I need another career”
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Good job to the crews for choosing to aid the cause of science rather than choose convenience.
And, sorry to say this, but it would be a very tough career to switch to. Highly competitive, with the entry level jobs going mainly to young people fresh from college. It would take years of study to get to the point where professors could reject you because a 25 year old would be a “better fit” for their teams.
You could possibly create a career for yourself simply by learning a lot and publishing erudite analyses. That may be an even harder path. One thing that rather disappoints me about academia is that academics these days seem more interested in a writer’s credentials than in his/her arguments.
Well, I’m not really serious about switching careers – it’s just a nostalgic fantasy, I suppose.
I absolutely adore software development…. it just leaves no room for serendipity, like the sewage workers’ discovery. =)