Science
Friday > Archives
> 1997
> August
> August 1, 1997
Life in the Field:
It's not like what you see on TV.
You've seen Indiana Jones running through the jungles chased by enraged local citizens and greedy treasure hunters. You've been to museums with bones and objects and plants from around the world. You've probably even thought about what it would be like to be in exotic surroundings, making great discoveries on your own.
But what is work in the field really like? Have you thought about the heat with no air conditioning, the snakes, the bugs? What about the long, exhausting hours? Have you thought about months of looking and looking - but finding nothing?
On this hour of Science Friday, we'll be talking to some real, honest-to-goodness field scientists about what fieldwork is really like. We'll even check in with a team of dinosaur hunters, stopping in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia on their way home from the Gobi desert, where they've made some fascinating discoveries about dinosaurs and early mammals.
Guests:
Michael Novacek
Senior Vice-President and Provost
Curator in the department of vertebrate paleontology
The American Museum of Natural History
New York, NY.
Mark Norell
Chairman, Department of Vertebrate Paleontology
The American Museum of Natural History
New York, NY.
Kelly Stewart
Science Advisor to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
Contributor
, "I've Been Gone Far Too Long: Field Trip Fiascoes and Expedition Disasters,"
Research Associate, Anthropology Department
University of California at Davis
Davis, California.
Christopher Scholz
Author
of "Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari"
Professor of Geological Sciences
Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, NY.
Books/Articles Discussed:
"Fieldwork:
A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari," by Christopher Scholz, published
by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1997.
"I've
Been Gone Far Too Long: Field Trip Fiascoes and Expedition Disasters,"
edited by Monique Borgerhoff Mulder and Wendy Logsdon, published by
RDR Books, Oakland, CA, 1996.
Related links:
Where were they?
Michael Novacek and the AMNH/Discovery Online crew are in Mongolia
Christopher Scholz worked in the Kalihari in Botswana.
Kelly Stewart worked for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund at their Karisoke
Research Center.
Check out reports from the AMNH team....
from the American Museum of Natural History
from Discovery Online
Ready to go yourself? Check out
Earthwatch
a list of research opportunities at biological field stations
the University of California Research Expeditions Program
| 
