Blog 2 - Summer Mentorship

This picture was taken on my third day of my mentorship. Next to me is another volunteer who was helping Dr. Scott clean fossils. Also, the camera was inside an Allosaurus skull replica (if you wondering).

1. List the contact name, phone number, and organization of the person with whom you volunteered.

- Eric Scott, (909) 798 – 8616, San Bernardino County Museum

2. What qualified this person as an expert in your topic choice?     

- Although Dr. Scott technically doesn’t have a degree in paleontology (the exact name is gone from my memory), the field he did actually intend to work in dealt with fossils of ancient hominids (in other words, all kinds of human species), which is very closely related to what a paleontologist actually does. Also, he has worked as a Paleontologist since he was a teen and professionally started at around 1998 when he got the curatorial position at the San Bernardino County Museum. Overall, his two most outstanding qualifications as an expert in the field are that he’s had a very long experience with the work itself and that his field of expertise is within the realm of what a Paleontologist does.

3. List three questions for further exploration now that you've completed your summer hours.    

- How can paleontology reveal our place as humans among the multitude of living organisms on our planet?

- How is the knowledge acquired by Paleontologists used to reveal relationships between entirely different organisms?

- Why is it important to fund the research conducted by Paleontologists?

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

- Overall, my summer mentorship showed me that the work of a Paleontologist requires the utmost patience because fossil cleaning is tedious since it is done by scraping millimeter upon millimeter of dirt off a fossil for hours on end and you have to constantly find ways to reveal complex ideas to groups of people (in my mentor’s case, children) in ways that do justice to the ideas, yet are simple enough for the not so well informed to comprehend.

5. What is your senior project topic going to be?  How did mentorship help you make your decision?  Please explain.

- My senior project topic is going to continue being Paleontology. My mentorship convinced of this because my mentor showed me how even the tiniest bit of information about extinct creatures could fill a room full of children with wonder and how knowledge about where fossils are likely to come from can keep eager construction companies from destroying vital pieces of natural history. Also, my mentorship showed me what really goes on behind the scenes with Paleontologists, and it was always something that isn’t shown in the movies, so from my point of view it is exactly what I looked forward to in my mentorship.