‘How to Become: A Paleontologist’ YouTube video(s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ-KxNtmFlY

This video by Study Hall features the many ways to become a paleontologist.
The narrator announces “A bachelors in paleontology doesn’t really exist, but minors inside of related majors (e.g. earth science, geology, integrative biology) do exist.”

In other words, you cannot sign up for ‘creodonts 101’ or ‘t-rex 101’. Instead, if you want to focus on something, you start a project and dive into the literature.

Summer internships
“can take place in the field or as a preparator at a museum or university.”

Writing a thesis, (senior, masters, PhD) is another pathway.

That’s basically what I did, but without university $$ and gate-keeping.
I wrote several manuscripts and abstracts. Each took several days to several months (including travel to Europe and China). All were accepted for publication in various journals (Nature, Science, JVP, Historical Biology, Ichnos, Rivisita Italiana) – until the rise of then student David Hone, an acolyte of professor and textbook author, Michael J Benton. Those two didn’t appreciate contributions that falsified professor Benton’s earlier hypotheses – especially from someone with no schooling, no degrees, no relationship to a university or museum – and (most importantly) no ability to referee the work of others . And that’s where first class gets separated from second class. That’s why SC Bennett felt free to predict, “You will not be published and if you are published you will not be cited.” 

A little later another English PhD, Darren Naish felt free to produce an online diatribe
that ventured into ad hominem – rather than sticking to the scientific method.

The video doesn’t mention the backstabbing
and name-calling by academics. Maybe it should have done so, just to cover all the bases.

This is not because of my status outside Academia or my methods. Tenured university professors, like the famous John Ostrom, were also ignored and ridiculed after publishing discoveries.

It is also gratifying to see that many workers are using DGS methods (Peters 2003) to colorize bones they wish to identify, rather than using ink drawings, abbreviations and call out lines – even if they don’t know amnd don’t care who did it first. It was inevitable given the zero cost of color in the digital age.

At about the same time papers with multiple authors also started to make the scene as professors sought to include more students on citations. So gradually there was a glut of papers, not a shortage. Journals added page and web pages to accommodate the inflow, rather than becoming even more exclusive in their publication decisions.

So the world changed and keeps changing.

The video reported on salaries
noting a professor of paleontology with book deals can command $100,000 annually. But those jobs are all filled awaiting retirement for succession.

A masters thesis can take 2 to 5 years to prepare and present to your professors.

A PhD thesis means more time  – five to seven years. Total: up to 20 years.

None of my papers ever took more than a few months, even while raising a family, having a full-time job, getting in some golf and aviation (200 hours of Hobbs time = while the propeller is turning). Doesn’t seem fair.

Other careers are covered in the video.
You can apply for jobs as a university teacher or museum curator, but those are senior positions with younger assistants. You can become or a collection manager or a preparator. You can also become a traveling educator or a paleoartist. Those are freelance gigs = someone, somewhere has to hire you.

On my own path I wrote and illustrated books for awhile – then built skeletons and models ‘with skin on’, again without professional training or tutelage.

They say the first one through the gate gets bloodied the most.
They also say the flak gets heavier when you’re over the target. They also say ‘Peters is a pseudoscientist and a crank‘. This is inappropriate for a professional, inappropriate for a teacher, inappropriate for Darren Naish , even inappropriate for an insecure middle-schooler.

Advice: keep pressing forward, acknowledge mistakes and keep wracking up those discoveries. If Ostrom and Huxley can be patient, so can you and I. Since there are no $$ involved, no grants, no tuition, no salaries, no royalties, there is no corruption here. Just learning. It’s  perfect retirement activity. No pressure. No worries. Just discoveries.
And infamy.

Academics are 6x more likely to be depressed and anxious. So, forgive them. Avoid the worst of them. And be patient.

A few comments from the videos linked below:
1. “What is unbelievable to me is how academia managed to secure an endless amount of highly specialized workforce to carry out research (phd and postdocs) for ridiculously low wages with minimal or absent work rights & security. And nobody blinks.”

2. “The most toxic part for me was the power imbalance between supervisor and me. I didn’t get in fights with me supervisor, but that is also because I didn’t feel the freedom to do so. Your supervisor has to green light your graduation, and thus has a strangle hold over you. The inability to demand better treatment without the possibility of your hard word being for nothing was the most damaging for me and my self confidence.”

3. “Yes one of my friend has brought his mattress to lab and he literally sleeps eats poops and studies in the lab.”

4. “The PhD candidates outnumber the stable faculty positions. So a lot of PhD students and Postdocs spend years training for a job that they can never have.”

5. “It [academia] is also a setting run and ruled by performative, malignant narcissists — and herein lies a good part of the problem.”

6. “I’m still in Academia as a full-time full professor at a state college. I love my job, but one of the saddest things to me is how many professors and deans seem unhappy. They don’t smile. They don’t take an interest in other people. They complain almost constantly when they do speak.“

7. “There’s a reason Einstein did his best work as a Patent Clerk far away from Academia.“

If this list of comments sounds and looks familiar,
I wrote about this topic briefly about a year ago here.

Another video on the same topic here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDs8z2jq3Ng

and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nmvmo11GNk

and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTsQaxkg0T4

and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E9-DpevGMA

and here for a biologist/animal artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ysqiwZflY

and an opinion delivered on ‘The PhD Effect’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHPCgsf7Qv8&list=TLPQMTcwMTIwMjaForonaHMChw&index=2

and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te2Ae-OWE5E&list=TLPQMjEwMTIwMjYnEE8F_KBsww&index=5

What’s wrong with modern science and how to fix it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=517Msi3wDJ4

“For every ten PhDs we produce in the United States, there is one faculty position.”
“And these are our best and brightest people.”

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/how-to-become-a-paleontologist-youtube-videos/