Hello, dear viewer. My name is Cameron Amill, and an amazing piece of scientific excellence that I think deserves more recognition for what the workers have to do, and the research they are providing to life sciences is one of my prized possessions, Paleontology. Paleontology is the study of prehistoric life, such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor. However, there are way more. Ever since I was a child, when I sat in front of a tv playing a dinosaur documentary, I fell in love with it: the moving dinosaurs, and how they lived their day to day lives. Before they went extinct and became birds. Yes, dinosaurs are indeed birds. Dinosaurs share many anatomical and evolutionary traits that coincide within birds, such as their skeletal structure that proves that birds once had fully developed limbs instead of their forelimbs only capable of flight. See how fascinating facts about Paleontology really are?
Paleontology has been losing more and more of an interest in the public eye and is generally overshadowed by many other historical life sciences such as Archaeology. However, I believe we can use Paleontology to help our future as we face more and more warmer environments due to global warming. We too have ourselves in the old same hot environment as Dinosaurs back in the day, yet dinosaurs still survived for millions upon millions of years.
Although Paleontology does not seem as important, Paleontologists make substantially good pay as much as $87,000. And furthermore, if you do become a Paleontologist one of your pieces may even be seen by others in a museum.
My obsession is very important to me, because I don’t feel like I could do anything else in the world, not even related to paleontology. It’s my Mona Lisa, or my destiny to become a paleontologist. My dad has always said “If you have a back up plan, you plan to fail.” I don’t plan to fail, as I am going to go to college, and get my doctorate degree in Paleontology. So I can be Cameron Amill Phd, and I can achieve my all time life goal to become a Master Paleontologist. Paleontology has gripped me ever since I even got exposed to Paleo media at all, such as Jurassic Park, Walking With Dinosaurs, Chased by Dinosaurs, Prehistoric Planet, and much more. Without Paleontologists, how would the fossils even get to the museum in the first place, and without Paleontologists most natural history museums wont have such interesting and fascinating exhibits. My family understands my passion and understands it like I was destined for science, as everyone knows me as the “Scientist” or “Dinosaur guy” and I have support from everyone in my family that understands my passion and will do anything and sacrifice everything they have for me even if it does not work out in the long run.
In order to fully become a Paleontologist, I must first go to a high school that has many science opportunities I am interested in, mainly life sciences, and then I must go to a college that has majors in Paleontology, or just biology in general. In order to dig up the dinosaurs I must learn about them, their anatomy, how they ate, how they behaved. However there are many famous fossils like “The Fighting Dinosaurs” which includes a depiction of both a Velociraptor and Protoceratops(Pro-To-Cera-Tops) fighting and the moment was completely ingrained as they died together, without a clear victor. Although there are much more famous and well renowned fossils. I someday want to find one of my own famous fossils, but my true and actual goal is to discover and name my own dinosaur. No matter the type of dinosaur, I will try my hardest to discover one that has never been seen before. I want to prove to the rest of the world that Paleontology is not a far fetched science branch that is important anymore. However, Paleontology is more important than we think. We have evolved among these beautiful creatures and our ancestors have watched them die out. I believe we can use Paleontology to learn more about ourselves and earth’s past, and also use it to figure out certain ways to deal with new issues, like global warming and other environmental issues. Dinosaurs lived in a very warm and oxygen rich area, we too are now facing dangerous high temperatures. If we get more people studying Paleontology, we may figure out how to fix these global issues and save ourselves and our home.
Paleontology I feel like, even if it has such a big scientific following, needs to be brought more into the limelight than normal biological sciences. Wake up people! Dinosaurs lived for 365 million years in such harsh and normally strange environments, but if we learn their secret, we may be able to save ourselves from destruction. Dinosaurs are truly fascinating and unique creatures within earth’s genetic dominion and they have made their own lineage of bird species that are still alive and thriving today, I would say that even if the meteor did not kill them all they would still be able to have their own in our new earth. Except for human destruction of habitats and natural bio ecosystems, and altered greenhouse gases. My name is Cameron Amill and this is the reason why I think you should have the same love of Paleontology as I do so much.
Cameron Amill – Bennett Day School – DMSF Class of 2029
Photo Credit: Lou Gold – Flickr