- Hello, good evening, and welcome to Daring to Dig: Women in Paleontology.

I'm your host, Nancy Coddington, director of science content for WSKG Public Media.

We have a special event planned for you tonight, including a panel of eminent women paleontologists who will share their careers, experiences, challenges, and inspiration for the next generation of girls pursuing careers in science and paleontology.

This panel is a compliment to the exhibit Daring to Dig: Women in American Paleontology on display at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York.

And that is up until December of this year, 2021.

And it's also available online at daringtodig.org.

We have participants from all over the country and the world attending our events, and we would love to hear where you're from.

So please take a moment to introduce yourself in the chat and tell us where you're tuning in from.

We also are going to encourage you to ask questions to our guest speakers throughout tonight's talk using the chat feature.

If you don't see the chat box on your end, and you're watching us on YouTube, you're in full screen mode.

To exit full screen mode, click the icon at the bottom right of your screen.

And the chat should appear on the side.

If you are tuning and watching us on Zoom this evening, use the Q and A feature to ask your questions, but please also use the chat to share information with each other, and also where you're tuning in from.

We will do our best to get to all of your questions.

And as you're asking them, we are collecting them and keeping them in a place.

So don't worry, we'll try to get to them.

So as we are getting started tonight, I would like to introduce the executive director of the Paleontological Research Institution, Doctor Warren Allmon, welcome.

- Hi Nancy, thanks for having us all tonight.

So I don't wanna take anybody's time from our guests tonight.

I just wanna say a little bit about the exhibit that you mentioned.

We got started with this project about eight years ago when we decided to kind of explore the general topic of women in American paleontology.

And the reason we did that is because our institution actually was founded by a man as was customary in 1932, but he was a Cornell professor who had a great interest in educating women in paleontology.

And, he passed off the leadership of our institution to one of his graduate students who was a woman.

And so we've always felt like, the Paleontological Research Institution has an interest in the role of women in this discipline.

And so we started this project about eight years ago and started to build it kind of bit by bit.

And it just happened to come to fruition during the pandemic.

And so we launched this temporary exhibit which you mentioned which will close at the end of December, but the, or online exhibit will live on indefinitely.

And it includes not just a lot of content about particular women, but it includes an archive, a video archive, of more than 40 women's stories.

And we'll continue to add to that archive.

And so I hope people viewing tonight will look at the website and continue to come back to it because we'll be adding content going forward, celebrating the role of women in modern American paleontology, which is really a success story.

And women have achieved a substantial role in modern American paleontology.

And that's part of the story that we wanted to tell here.

and you've brought together a group of just really outstanding women paleontologists tonight.

And there's nothing that I could say that would add anything to what they're gonna say.

So I will shut up now and thank you again for having us tonight.

- Well, thank you Doctor Allmon, and everyone at the Museum of the Earth for partnering with WSKG to hold this event, because as it definitely is important, talking about women and their careers in STEM.

The field of paleontology has been greatly shaped by women as Doctor Allmon was telling us, despite encountering resistance at every level required for success in the profession.

The work of achieving equity in paleontology is still ongoing.

But in the 21st century, paleontology is becoming a more welcoming science for everyone, regardless of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, or ability.

Tonight's panel consists of four women paleontologists in degrees of study from across the United States.

Doctor Elizabeth Hermsen is a paleobotanist, she studies fossil plants, with a focus on their structure, classification, and evolutionary relationships.

She has done paleontological fieldwork in both North and South America, and has studied fossil spanning time periods from the Middle Triassic to the Neogene.

She received her PhD from Cornell University and was an assistant professor at Ohio University.

And she's now a research scientist at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York.

Liz also contributes to projects in science communication, such as the, Daring to Dig: Women in American Paleontology exhibit and online open access "Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life."

Welcome.

Doctor Linda Ivany studies the chemistry of fossil seashells to learn about the ancient animals that made them and the environments in which those animals lived.

She is particularly interested in times in the past when earth climate was much warmer and her work has taken her to places near and far, including the US Gulf Coast, Antarctica, and Australia.

She's been interested in geology and paleontology her entire life.

Linda went to Harvard University for her PhD and was later a fellow at the University of Michigan.

She is currently a professor and associate chair of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University.

Doctor Christy Visaggi studies the ecology of ancient marine environments, especially through fossil snails.

And she's passionate about sharing her love of science as an educator, paleontologist, and mentor to students.

Her field work has taken her two locations across the US and the Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, and Argentina.

Christy received her PhD at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and is currently undergraduate program director in geosciences at Georgia State University.

Doctor Visaggi has been a leader with numerous science education organizations, is an advocate for diversity in the geosciences, and has received numerous awards for her teaching.

Doctor Phoebe Cohen studies ancient single-celled microscopic organisms that lived before animals evolved.

She uses microscopes, chemistry, and geology, to figure out what very ancient organisms in their environments were like and how they've changed through time.

Her field work has taken her to many remote sites around the world.

Her first job after college was at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York, where she decided to become a paleontologist.

Phoebe received her PhD from Harvard University in 2010, and is currently an associate professor of geosciences at Williams College in Massachusetts.

She is very involved in diversity and inclusion work in the geosciences.

Welcome panelists.

- Hello.

(panelists laughing) - Good evening.

- Thanks so much for having us.

- Thank you, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us tonight.

We are very excited to have you.

So we are gonna jump right into some of our questions and get going.

Also, I wanna remind our audience to please ask questions in the chat features where you are viewing us so we can ask our panel tonight.

So Doctor Hermsen, we're gonna start with you.

Can you start off telling us what is the difference between being a paleontologist and an archeologist?

- Right, so, paleontologists study ancient life or fossils that represent ancient life.

So we often think of paleontologists as studying dinosaurs, but really paleontologists can study fossils of any sort of organism.

So some of us here tonight work on invertebrates or single-celled organisms.

I, myself work on plants.

Fossils can also be traces of past life.

So things like footprints or feeding traces.

Archeologists deal more with evidence of past human civilizations or the way humans used to live in the past.

Typically, the things that paleontologists are studying are very old.

They can be hundreds of millions of years old, tens of millions of years old, but some paleontologists work on things that are relatively young.

Archeologists often work on things that are younger than paleontologists, but there's some overlap there as well.

- Thank you.

That was a great explanation.

Doctor Linda Ivany, did you always know that you wanted to go into a science career?

- Yeah, for me, I was pretty much hooked right from the beginning.

I can't even remember a time when I was not interested in geology and paleontology in particular.

So for me, maybe that's a little bit unusual.

But, yeah, it's been pretty much the whole way through.

And I think a lot of people that are really passionate about this, many of us actually did start really, really early on.

But then there's a whole nother set of folks that were really exposed to it in school at some point, maybe in high school or in college for the first time.

And boy, when you get the bug, you know it, and you're gonna be passionate about it.

And if you're passionate about it, you're gonna do well in it.

- Thank you, I'm gonna toss that same question to Doctor Phoebe Cohen, did you always wanna go into the science careers or when did you first realize that that was your passion?

- Yeah, I was a little bit different than Linda.

I was always very into science and nature as a kid, but I also had a lot of other interests.

I loved photography, I loved writing, I loved history.

And so it wasn't really until I got to college and then even afterwards that I really focused my interests on paleontology and the area of paleontology that I work on today.

And it was because I was really interested in big questions, like how the world got to be the way it is today and paleontology you was a way for me to try to answer those questions.

- Absolutely.

Doctor Visaggi, who inspired you to pursue a career in STEM?

- So I was always interested in science careers.

I didn't plan on becoming a paleontologist, but I did find a fossil when I was five and I took it to a museum.

I met real paleontologists when I was very young and my family grew up fossil collecting as a hobby.

So I don't think there was necessarily one person, but I think that there were multiple people along the way from those paleontologists I met when I was really young, who encouraged my passion, to the mentors that I had in my classes in school, who continued to encourage me in that way.

So I don't think I have one single answer, but, many people who were supportive along the years.

- Yeah, it tends to be multifaceted, right?

Where you have a lot of support or people that spark that interest.

Doctor Elizabeth Hermsen, I'm gonna ask you that same question, who inspired you to pursue a career in paleontology?

- Paleontology is something that I've been interested in since I was very young, so I don't know if there was a particular inspiration that kind of pushed me in that direction.

It's just something, like I said, that had been interested in for a very long time.

And, I decided to continue pursuing as I got older.

- Okay, thank you, great.

So I'm gonna toss this out to the entire group.

What do you think are some of the best resources for someone who wants to learn about paleontology?

(overlapping chatter) - Yeah, exactly.

I think we're all gonna say the same thing, which is the project that Liz mentioned, that was mentioned in Liz's bio, which is an amazing online encyclopedia and textbook of paleontology that, well, Liz can tell you more because she actually writes it, but I use it in my classes for teaching all the time.

It's a wonderful resource.

- Doctor Hermsen, do you wanna elaborate on that?

- Yeah, I can elaborate on it a little bit.

So, Digital Atlas of Ancient Life is sort of the name for a project that has a series of components.

So there are the digital atlases.

I think there are four of them now with the show, I guess, pictures of fossils from different regions of the United States and different time periods.

So for instance, there's "Neogene Atlas," to the Southeastern United States.

There's an "Atlas of the Ordovician" that I think covers Ohio and Kentucky.

So that's interesting maybe if you're out looking for fossils in these areas and you wanna identify what you're looking for.

There's the "Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life."

This involves multiple paleontologists, not just me, but I'm working on the plant sections of this.

It's more of an online textbook.

So it's set up to help you learn about different groups of organisms and their biology, and also their fossil record.

And then there's also a section on virtual collections.

So these are 3D models of fossils and you can actually go in and manipulate them, turn them around in space on your computer and look at them.

And some of them also have labels telling you the different structures on the fossils you're looking at.

So it's kind of set up as an overarching teaching resource that a lot of people, maybe from the amateur level to college students can get a lot out of in terms of learning about paleontology.

- That sounds like a great resource, and we will get the link for that and put that in the chat during our talk this evening.

I really like how you can manipulate and move the pieces around to get a better look at them.

That's really fascinating.

We do have an audience question.

"So do you have any advice for women who are looking to get into paleontology?"

Doctor Ivany, do you wanna start with that one?

- Sure, I suppose it sort of depends on what level you're at right now, if you're still in school in high school, or if you're in college at this point.

So in terms of getting into paleontology, boy, if you're still in school, take some classes, if you're not in school, go outside and look around and observe nature.

I think that's one of the more important things you can do.

and then, yeah, just in general, I guess it would just sort of depend on where you're at.

Go to museums.

Museums are great resource to try and learn what's going on these days.

And, oftentimes there's short courses and such you can do there, talk to paleontologists there and make some connections.

So it really depends on where you're at, what stage you're at.

We can elaborate more on that if there's more detail.

(Ivany laughs) - Sure, sure.

Gigi ask that question.

So if you can share with us what more specifics you're looking for in the chat, we can help to hone in with that.

Doctor Cohen, can you add some additional advice?

- Sure, I think, I teach at the college level, so I often get students who come in as first year students who are really interested in paleontology.

And so, like Linda said, encourage folks to take courses, not just in paleontology, but in geology, in biology and evolution, and find a mentor.

I think, finding a mentor, and that doesn't necessarily have to be a professor.

It could be someone at a museum.

It could be a graduate student if you're at a university.

But someone that you can connect with and who is maybe a little bit ahead of where you are in terms of your schooling, who can give you a sense of what their experiences are like, what their careers have been like.

And I think attending events like this is also a great way to learn a little bit more about what it's like to be a paleontologist and whether or not something that you wanna try to pursue.

- Great, thank you, and I'm gonna ask Doctor Visaggi to comment on that same question, any advice for women who are looking to go into the field of paleontology?

- Sure, so, the Paleontological Research Institution, who is helping host this event, they actually have a website that talks about, so you want to be a paleontologist, where they tell you, "Oh, take science and math classes or go explore outdoors."

And all these things that everybody's mentioned.

So I would definitely recommend checking that out.

If you go to museums or you university nearby or check out and see if you have local fossil clubs, don't be afraid.

No matter what stage you're in, if you're in middle school, if you're in high school, any age, reach out to people and try to get experiences where you can go collect fossils or study fossils, or just ask the advice of a professional who's working in the field.

I think our community is really welcoming.

That's one of the things I love about it.

And so hearing from folks who are excited about the field is always a wonderful thing.

- Yeah, that is really exciting.

Doctor Visaggi, I'm gonna stay with you for a second.

We have a question, What fossil, you mentioned you found a fossil when you were young, so what fossil you find when you were five years old?

- I found a brachiopod, which is similar in appearance to a clam.

There are some differences, but if you don't know what a brachiopod is, it kind of looks like a clam.

It has two halves of a shell, and they used to be really, really popular hundreds of millions of years ago.

We still have them today, but they are a lot less common now.

And I still do have that fossil.

My mom actually gave it to me for Christmas a few years ago.

So, it's really fun to still have the fossil that inspired my interest initially.

- That's really cool.

(Nancy laughs) I also started a rock collection when I was very young and fossils and still have very much a lot of rocks around me, which people don't encourage when I have to move (Nancy laughs) that they'll move them.

They're not really fond of moving rocks (Nancy laughs) I don't know why.

Doctor Cohen, being a female paleontologist, did men ever tell you couldn't achieve your goal because you were a girl?

- Hmm.

So, I was fortunate in that I never had anyone explicitly tell me that.

And I thank the wonderful science teachers that I had in my K12 life.

And then also Warren was my paleontology professor and he was nothing but encouraging and still is to this day.

But I would say that there were definitely situations in my education and in my career where, it was more of like an undercurrent of feeling like I didn't belong or I wasn't good enough or smart enough or couldn't hike as fast as the men could.

So for me, it was more an experience of, yeah, I guess, like I said, sort of an undercurrent as opposed to explicitly being told that I didn't belong.

And that's can be almost as hard because sometimes it's hard to know how to sort of trust yourself and trust your instincts in those situations.

- Yeah, the undercurrent can be something that just continues to tug on you, correct?

- Yeah, exactly.

And I think coming back to this idea of mentors in community, I think one of the ways that I overcame that, was by talking to other women who were having the same experience and sort of realizing like, "Oh, wait a second, this isn't just me, this is something bigger than me."

Christy is a great example.

Like we've known each other since we were students.

And we've definitely had conversations where it's been like, "Is this all in my head?"

"No, no, it's not all in your head."

So, I think again, finding community and finding mentors at different levels, whether they be peer mentors or mentors who are older than you, is a really critical part of finding your place and creating a sense of belonging for yourself in paleontology.

- Oh yeah, that's absolutely great advice.

I'd like to actually go to Doctor Visaggi, can you also comment on that, being a female paleontologist, did you ever hear men telling you you couldn't achieve your goal because you were a girl?

- So early on, I never had that experience.

There was never a time in K12 where I thought that.

I really think it was only as I progressed in my career.

That again, kind of like Phoebe said, for the most part, it was more of an undercurrent.

There was the rare occasion where somebody said, "Do you want a career or do you wanna have babies?"

I do remember that vividly, but, well I have a career and I have babies.

So take that.

(Visaggi laughs) But as Phoebe said, having community has been really important both my peers as well as wonderful mentors, like Doctor Ivany, also a panelist tonight.

- Yeah, thank you.

Actually I'm gonna ask, Doctor Hermsen, Hermsen, excuse me, the same question.

'Cause I think this is important, coming up against those barriers and being told that either you're not good or you're not welcome in this field, did you experience that as well?

- I wouldn't say I did, definitely not as a student.

I got a lot of support from my parents in pursuing science and when I was young, we went camping a lot and stuff.

So I never had this idea that I couldn't be in the outdoors or I couldn't go hiking or we'd go fishing and stuff.

that all seemed very normal to me.

So I would say no, I would say if anything, the difficulties have come more as I've progressed to becoming more senior in my career.

And also for me, especially because I'm married to another paleontologist, which can make it really difficult to sort of navigate around two careers, if you will.

- I bet that becomes challenging, especially with travel.

- We travel, we're trying to find jobs in the same place.

We actually lived in different states for a very long time.

For a while I was in Ohio and he was in California, so that was very challenging, yeah.

- And Doctor Ivany, can you also give us your perspective on this question?

Did you come up against this barrier where you felt like you didn't have a space in paleontology because of being a woman?

- Yeah, so, I went through the system a little earlier than everybody else.

And so, I don't think I had quite the benefit of having quite as many women around at the time.

So things were a little more interesting.

(Linda laughs) I won't go into details.

I can say though that, when I was younger in grade school and high school, I had tremendous amounts of support.

It never even occurred to me that there was an issue of boys versus girls.

It was just nothing else.

I was totally supported in that regard.

I do recall once I got into college, again, it was super supportive, but my very first professional conference that I ever went to, I was told by some eminent male scholars that, "Well, women don't go into geology and paleontology unless they're ugly or they want a husband.

So you're not ugly, so do you wanna go get a drink?"

(Linda laughs) Literally that's cool.

So that was an interesting experience.

I thought this guy's on another planet or something.

So we all have these little war stories and there's more interesting ones that I won't go into now, but I think I had the benefit from the women, the relatively few, but certainly there were women that went through the system before me and had laid the groundwork and had changed the system already.

And I'm sort of hoping that the people in my generation have made the pavement just a little bit easier for everybody else subsequently to navigate.

I guess I still feel like, I'll just echo the same things that everybody else has just said.

I think there is sort of this undercurrent that you're never quite part of the crowd, part of the in crowd, the group.

There's always just a little bit of a sense of being an outsider here and not being quite comfortable about whether you're, to trust yourself that that in fact is real or if you you're just imagining things.

So that can be a little bit difficult.

But I think by and large, other folks are absolutely right.

There's a really strong community of women out there in paleontology, and women in men both who are super supportive of everybody that wants to get into the field.

And so you find some people like that and connect with them, make them part of your circle.

- That was great, thank you.

I wanna stay kind of on this thread for a moment.

So I am going to ask all of you this similar question because I think there's a lot to say about it.

So what was your biggest obstacle in getting to where you are today?

And why don't we go ahead and start with Doctor Ivany.

- Yeah, boy.

Biggest obstacle, I guess, probably myself I have to admit.

(Linda laughs) Just my own confidence that I am in fact able to do this in terms of being welcome in the field and feeling like I'm confident enough to do it.

So for me, that was probably the biggest thing.

It's just sort of getting through my own head that in fact I was part of this that I could actually do it.

Thank you.

Doctor Visaggi.

The first thing that came to mind when you asked that question was this time period in between my masters and my PhD, where I was trying to navigate multiple aspects of my life.

I had a relationship with the man who is now my husband and I wanted to move across the country and be with him.

I had my family in New Jersey who very much wanted me to stay on the East Coast.

And I had to decide about looking for jobs and internships in my PhD.

And, there were some really, really challenging times in trying to navigate all that and being able to pursue what I wanted to do.

Fortunately, I ended up landing a National Park Service internship that allowed me to kind of keep my toes in paleontology while I was figuring things out.

And then I later returned to school for my PhD, but that was a really big obstacle 'cause it was a very difficult time to try to navigate all the different aspects of my life at once.

- And that's the reality, right?

Not everybody's path is a straight path.

It's often crooked and goes in different ways.

Doctor Hermsen, what was your biggest obstacle in getting where you are today?

- Well, I think I kind of brought it up already.

I got married in grad school and my husband was in a program in paleontology as well.

So everything post grad school, we've been trying to find a way to be in the same place.

And we lucked out when we both managed to get postdocs in Kansas, but after that for a very long period of time, we weren't both able to find jobs in the field, in the same area.

So he got a job in California.

I ended up in New York, then I was in Ohio.

Then he was in New York.

Finally now we're both at PRI, but it took a long time for us to get here.

So, there was just a lot of juggling and a lot of different time zones and navigating a long distance relationship involved.

- And that's definitely very challenging.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

Doctor Cohen.

- Sure, yeah.

So, for me a little bit what Linda said, I think I was my biggest barrier and for me, my sort of crisis of confidence was at the end of graduate school.

I had some really difficult sort of scientific interactions and dynamics and challenges at the end of my PhD program that made me doubt whether or not I was sort of cut out for academia, cut out to be a researcher.

And whether or not it would be sort of better or easier for me to take another path.

And so I kind of, I took one foot out of the or I had one foot in one foot out sort of like what Christy was saying.

And it was again my community, my collaborators, my friends, my colleagues in the field who really helped me see that I did have a place in paleontology and that I could do it and they were right.

And, here I am so.

- And we're glad you're here.

We have a question from our audience member for Doctor Ivany.

This person is interested in geology and paleontology and they are curious, how does your research correlate with both?

- Geology and paleontology?

Well, I guess I'm interested in the ancient earth and how the earth's surface, including life has changed over time.

So, to be able to understand what's going on in the fossil record, you really have to be a solid geologist to try and interpret the environment in which these things are being found.

So fossils are coming outta rocks and those rocks are telling you about the ancient earth surface.

So if you don't understand the rocks, the geologic context for your fossils, then yeah, you're missing some stuff.

So for me, geology and paleontology are just interwoven.

It's like people ask me if I'm a geologist or a paleontologist.

Well, I'm both, I don't know how to disentangle those two things.

I think that doesn't necessarily have to be true depending on the flavor of paleontology you wanna do, but, at least for my own work, I'm very much interested in the evolution of the earth system.

The Earth's surface environments and organisms and how they are affecting each other.

And so, for me, I really do need to have both fields of expertise has to have to come to bear on this.

- Thank you.

I have a question I'm gonna toss out to the group to see which of you wants to answer this one.

We had no audience question about, how do you think we can best incorporate paleontology into elementary schools?

- I can chime in to start.

I'm sure others will as well.

But if you are a teacher who's asking that question, there are numerous standards in biology, especially also in earth science like in sixth grade where you can talk about fossils.

And fossils I believe in third grade is usually when they're introduced as a concept.

There is a resource called fossil use cards, and I can share the link with the organizers so they can share it with everybody.

And I was part of this project for the Paleontological Society.

And what we did was, we looked at how fossils have been used by humans through time as well as now.

But the reason I bring it up is because we provide a list of the next generation science standards.

And so these are the standards that many of the teachers use in K12 to teach their courses and all of the ones that are relevant to the resource that we provide.

So if teachers are looking for a way to incorporate fossils into different lessons, that could be a great start to look at some of the standards and how to incorporate fossils in those lessons.

- That is great, thank you so much.

Does somebody wanna add on to, okay, Doctor Cohen.

- Yeah, there are also programs like Skype a Scientist, where teachers can request a paleontologist or another scientist, who'll just Zoom or Skype into their classroom, and do a Q and A, and so that can be a great opportunity to sort of like this event to have a chance to talk to a scientist or a someone who's still in graduate school, who can talk to your students about paleontology.

I've also done class visits for locals tools.

And I know many of us do that as well.

So reaching out to local colleges or universities or fossil clubs.

So there's, in some parts of the country, a lot of avocational paleontologists.

So people who do it as a very serious hobby, and those groups often will also be really happy to come and do events at elementary schools as well.

- That's great, thank you so much.

Doctor Hermsen, do you have anything to add additionally?

- I don't know.

A lot of good things have been brought up, I'd say I guess another good thing to do is to get out and get hands on and look for fossils.

If you have an area where you can go out and do a field trip or if you have a child in your life and you can take them out, just go out and look.

Some states like Ohio have fossil parks where you can actually go out and collect.

And there are sometimes private areas where you can go and collect.

Obviously if you're collecting anywhere, you wanna know the rules of the land or who the land owner is, you know you have permission to collect.

But, I think that's a way to get people interested and I think that's actually a way a lot of people get interested in paleontology.

- Thank you so much.

This question is for everybody, but I think Doctor Hermsen's already touched on this a little bit, but how much do you travel and or move for your research in your job?

Doctor Ivany, do you wanna kick us off?

- Sure, yeah.

I guess from my own perspective, I probably travel a whole lot more earlier on in my career than I'm doing now.

And that's just because of where I'm at in my life right now.

And it's a little bit more difficult to travel.

I think a lot of paleontologists get into it because of the field work, because it's exciting and fun, and you can go to these cool places and sort of the thrill of discovery of fossils, but it's also true that an awful lot of really cool paleontology is done right in your office.

You don't have to actually go out.

There's also some really great databases that you can use, and you can do a lot of work with museum specimens as well.

So it really kind of depends on what floats your own boat, right?

And what makes you excited about these things.

Certainly the potential is there to do a lot of great travel associated with it.

I'm sure Christy, for example, I'm sure has lots of good stories to tell about the field work as well.

But there's a lot you can do in the lab as well that doesn't require field work.

So it really is whatever you decide is important and interesting to you.

- Thank you, yeah, let's go to Doctor Visaggi, can you talk a little bit about that?

- Yeah, so I think it is true that a lot of us enjoy being outdoors and (laughs) looking for fossils and being out there.

But the reality is that's only maybe a few weeks out of the year that I do that.

Teaching is my passion.

So I am more often in the classroom or behind a computer doing a lot of the work on fossils.

And actually I've pivoted a little bit during the pandemic in not being able to travel and started to work on modern land snails and slugs because I can't go out and collect my fossil samples as easily with the travel restrictions.

So I've found a way to do science with my students locally outdoors, which has been really fun.

And there was one more thing I was gonna add and I can't remember what it is.

So (laughs) maybe come back to me.

(Nancy laughs) - You got it.

I love how you were able to pivot and still keep that research and that wonder going, but yeah, with the travel restrictions that does slow some of that down.

- Oh, I've remembered.

- Okay great.

(Nancy and Visaggi laughing) - I dunno how important it is, but I would say also that when I was a graduate student and earlier in my career, I did travel a little lot more, but now I have two wonderful young children, ages four and six.

And so that has certainly factored into my decisions to ease up a little bit on the traveling and do more of the local exploration.

And then hopefully when they're older, I can bring them back out into the field more, although when they were babies, I put them in a wrap and we went out to the field or went to the conference.

So just know that you can do those kinds of things too.

- That's great advice, yeah, because you can absolutely take them with you.

Doctor Cohen.

- Sure, yeah.

So I've gotten to travel all over the world as a paleontologist, which has definitely been a super exciting part of my career.

But as Linda said, and as Christy pointed out, the ratio sort of travel to lab work and computer work is pretty low.

So maybe a week or two of field work and travel and then lots and lots of time in the lab in front of my computer trying to understand what it all means.

In terms of moving for my career, I've been very lucky in that I haven't gone very far.

(Cohen laughs) I grew up in the Boston area.

I went to Cornell, I went back to the Boston area for grad school and now I'm in Western Massachusetts, but I would say I'm an anomaly.

I think most people end up having to move more often further away to pursue different types of research opportunities and jobs which can definitely be a hard part of the job.

And Liz discussed that earlier as well.

But the travel is great.

And for me it's sort of like a perk of the job.

But definitely it's not like I'm gone four or five months out of the year or anything like that.

And I also have a young kid, so that's definitely impacted my work travel as well.

- Thank you, it actually leads us right into our next audience question.

"When you do your field work and have a family, can you bring your family along and get them involved in your research?"

So Doctor Hermsen, can you start us off with that?

- Well it's a good question.

I actually do not have children.

And I usually do my field work on my own in terms of well, with a research group, not with family.

In terms of whether you could bring your family, I think it probably really depends on maybe age of your children, on where your field site is, on how expensive it is to travel there.

There are probably a lot of factors that maybe Phoebe and Christy can speak to a little bit better or Linda.

- Yeah, Doctor Ivany, do you wanna take this?

- Sure, I'm also in the same boat in that I don't have kids.

And so it's a little bit easier for me in terms of traveling.

I do know that, I have a number of wonderful colleagues who are outstanding scientists who have kids, several of whom are on this call.

And many of them have found ways to bring their kids out in the field.

So, we can certainly hear a lot more about that I'm sure.

Depends on where you are, right?

I mean, and where you're going.

Like, so for example, I did a lot of field work in Antarctica and that's a little bit harder.

Like if I had kids, I would not have been able to bring them there clearly.

But other places, yeah, you can definitely navigate that system and figure out ways to do it as long as you're safe, yeah.

- Great, thank you.

Doctor Visaggi.

- Yeah, so I have brought my kids with me to the Bahamas.

I have had them come look for fossils with me locally in the Southeastern US.

They absolutely helped a lot after virtual kindergarten with looking for modern snails and slugs.

They're much better at it.

They're closer to the ground and they notice these things.

So, it's been really great to involve them in field work.

I think there's other field experiences I've had where it really wasn't quite the right situation to bring them along, but it's nice to know that there are some times when everybody can participate.

- Thank you.

And Doctor Cohen, did you wanna add anything to that?

I mean, you already touched about how you take your kids with you, which is great.

- Yeah, so my son is four and he has not done field work with me yet in part because I haven't done very much because of the pandemic.

And in part because some of my field work is really remote in places sort of like what Linda was talking about, where it wouldn't be safe to have a kid with you.

But I'm definitely excited about bringing him with me as he gets older.

He already knows how to identify different kinds of fossils.

Like you, we have lots of rocks and fossils around the house.

He loves to hike.

And so I'm excited to maybe try to bring him along as he gets older.

I've definitely done field work with colleagues who have brought their kids with them.

And it's actually been really fun.

And I have other colleagues whose kids have been a part of their field work for their lives and now their kids are in college and pursuing science degrees.

So that's really cool to see too, that you can make it work and you can find ways to incorporate your family into your work.

- That's great, thank you.

We have a question looking for some advice.

This sounds like a person who has found paleontology their passion for that later in life.

And do you feel that there's ever a time where it's too late to change your careers or that age would be a barrier for going into paleontology?

Who would like to start us off?

(overlapping chatter) - Oh, go ahead.

- Oh (laughs).

- [Nancy] Please.

- I've had several colleagues who didn't find their passion for paleontology until much later in their life.

Forties, fifties and beyond.

And they went back to school and they found ways in which they could pursue this as a profession.

So I don't think that there's ever a time in which it's too late to pursue that.

And there's also many different ways to pursue paleontology.

Work in a museum or as Doctor Cohen mentioned, there are a lot of avocational paleontologists.

So even if your situation is such that you can't turn it into a new profession, there's other ways to get really involved and be able to regularly contribute to the discipline.

- Thank you.

Doctor Ivany, did you wanna add onto that?

- Yeah, I'll just echo the same thing.

There's a lot of ways that you can get involved.

It's never too late, even quite late in your career.

And so I know a number of people now that have gotten involved, especially with museums and collections and volunteering in collections.

It's a great way to get started and get your feet wet in the field.

I also have a number of colleagues who are now supporting a department for example, where there is paleontological research being done.

And they're basically going to seminars and contributing at various levels and learning a whole lot at the same time.

And these are people that are like 82, for example.

So they're coming at it a little bit later in life, but it's certainly a rewarding experience and you can learn a whole heck of a lot and make some significant contributions at that level too.

So it's never too late.

- I love that advice.

We have a question from Evelyn.

"As a high schooler, I would love to start at paleontology and fossil club at my school.

Any advice or resources that I could use?"

Doctor Hermsen, do you wanna start us off?

- Wow!

Yeah, I think it sort of maybe depends on where you are.

You might be able to kind of connect with an amateur fossil club in your area.

There are some that are very active and they may be able to help help you out with local resources or maybe even fossil collecting trips.

Yeah, I guess you can look for regional resources as well.

We mentioned the digital atlases, but national parks, state parks, may have information on paleontology in specific regions.

I guess it kind of depends on what you wanna do.

Learn about paleontology or collect or whatever it is.

- Doctor Cohen, do you have anything to add to that?

- Yeah, I would just echo finding local resources, again, connecting with local museums with local fossil clubs if they exist.

And, check out the links that are being posted in the comments.

There's a lot of different resources.

Christy has mentioned the fossil project, which is a network of avocational paleontologists and paleontology fossil clubs.

There's the "Encyclopedia of Ancient Life" that Liz mentioned.

So I think there's a lot of online resources and then places that you can connect in person like museums and clubs.

- That's great, thank you.

And we have several links that are also in the chat for you taking you back to a lot of the comments that our panelists have mentioned.

So we have a question, "How did you decide what organism or organisms to specialize in?"

So I'm gonna start with Doctor Ivany.

(Ivany laughs) - Yeah, you know it's funny, I guess for me, I don't have a particular affinity for one organism over another.

I just for me, it's like what's the question, if the question's interesting, exciting, that's good enough.

So I've worked on things from fossil sea grasses or plants, and I've worked on fossil whales, things with backbones.

Most of what I work on are invertebrates these days and okay, admittedly, I am rather fond of molluscs, that is true.

Clams and snails and squids and their relatives.

But, yeah, I don't know for me, it's always about the questions you can ask with those fossils, with those organisms.

And if the question is an exciting one and a compelling one, doesn't really matter to me what the animal is or plant or micro fossil is.

There's some outstanding work that's being done there across the whole kingdom of well, everything.

(Ivany laughs) And so, yeah, there's a lot you can do.

There's not a particular group for me.

- Thank you.

Doctor Cohen.

- Yeah, so I work on tiny fossils.

And so they're all different kinds of microscopic fossils, but I really love microscopy.

I love seeing the unseen.

I love discovering that just a boring old rock that has nothing on the outside is actually full of hundreds of microscopic fossils that can tell us just a huge amount about past life on earth.

So for me, it's that's part of it that gets me really excited.

I did a lot of photography as a teenager and in college.

And so microscopes and taking pictures with electron microscopes of really microscopic things is one of my favorite parts of my job.

And so, I think that love of photography and love of sort of the hidden or secret parts of the fossil record is what got me excited about working on micro fossils or tiny fossils.

- Thank you.

Doctor Hermsen.

- Yeah, so, I work on plants.

I got really into plants in high school.

We did a herbarium project where we got credit for each plant we collected and different families and different genre and different species.

So then I had to go out and learn how to identify all these different plants.

So that probably sparked my interest in focusing on plants as a study organism.

Yeah, and I've worked on a lot of different time periods, a lot of different styles of preservation.

Right now, one of my projects is looking a lot at fruits and seeds, and these are very small fossils as well.

So I do use a lot of microscopy in my work.

But yeah, I just actually really like plants.

So that's why I work on them.

(Hermsen laughs) - Well, that's a good reason.

Doctor Visaggi, can you finish us out?

- I have always had a fondness for marine invertebrates, so things without a backbone, brachiopods, clams, snails, crabs, things like that.

The marine realm in particular, I've always really enjoyed marine ecosystems.

And I think a lot of my interest in molluscs, which is what I've been studying for about 20 years now, is because of that initial interest in marine life and trying to decide, do I wanna pursue geology?

Do I wanna pursue marine biology?

And I think molluscs kind of have made the best fit for being able to do that, both in using modern organisms to help understand questions in the fossil record, as well as studying fossils and maybe thinking about what that can tell us as we approach conservation problems today.

I just love how versatile they are.

You can look at predator/prey interactions, you can find out information about past environments and climate and seawater chemistry.

You can study how communities have changed through time.

And they're just so abundant because they have those hard shells that preserve really nicely.

So I just, I love my snails and clams.

(Visaggi laughs) - Well, what's not to love there, right?

(Nancy laughs) I have a question that I'm gonna toss out to the group.

Universities and museum have large collections of fossils for researchers to study that are not on display for the general public.

Do you ever use those collections in your research and how do you find them?

Doctor Hermsen can we start with you?

- Yeah, actually I use a lot of collections in my research.

So right now, one of my main project is with gray fossil site in Tennessee.

And, this is a fossil site, it preserves sort of this ancient lake deposit that formed in a sinkhole.

And, there's actually a museum on the site and they have volunteers in that, that excavate the fossils and process all the fossils.

So I go down there to just choose things that I wanna work on.

And, a few times I've gone down for a few days to maybe five days or something, just to sort through the collections and look at things.

Another project that I'm involved in, is based in Argentina.

And, we work a lot with the museum down there that houses the collections and also helps provide the logistics for field work.

So, yeah, collections work, both fossil collections, but also herbarium work because there are herbaria that store modern drag plants as well are really important to my research.

- Thank you.

Doctor Ivany.

- Yeah, I'll just jump in there as well.

Museum collections are so incredibly important to maintain and to have around, especially for paleontology.

So a couple of really obvious things that might be important is that they're housing collections of material that might be really valuable from places, for example, that are no longer accessible or don't even exist anymore.

Things have been completely paved over or destroyed in the process.

So museums are really the only place you can get to that material now at all.

And so really, really important to be able to do that.

It's also really important to be able to access fossils from places that are not easily accessible today.

So for example, I work in Antarctica and work on Antarctica fossils, and yes, I've been down there several times and I have my own material that I've brought back, but boy, you can't collect everything that you're ever gonna need.

And so having other resources around, museum collections around, for example, like at the Paleontological Resource Institution, they have a really important collection of material from Antarctica that was amassed over many, many years of field work.

There's no way I could ever do that in one field season.

And so having that available and accessible is just incredibly important.

So yeah, museums are really vital resources.

- Thank you.

so we have a question, what degrees do you recommend for a paleontology career?

Doctor Visaggi, do you wanna comment on that?

- Yeah, I think most paleontologists either choose geology or biology or zoology, some one or the other, or maybe both or having a major and a minor.

I think it's really important that initially paleontologists get experience in kind of both areas because you need to study the life, but also the contexts in which they were found.

And then typically what happens is, you might end up pursuing more geology or more of the biology, zoology, depending on the type of paleontology that you study.

I'm an ecologist, I study organisms and how they interact with their environment and with each other.

So I actually did my first two degrees in geology and then my PhD in marine biology.

So I could kind of get the best of both worlds.

- Great, thank you.

And I know that so many of you have a varied background.

Doctor Cohen, do you wanna comment on that?

- Yeah, a lot of it depends on the specialty or the area of paleontology that you're interested in.

So my undergraduate degree is in earth systems science, which was a interdisciplinary earth science major at Cornell.

So I never took a lot of the sort of, traditional geology courses.

And I often tell my students this because I'm a professor in a geology department.

And a lot of that I learned along the way.

And so I think one thing to remember is that, like all the choices that Christy just outlined, there are many different paths to becoming a paleontologist.

And just because maybe you were a geology major and didn't take a lot of biology or vice versa, doesn't mean that you can't progress in the field.

And so a lot of what we learn, we learn sort of on the job or we learn in the course of doing our research.

So I think whatever track you start on, whether it be more biology focused or more geology focused, can still lead you to a career in paleontology.

And in my experience, at least people who work on vertebrates, so dinosaurs and mammals and things of like that, tend to have more of a biology background.

People who work on invertebrates tend to have more of a geology background, but that's definitely not universal.

And there's certainly exceptions to all of those.

- Great, thank you so much.

We do have a few more questions that are coming in.

So if you do have questions, please do ask them in the chat so we can get to them.

"Are paleontologists jobs limited to academia and or museums?

Can you get jobs outside of these realms?"

Doctor Visaggi, let's start with you.

- Sure, one thing that comes to mind and then maybe I'll toss it to Phoebe 'cause she looked like she wanted to say something is, there is paleontological consulting.

So there are certain places, California is one example where as part of new development and construction, they want to make sure that they're not destroying important fossil resources and that they're properly observed and excavated if need be.

So I know several people who have worked kind of in that realm.

Another thing that comes to mind is in, kind of federal agency work.

So the USGS, the United States Geological Survey or the National Parks Service, and there's different ways in which people hold jobs related to paleontology in that regard, some are doing more research, some are doing more management of fossil resources and others are doing education.

So those are just a few examples, but there's more that I'll let Doctor Cohen share.

- Well, Christy mentioned a lot of them, but the reason I was eager to raise my hand is because I just ran a careers and mentoring event a couple of weeks ago for college students and graduate students in paleontology in my role in the Paleontological Society.

So that's another resource we haven't mentioned yet, professional society of paleontologists, and it's mostly geared towards academic paleontologists and students, but definitely has a lot of resources for everybody as well.

And in that career panel, I had someone who worked for like a company that Christy just mentioned, who does contract paleontology.

We had a science writer, Riley Black, who writes books about paleontology and does field work.

People who teach at all different levels from high school to college, community college, people who work in museums in many different roles, from curation to exhibit design and education, the park service like Christy mentioned, and other government agencies.

I also have friends who have advanced degrees in paleontology who have gone on to do science journalism, investigative reporting, and policy work.

So there's some really great programs for scientists after you get a PhD to go into sort of science policy work and work in Washington DC for Congress.

- Great, well, thank you.

Yeah, that sounds like there's lots of avenues to explore with a paleontology degree.

I think we're going to wrap up with this question and I'm gonna ask everybody to comment on this.

What do you think are the most effective ways to attract girls and young women in careers in STEM?

Doctor Cohen, do you wanna go ahead and start with.

- So this is always a tricky question, 'cause I don't think we actually have to work to attract girls and women in STEM.

I think they're already interested.

I mean, obviously if you're a parent, exposing your kids to all sorts of different areas of science is really wonderful, taking them to museums, buying them different kinds of books like the "Daring to Dig" book that shows women in paleontology is great, but there's a lot of women and girls who are interested in paleontology.

And so, as a college professor, I really see my job as making sure that the students who show up interested, stay interested and have a positive experience.

And this comes back to those early comments about potential like sexism that some of us may have faced early in different stages in our career.

So for me, it's really about making paleontology a place where women and girls feel comfortable, feel safe, and feel supported, in pursuing their interests.

And that's what I'm really focused on.

- Thank you.

Doctor Ivany.

- I'm just gonna echo what Phoebe just said.

I think that she put it beautifully.

I think retention is probably more of an issue than getting people excited about it to begin with.

Yeah, what else could I suggest?

I think that's about right, yeah.

- Great, thank you.

Doctor Hermsen or Doctor Visaggi, do you have anything you wanna add?

- I think Phoebe's comments covered it very well.

Girls are interested and I think that the important thing is to try to support their interests and to try to find ways to retain them as they get older and further along and may face more obstacles and barriers to staying in science.

- And I would echo all of that, that everybody said.

but to be more explicit, to reiterate a point that was mentioned earlier is finding mentors and finding peer mentors and mentors who are farther along in their career than you.

I had the good fortune to have three women mentors for each of my degrees.

I also had some amazing male colleagues who supported me, but it's been really great to have those women mentors in my professional space as well as other grad students at the time when I was in school or now, other colleagues at my institution who are women and I think building that network can never start too early.

So finding those supportive people in your community is really valuable.

- It definitely is.

We do have an audience question that is pretty specific.

so I'm gonna read it and then ask who might want to field this one?

"So between biology and geology, which would paleontologists who specialize in 3D printing and biomechanics major?"

They also added ASO-paleo artists question.

- Yeah, I would say biology, because you really need to understand the physiology of vertebrates for that kind of work, right?

Like how vertebrates are build and how they work.

And I think for that, you need to make sure that you're at a school that offers those kinds of courses, because a lot of biology departments are more focused on like molecular or cellular biology and genetics, which is great.

But making sure that you are at a school or institution that has courses in vertebra anatomy, human anatomy, things like that, that would provide you those opportunities to learn more about how organisms are built and bones, yeah.

- Thank you.

Does anybody else wanna comment on that?

Doctor Ivany.

- No, sounds about right.

- Okay.

(Nancy laughs) (indistinct chatter) - I was gonna say bio, Phoebe got it.

(Ivany laughs) - Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Well, I would like to thank our panelists this evening.

Paleobotanist and research scientist at the Paleontological Research Institution, Doctor Elizabeth Hermsen.

I would like to thank professor and associate chair of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, Doctor Linda Ivany.

Undergraduate program director in geosciences at Georgia State University, Doctor Christy Visaggi.

- Thank you.

- And associate professor of geosciences at Williams College in Massachusetts, Doctor Phoebe Cohen.

- Thank you.

- This panel is a compliment to the exhibit Daring to Dig: Women in American Paleontology on display at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York, until December, 2021.

It is also available online at daringtodig.org.

This event will be archived and available to view on WSKG's YouTube channel.

Thank you to the Paleontological Research Institution and this Museum of the Earth.

I wanna thank our team here at WSKG, Jackie Stapleton-Durham, Patrick Holmes, and Alyssa Micha.

I'm your host, Nancy Coddington.

Thank you for joining us and goodnight.

(gentle music)