#WorldScienceDay I get asked a lot why I study palaeontology. Sometimes out of genuine curiosity, other times it feels like I’m being put on the spot, like “why would you put so much energy into something that doesn’t matter?” I try to tread carefully when answering these:

My work is rooted in a deep appreciation for the biodiversity of our planet and a desire to keep it alive. The threat of climate change wiping out earth’s essential plants and animals (those that produce the air we breathe, that pollinate our crops, that bring us peace...)

...has been supported countless times by reputable scientific research. It isn’t a question anymore. Climate change is here.

You can’t understand the present (or future) without looking at the past. That’s why historians talk about the 1918 Flu Pandemic so much during COVID-19. Learning from the past informs how we solve today’s problems.

And just like learning from past pandemics, palaeontology helps us understand how the earth’s climate has changed over millions of years; how the earth bounced back after devastating mass extinctions; and how animals adapt to changing environments.

If applied conservation work is like the foreground of a photograph, the study of evolution is the sunset in the background, colouring everything else in the photo. It’s the essential ground-work informing all biodiversity-related decisions being made today.

My mission has always been to show people that palaeontology & evolution are about so much more than “cool dinosaurs”. We study palaeontology so that we can learn how the past informs the present, before it’s too late