My kids and I sometimes will just sit in my office and talk about what the world was like 68 million years ago. Amanda, our oldest daughter, wanted to be a paleontologist for a long time.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a palaeontologist. I wanted to dig up dinosaurs.
When I was a child, I thought I was going to be a paleontologist because I loved dinosaurs. I loved monster movies and sci-fi, and then 'Star Wars' came out, and I was completely out of my mind with that, with 'Close Encounters,' and then I thought maybe I was going to go into special effects makeup, which I thought was awesome.
I dreamed of becoming a scientist, in general, and a paleontologist, in particular, ever since the Tyrannosaurus skeleton awed and scared me.
I loved dinosaurs, I loved space, and I thought maybe I'd be the first paleo-astronaut.
When I was a child, it was cool to be a scientist.
In pre-school, I was drawing dinosaurs - I was huge into dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist, not a cartoonist or a filmmaker or anything like that - just a paleontologist. So I would draw dinosaurs.
I used to dig around the sandbox and pull out pieces of coal and show them to my mother, and she used to say that's how I must have known I was going to be a geologist.
When I was growing up, my mother would take me to plays and museums, and we'd talk about life. Those times helped shape who I became.
I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.
I'm a paleoanthropologist, and my job is to define man's place in nature and explore what makes us human.