AWG Home > Employment, Awards, Scholarships > Career Profiles

- Job Web   - Career Profiles   - Scholarships   - AWG Awards

J. Lynett Gillette Paleontologist Lynett Gillette works with dinosaurs almost every day as a Curator of Paleontology in a small museum in New Mexico, but she wasn't attracted to dinosaurs as a child. In fact, she doesn't remember ever thinking about dinosaurs or fossils or geology as a young person. She was interested in biology and astronomy and liked reading science fiction. In college she completed a double major in anthropology and journalism and went on to two years of graduate study in anthropology at Southern Methodist University. When her daughter was seven months old she began working as a research technician in the Department of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. Museum work was very exciting for her. She particularly enjoyed creating a computerized system for recording evidence of disease in Paleo-Indian skeletons. Lynett's husband was a paleontology graduate student when they married. She began working with him in field explorations. Once they lived in an old cotton plantation dedicated to research in natural history and spent their days diving into the rivers of northern Florida for Pleistocene fossils from the sandy river beds. Later she began taking geology field trips with his geology students and helping with exploring expeditions for fossils in Argentina and Australia. When she was 33 years old she went back to school and received a BS degree in geology from Boise State University in Idaho. For a while she worked as an exploration geologist in eastern Oregon and western Idaho and then as a geologist for independent oil companies in Dallas. In her spare time she worked for the Shuler Museum of Paleontology at SMU. She and her husband came to New Mexico to help create a new museum of natural history in Albuquerque. Lynett worked in the fossil preparation lab and began casting and restoring fossils at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico and the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. For the last seven years she has helped develop Ghost Ranch's new Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology. In a normal work day she may lecture on geology to a visiting school group, supervise the extraction of fossils from matrix in the museum, conduct excavations for fossils, study or help other scientists study fossils and geology at Ghost Ranch, write articles for magazines and books, add new records of fossil discoveries at the ranch to the computer catalogue, supervise volunteers, plan for new exhibits, write text for displays, and teach seminars in paleontology for groups such as the Elderhostel program. Lynett also enjoys writing books about paleontology for young people. Her book, the Search for Seismosaurus (1994) explains the seven year-long excavation of a new sauropod dinosaur in New Mexico. She feels fortunate to have work that allows her to pull together so many skills she used in past jobs. She advises you to keep growing and learning all of your life and to follow your interests even if they lead you into new fields. Lynett's daughter is now studying marine biology in college. "Jennifer always went in the field with us, sometimes with Dave and his students and sometimes with me when I was an exploration geologist", said Lynett. "I guess she's turned on to science, but she has had her fill of deserts and fossils!" Back to Career Profiles

Comments? Questions? Please contact Heather Henkel - Webmaster Last modified: 07 October, 2002 @ 03:28 PM