My 6yo is mad about Dinos and fossils and has ran through many fossil digging kits. What can I tell him that will be easy for him to understand what all should he do in order to have a good chance of becoming a paleontologist?
In: Biology
teach him to be very frugal so he can afford to work on a paleontologist salary!
seriously though, your kid sounds smart but this is likely just one of many obsessions until he discovers girls, then all bets are off
Well obviously he needs to dig into his studies and bone up on evolution. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)
[The Paleontological Research Institute has an article on this](https://www.priweb.org/blog-post/i-want-to-be-a-paleontologist), though it seems to be aimed at older kids.
For now, I would focus on developing your child’s broader interest in all the fields that go into being a paleontologist. The biggest two will be biology (studying the plants and animals that eventually become fossils) and geology (studying the terrain and rocks where these fossils are found), but there will be others.
Six years might be a little young yet to own him his own pet dinosaur, but when the time comes, it can be done. When you and I were growing up, we were told the dinosaurs had all died out, but it turns out that this was a mistake. The “classic” species are gone, of course, but in more recent years we found one grouping that had survived the mass extinction, even flourished. Their descendants are still with us today, and they’ve been hiding under our noses the whole time. Or rather, they went right over our heads. We call them birds. Talking about the link between modern birds and ancient dinosaurs might be a good way to spark the wider sorts of interest that a paleontologist needs.
If you need to brush up on some of this stuff, I recommend [Clint’s Reptiles](http://www.youtube.com/@clintsreptiles), but you may want to pre-screen the videos about birds being surviving dinosaurs. Not necesssrily anything you would find problematic, but you probably don’t want to get caught off guard when he has to talk about ducks’ gigantic corkscrew penises.
Hes 6, chances are he will likely also want to become an astronaut or firefighter or race car driver by the time he’s 10.
Just support his interests, get him dinosaur toys or archeologist toys.
We just came back from a vacation at Badlands National Park—there are no dinosaurs, but fossils abound! And they have a lab where you can chat with real paleontologists (and college students) who are working.
If you can get to South Dakota, highly recommended so he can talk to someone who made it their career (and has put themselves in a public-facing role so they are good with kids)
He’s 6. Pretty much all kids that age go through a dino phase, your kid isn’t special nor might actually want to be a paleontologist…
Just support his curiosity, even if it veers away from dinosaurs. That’s the most impot thing you can nuture in him at this age.
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