PaleontOLogy > Meet the OLogist: John Flynn

JOHN FLYNN: My name is John Flynn and I am Frick curator of fossil mammals in the division of paleontology.

I'm a paleontologist. And paleontologists study any evidence of past life. The wonderful thing about paleontology is that it actually blends a couple of different kinds of sciences so that you can study various aspects of earth history and geology, as well as biology, so it's really integrative.

My research specialty is fossil mammals, but I actually study a wide range of things that includes living as well as extinct mammals and also other vertebrates from the age of dinosaurs and the age of mammals. That research focuses on two different kinds of things. One is the evolutionary history of a specific group called carnivora-- that's dogs and cats and bears and seals and their relatives-- and looking at understanding their evolutionary tree, what the history of their life has been during their evolution.

I also study the interplay between mammals and their environment. So I work on how things like mountain-building or plate tectonics and movement of continents might affect the evolution of different groups of vertebrates over time.

JOHN FLYNN: What do I enjoy most about my work as a scientist? That's a pretty easy question to answer, and that's field work. Getting to go on expeditions to some of the most amazing places on Earth is really a wonderful reward for me.

I get to look for fossils across the globe, from South America, the mountains of the Andes of Chile, to the rain forests of tropical Peru and the Amazon. I've worked in India and Mongolia, Africa, mainland in Angola, as well Madagascar. And also closer to home. The Rocky Mountains of the Western United States are an amazing place for discovery of fossils.

JOHN FLYNN: My favorite place in the museum is actually on the fossil vertebrate halls on our fourth floor. There's a beautiful specimen of a Smilodon, a saber-toothed cat from the La Brea Tar Pits that went extinct only 10,000 years ago. This skeleton has gigantic sabers. You can see what a fierce predator this animal would have been.

But there's also right next to it a beautiful painting by a famous natural history artist, Charles R. Knight that shows the most beautiful and dramatic recreation of a fossil carnivore that I've ever seen, standing on a bluff looking out over its potential prey. And that's really a spectacular item.

But there are so many different wonderful exhibits throughout the museum, and I think that it's a great place to explore and wonder.

JOHN FLYNN: It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. My parents-- when I was a kid, my parents used to bring me to the museum, and I think I got a fascination with natural history then. I had a rock collection growing up.

But when I went to college, I was interested in a couple of different things-- English and biology. I took a course in geology, and I realized at that time that the study of paleontology would allow me to bring together a lot of these things.

As a scientist, you have to be able to write and read different kinds of articles, you have to be fluent in languages, that you have the ability to combine biology and geology through the study of fossils. So I think it was a life-long decision making, and I'm still continuing to make those discoveries as I go on.

JOHN FLYNN: If I weren't a scientist, what would I be, is a difficult question to answer, really. Because I've never really thought about it since I've started on my career of doing anything else. I did at one point take a law class and was thinking about environmental lawyer. I think that that would touch on a lot of the kinds of interests that I have in thinking about the world environments and the life on our planet. And it might be another way to contribute if I weren't a scientist discovering more about that life on Earth. 

JOHN FLYNN: If a kid is interested in becoming a scientist, I think that there's not a lot you really have to do. You just have to maintain your curiosity, because what motivates scientists is making discoveries, exploring, probing, asking important questions, and trying to find answers to those important questions. So really, curiosity and being willing to learn throughout your life is how to best prepare for becoming a scientist.

But of course, you want to make sure that you're strong in math, all the different kinds of sciences that we have, but also fluency in languages, being able to communicate across our planet. And having an interest in art and really being able to understand the three-dimensional aspects of the beauty of our planet is an important factor as well.

JOHN FLYNN: Sometimes people say that science is boring or irrelevant to society, but that's absolutely not true. Science is the most exciting thing that anyone could do. It's really an opportunity to express yourself, to explore questions that we're interested in, and it is a chance to contribute something back to society and to the generation of knowledge. And being a scientist is a process of lifelong exploring, discovery, and probing, asking questions. And what kid doesn't like to do that? 

JOHN FLYNN: Thinking about what my favorite kid's book was kind of fun because I went back to my own childhood. And one of the things that I really remember is reading the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. And I think that that was a chance to get a sense of the fun and mystery of exploring and making discoveries. And that's a perfect kind of skill to have for being a scientist.

When I also was thinking about this, look, my kids have just grown up and I remember reading them a lot of different books. And one of my favorites recently was one called Squid's will be Squid's. This is based on Aesop's Fables, and it uses a lot of kinds of animals to tell allegorical stories. But it's very clever and humorous, and it's a wonderful set of contemporary lessons about the world.

There's another one that I really like and that's The Phantom Tollbooth. The Phantom Tollbooth is about a young boy transported to another world where there adventures in mathematics and knowledge and what happens when we don't have sounds and exploring things like the development of the rainbow and colors and so on. And this adventure is just really a wonderful story that integrates science.

And then finally, one that's a little bit odd is called The Muddle-headed Wombat. This is an Australian classic kid's book. And what's wonderful about it for me was the notion of discovering the different kinds of animals that are on a place like the island continent of Australia, where you have wombats and other creatures that you don't see in New York or in the United States. And so it's a great children's book that kind of explores some of those aspects.

JOHN FLYNN: My favorite flavor of ice cream is a little bit unusual, it's pistachio. And I don't know what having nuts in my favorite ice cream says about me, but the flavor is just wonderful.

And if I didn't pick pistachio, it would probably have to be vanilla. That's a little plain, but I do work in Madagascar where most of the world's vanilla beans are grown so that's kind of a nice touch as well.