15 Questions For Ross Geller About His Alleged Career In Paleontology

Sometimes we must, as a society, ask the tough questions...

Dr. Ross Geller, an affable goof from the hit TV show Friends, is a moderately successful paleontologist. At least that is what we are led to believe...

However, unless Ross has a really good answer to these 15 questions, he probably isn’t a real paleontologist.

1. How did you get a Ph.D. and a museum job before you were 26?

2. Why would you work at a museum with a laughably redundant and unscientific name?

3. Are you sure you are actually a paleontologist, and not an archaeologist or anthropologist?

He also frequently discusses human evolution (anthropology) as if it were interchangeable with the already broad field of vertebrate paleontology.

4. What IS your area of expertise, anyway?

5. How are you somehow an expert in all of geologic time?

6. What self-respecting scientist would keep a pet monkey in a small New York apartment?

7. Did you find some source of dinosaur DNA that modern science is unaware of?

8. How can such a decorated paleontologist not know the difference between a species and a genus?

9. Has anyone looked into the fact that there is no "Department of Paleontology" at New York University?

10. What the shit do you actually teach at NYU?

From left to right: basic geology, recent (non-dinosaur) paleontology, and sociology(?). These topics are extremely wide-ranging for a single academic to teach.

11. How does a visiting instructor get such a rad office?

12. Why are you excited by a $25,000 grant?

13. How the hell do you expect a $25,000 grant to cover six graduate students and field work?

14. Was your tenure committee in any way concerned about your history of sexual relations with both colleagues and students?

15. How did you go from visiting instructor to tenured professor so quickly?

In conclusion...

But are you? Are you really?

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