Question: What got you into being a palaeobiologist? Is the dinosaurs or the birds?

Maria McNamara answered on 12 Nov 2019:

Neither actually. I decided to do a PhD in palaeontology, specifically in fossil preservation, because I didn’t understand it. I had found that topic really interesting as an undergraduate but had struggled to understand how fossils preserve, so I found the PhD topic quite daunting. But in the end I thought that either I could run away from it and be afraid of it (and not understand it) for ever, or else I could just bite the bullet and do the PhD and (hopefully) understand how it all works at the end. Luckily things worked out!