Paleontology at its finest

Since this blog is supposed to be largely about paleontology, I think it only fair that I dispell one of the long standing myths about my profession of choise; that is, that paleontology is done in the field where we dig up the dinosaurs (or whatever). Wrong; paleontology is done for the most part in the library, with occasional trips to the lab. Indiana Jones made a similar comment in the third movie, but then he went on a wild adventure on the other side of the globe. Then again, years of library work would have had to gone into the notebook that his father found. If Indy had to do it himself, it would have been a much less interesting movie. To give you folks out there a taste of the sort of stuff that I read, here's an excerpt from a scathing rubuttle from one collegue to another:
"The smooth dorsolateral surface of the parietal is slightly constricted just posterior to its mid-length, as well as behind the posorbital process, thus defininga cerebellar swelling (more distinct than in Dinilysia but less than in booids); cerebral and cerebellar lobes are also marked by smooth ridges on the internal surface. Most distinctively, in both Wonambi and Dinilysia there is a prominent, shelf-like lateral crest (latteral wing; Barrie 1990), rounded laterally in dorsal view and angled somewhat below horizonal, at a level below the postorbital process and extending almost half the total length of the parietal."
Count 'em that's just two sentences. There's 30 pages of material, most of which referring to things that most people have never even heard of; like the crista circumfenestralis, or the basal tuber or even the basisphenoid (one of the major bones in the braincase). Really, it took 30 pages for the author to just say "I'm smarter than you, so just fuck off and leave the rest of us 'real' scientists to do our job." In the paleontological community, a paper like this is equivalent to getting dick slapped.