[Basic] Skill of the week: Paleontology

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

How on earth would one game Micropaleontolgy; arachnid fossils? Wow, after sifting that cubic foot of sediment for a week, you've found three spinnerets of a new species of lactrodectus aka Widow spiders. Ooooh. ;)

I'd call those zoopaleontology. For micropaleontology you want fossils of cyanobacteria, or protozoa, or maybe rotifers—something smaller than a spider, which after all is visible to the naked eye.

[ericthered]

Most 'knowledge' skills are boring if you use them in everyday life.

mircopalentology is pretty niche. You could use it to determine if a specific set of ancient aliens ever visited a planet, date yourself in a time travel setting (paleontology comes up a lot in such settings), or gain a crucial clue in a Monster Hunters setting where threats are ancient and biologically based.

You can also use it as a flavor skill.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'd call those zoopaleontology. For micropaleontology you want fossils of cyanobacteria, or protozoa, or maybe rotifers—something smaller than a spider, which after all is visible to the naked eye.

Entire spiders are, or at least most are. But there are some damn tiny ones, and I think I read that they tend to crumble as fossils. This means that you literally only find individual spinnerets. If you can see them without powerful magnifying glasses, then you finally broke your human cover.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Most 'knowledge' skills are boring if you use them in everyday life.

mircopalentology is pretty niche. You could use it to determine if a specific set of ancient aliens ever visited a planet, date yourself in a time travel setting (paleontology comes up a lot in such settings), or gain a crucial clue in a Monster Hunters setting where threats are ancient and biologically based.

You can also use it as a flavor skill.

One large animal fossil femur only tells you so much about the time and area. But 1000 micro-fossils from over 100 unrelated species of plants, fungi, and animals tells you so much more, yet never gets the big press releases.

[Humabout]

Tangentially on topic:

Is there an index of all of these threads somewhere? They are an awesome resource, and it'd be nice if there was one spot to find them all.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Humabout

Is there an index of all of these threads somewhere?

Yes, it's in the GURPS Resources sub-forum, here.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Entire spiders are, or at least most are. But there are some damn tiny ones, and I think I read that they tend to crumble as fossils. This means that you literally only find individual spinnerets. If you can see them without powerful magnifying glasses, then you finally broke your human cover.

Wikipedia seems to agree with you. They put the upper limit of microfossils as 1-4 mm.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by ericthered

mircopalentology is pretty niche. You could use it to determine if a specific set of ancient aliens ever visited a planet, date yourself in a time travel setting (paleontology comes up a lot in such settings), or gain a crucial clue in a Monster Hunters setting where threats are ancient and biologically based.

In a Mars-Horror scenario I ran a while back, one of the pregen PCs has Micropaleontology and her player can solve the adventure by asking the right question - which happened one time out of three. ("Solve" != "Survive" - it just means the players get the answers to what's really going on in character during play, rather than when I chat with them afterwards.)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

In a Mars-Horror scenario I ran a while back, one of the pregen PCs has Micropaleontology and her player can solve the adventure by asking the right question - which happened one time out of three. ("Solve" != "Survive" - it just means the players get the answers to what's really going on in character during play, rather than when I chat with them afterwards.)

Yeah, knowing the biology, psychology, and history of tigers doesn't stop one from eating you. It's the big reason why I think human level intelligence has only evolved once. It's not that useful until long after its inception with culture, language, and skills.
In the real world, the only sensible biologist to send to Mars would be a micropaleontologist. There ain't no martian dinosaurs, afterall.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Yeah, knowing the biology, psychology, and history of tigers doesn't stop one from eating you. It's the big reason why I think human level intelligence has only evolved once. It's not that useful until long after its inception with culture, language, and skills.

The currently favored theory of human intelligence seems to be that its primary function is keeping track of a large social group, and in particular imputing motives multiple layers deep: Iago wants Othello to believe that Desdemona is in love with another man and is trying to conceal it from Othello.

Given that human beings had spread out from Africa to Scandinavia, Australia, and South America before we got out of the Paleolithic, there's some case to be made that high intelligence was useful in adapting to varied environments.