Invertebrate palaeontologist - Natalie Camilleri

Being an invertebrate palaeontologist is like being a detective. That's because looking for fossils can give us clues to the secrets of ancient life in Australia. Ancient reefs and the organisms that lived on them provide insights into what could happen to living coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef.

I am particularly interested in reefs from the Devonian period, about 360 to 400 million years ago. These reefs contain many different marine fossils and were the last big coral reefs to form until the Great Barrier Reef, which appeared about half a million years ago.

My work at the Queensland Museum involves organising field trips to isolated areas of outback Queensland for the painstaking and often time-consuming work of removing fossils from the rock or matrix in which they are embedded.

I specialise in invertebrates - animals without backbones, which include corals, sponges, molluscs, insects, crabs and worms. They existed for many hundreds of millions of years before vertebrates appeared and make up 95 per cent of all fossils.

Once the fossils have been excavated, they are catalogued, registered and preserved. I clean them carefully to reveal their finer morphological details, photograph them and make drawings to illustrate scientific papers and books.

Fossil excavations are exciting because you never know what you might find. On a recent field trip to unearth a Kronosaur (the largest known flesh-eating marine reptile) in Central Queensland, we also found a Woolungasaurus (a long-necked plesiosaur) just 100 metres away. Finding two large fossils in good condition so close together is extremely rare and was definitely one of the most exciting moments in my career.

If you are thinking about a science career, try to get some experience working in science so you can learn more about what you do and don't like. Most museums take volunteers.

"Science Futures" was produced by Wisenet with the aid of a grant from the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism Science and Technology Awareness Program.