20-Year Prospect

20-Year Prospect

Archaeologists may spend their days digging up ancient bog bodies and other remnants of lost civilizations, but this career won't be joining the dead beneath the dirt anytime soon.

As the human population expands and we build in new places, there's always the chance we'll come across an incredible archaeological discovery...which is why construction crews keep an archaeologist on speed dial, just in case.

Take, for example, the recent discovery of the bones of Britain's King Richard III—you probably know him as the king with the humpback. Richard's remains weren't found in a well-marked tomb, but beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England. Not exactly a noble resting place, but then, you could argue that ol' Richard wasn't so noble himself.

While everyone was pretty sure the skeleton belonged to the fifteenth-century monarch (the whole humpback thing was a dead giveaway), it took a pack of archaeologists doing nifty things like radiocarbon dating the bones and comparing the corpse's DNA to that of Richard’s descendants to confirm that the parking lot was, indeed, the final resting place of an infamous British king.

Now, there'll never be enough wicked cool archaeological discoveries in the United States to justify this country having room for more than a few thousand archaeologists...but when have numbers ever been enough to convince a kid he can't be the next Indiana Jones?