My husband jokes that, as a biologist and general wildlife lover, I'm only interested in something if it has four legs and a tail. And he is pretty much right – it has to be really special to draw my interest away from anything living. One special place is the New Mexico Mineral Museum, a crystal palace of mineral specimens on the campus of New Mexico Tech in Socorro, N.M.
Biologists are interested in living things mostly on the surface of the Earth; geologists think of plants and animals as the obstructions that get in their way when they want to get to the "good stuff" – the rocks and minerals that make up our Earth.

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