Not only are we diverse in terms of the work we do, we come from, and work around the world. You will find biologists here from Norway, Argentina, Canada, Ireland, the UK, Germany, the USA, France, Japan, Australia and others. This really is an international operation.
Below are brief descriptions of everyones’ jobs and where they work. Many provide links to their proper homepages or their parent institution’s webpages, so you can find out more about them there.
Mark Bell, University of Bristol
Dr Jonathan Codd, University of Manchester
My research broadly spans all areas of respiratory biology and aims to better understand the breathing mechanics of birds and bats. These animal models are of interest as both face similar functional constraints: fluctuations in body temperature and breathing during locomotion. To this end current research interests include an examination of the biochemical and biophysical adaptations in the pulmonary surfactant system associated with torpor and the role of hypaxial musculature during locomotion.
Given the evolutionary link between some birds and dinosaurs we are also attempting to apply the knowledge we have gained from our studies of birds to allow us to reconstruct the breathing mechanics in some theropod dinosaurs.
We approach the study of respiratory biology utilising techniques applicable from the whole animal down to the molecular level, encompassing ecological, anatomical, biochemical, molecular and physiological methods to answer questions arising from our research. Ultimately we hope to gain a better understanding of the evolution of breathing mechanics in these two groups of flying vertebrates.
Professor Innes Cuthill, University of Bristol
When we ask "why does an animal do that?" we can answer the question in four main ways: in terms of mechanism (e.g. how external stimuli, hormones and the nervous system cause the behaviour to happen), in terms of development (e.g. was the behaviour learnt, and if so how, or is it under fairly rigid genetic control?), in terms of evolution (How long ago did the behaviour evolve? Did the ancestors of the animal do the behaviour for the same or different reasons?), or in terms of function (what is the behaviour for, in terms of survival or reproduction? Why has natural selection favoured this behaviour?). I am Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the School of Biological Sciences at Bristol, and behavioural ecology seeks to answer questions about function and evolution, and often not just behaviour but also structure and form. For example, if you want to understand why peacocks perform elaborate mating displays, you need to ask why its train is so large and colourful. My own interests are broad (mating systems, parental care, foraging behaviour, signalling), but a particular interest is animal coloration (camouflage, warning colours, mating displays) in relation to the different types of colour vision that animal species possess.
Ed Drewitt, Bristol Museum
I work at Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery as a museum learning officer, giving visitors the opportunity to learn more about natural history and geology using both objects and the outdoor environment. I am interested in all aspects of the natural world, with a particular passion for birds. In my own time I give talks, walks, boat tours and courses on wildlife, especially helping people to learn more about how to identify birds and their songs. I also write for wildlife magazines such as BBC Wildlife. I often represent the RSPB, helping to support the work that they do, especially telling members more about garden birds.
Dr Markus Eichhorn
I'm an ecologist, specialising in the structure and dynamics of forest communities, and how trees interact with other species. Trees are the defining organisms of many ecosystems, and their distribution, structure and growth can have many surprising effects on the communities that surround them.
For example, some of my recent research has investigated how changes in vegetation and agriculture (especially orchards) in Thailand have changed the abundances of the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and dengue fever. How trees are managed in the landscape turns out to have important implications for human health.
Other research includes agroforestry, which has the potential to increase the sustainability of agriculture. Many traditional systems of farming with trees have existed for thousands of years, and provide valuable insights into how we can improve modern farming methods. For example, it seems that mixing trees with crops means less pesticides need to be applied, because they provide habitats for the natural enemies of crop pests.
This picture is from my work in tropical rain forests in Malaysia, where I study the links between trees and their herbivores.
Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, University of Bristol
I am a lecturer in palaeontology at the University of Bristol, UK. I teach undergraduate classes in climate change, earth history, and the evolution of plants amongst others. I do field research all of over the world, but I am especially interested in the geology of eastern Canada. One of my favourite fossil sites is the Joggins Cliffs of Nova Scotia where remains of the earliest rain forests are preserved as upright trees. This site lies on the Bay of Fundy, famous for its extraordinary high tides. Its never dull visiting the Joggins section because the tides are always uncovering interesting new fossils. I use fossils to understand what the ancient climate was like. A better grasp of past climate is important for improving knowledge of present day change. For me, the past is the key to the future.
Marlies Fischer, University College Dublin
I am a biologist currently doing my PhD researching prions (infectious proteins causing diseases) at University College Dublin. I studied biology in combination with engineering at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. I am especially interested in projects with a medical approach with the aim of discovering a cure. I did my master thesis on influenza (flu) vaccines at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg, Germany.
Currently, I focus on understanding the behaviour of the Prion protein (PrP). Prions are infectious agents that cause a group of fatal diseases (also called TSEs), which destroy tissue of the nervous system and affect both humans and animals. Mad cow disease (BSE) is one example. Prions are unique - they don’t contain DNA as do all other pathogens known before the discovery of prions (bacteria, viruses, fungi). This is a fascinating topic for me to research because so many aspects are not understood and there are so many questions to answer.
Dr Neil Gostling, University of Bristol
I am an evolutionary biologist, and if you want to answer ‘big’ questions you need to think ‘small’! I work with embryos of marine invertebrates, both living and fossilised. I started in Evolutionary Developmental Biology, looking at living animals, and how the nervous system is 'built' in chordate animals (that's the group animals that human beings are in).
If you want to know how animals are related to each other, you can look at the way that animals develop from their eggs to the larvae that hatch out. If you have three different animals and two of them develop in a similar way to each other, but differently from the third, then the 'similar two' are more closely related to one another than they are to the third animal.
10 years ago palaeontologists were lucky enough to realise that fossilised embryos were preserved in rocks from 520 Million years ago (and older). These fossil embryos (in the picture a fossil embryo is perched on the end of a finger) are really important, because they are from rocks laid down at he same time as when animals first appear in the fossil record.
So we can now describe development of some of the very first animals ever to crawl and swim through the ancient oceans of our planet.
Dr David Henley, University of Western Australia
I am a medical doctor. I have trained in general medicine and then become a specialist in endocrinology. This is a branch of medicine that manages disorders of the endocrine system and its secretions called hormones. These are chemical messengers that communicate between various organs and tissues in the body. They are secreted into the blood and are the means by which one gland can “talk” to another gland/tissue to alter its function. My particular area of interest is in neuroendocrinology which involves how areas of the brain (such as the hypothalamus and pituitary gland) control the secretion of hormones from other endocrine glands.
Dr David Hone, Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology, Munich
I am a biologist and palaeontologist working in Munich, Germany. My main areas of research are in cladistic methods - finding out how extinct animals are related to each other (building 'family trees'). I mostly work on dinosaurs and pterosaurs (and some other fossil reptiles), but I also work on African ungulates (grazing mammals. I also work on biomechanics (how animals move) especially of extinct organisms, and on various aspects of macroevolution (how big changes happen across whole groups of animals).
One important area of my work is on 'gigantism' - how and why some animals got to be so big. Some dinosaurs got REALLY big: the picture above shows me (looking a bit fat) with a Brachiosaurus humerus (upper-arm bone) that measures over 2 m long! I have also worked in several zoos and museums so I will also answer questions about them too.
Peter Howlett, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
Hi, I'm the Curator of Vertebrates (things with backbones). My main interest is in birds and mammals. As these are the largest vertebrate groups in the UK this tends to be the focus of my work but species from farther afield certainly don't get ignored. My interests also extend to invertebrates - particularly butterflies and moths.
My job is more involved with raising public awareness on various biodiversity and conservation issues than research. This means I tend to be more involved with creating displays in the museum. It also gets me out and about with giving talks to various local groups and taking specimens to various events and conferences.
Dr John Hutchinson, Royal Veterinary College
I'm an American biologist who has found a new home in the UK. I got my B.S. degree in Zoology at the University of Wisconsin in 1993, then received my Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at the University of California with Kevin Padian in 2001, and rounded out my training with a 2-year National Science Foundation bioinformatics postdoc at the Biomechanical Engineering Division of Stanford University with Scott Delp.
I started at the RVC as a Lecturer in November 2003. My interests are in the evolutionary biomechanics of locomotion, especially in large terrestrial vertebrates. I've studied birds, extinct dinosaurs and their relatives, elephants, and crocodiles. See my Research Interests page for details.
Nizar Ibrahim, University College Dublin, Ireland
I try to find out what life was like for vertebrates in Cretaceous North Africa. The dinosaurs of that region and that time are poorly understood and their evolutionary history, palaeoecology and even their basic anatomy remain mysterious. My research focuses on Cenomanian sediments in Morocco - these contain the remains of many different vertebrates (crocodiles, fish, dinosaurs etc). Hopefully my PhD project will help us to understand in what environment these animals lived, how the dinosaurs found there are related to dinosaurs from other areas and maybe we will even be able to understand their lifestyles in more detail.
I have taken part in palaeontology field trips to Spain, England, France and am now studying vertebrate fossils from North Africa and organising an expedition to the Sahara desert. On my fieldtrips I excavated everything from small fish to large dinosaurs. I also gained important lab and museum experience as a research assistant in the Museum für Naturkunde (Germany), and in the palaeontology lab at the University of Bristol. I also organised, or helped to organise dinosaur events in museums and gave many talks, both for the general public and for scientific audiences. I am also a scientific advisor for Berlin's Natural History Museum's new Dinosaur display.
Phil Jardine, University of Bristol
I am a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, and I am interested in using the fossil record to determine how communities of plants and animals were structured in the past, and how these communities changed over long periods of time. My current research involves using pollen to study vegetational changes on the U.S. Gulf Coast during a period of time called the Palaeocene, which lasted from 65 to 55 million years ago. As anyone who suffers from hay fever will know, many plants produce pollen in great quantities. Some of this pollen gets preserved in sediments, and studying this allows us to reconstruct the vegetation as it was at the time. I’m hoping to find out how the plants in this region recovered from the K-T mass extinction (the one that killed off the dinosaurs), and how they responded to climatic changes later in the Palaeocene.
I have also worked on extinct mammals from North and South America, looking at how the structure of their communities changed over the last 30 million years, in response to the fragmentation of their forest habitats and the development of grasslands.
Professor Steve Jones, University College London
Without variation there could be no genetics and no evolution so why is it there? Perhaps surprisingly we have no real idea; and I have spent many years studying the ecological genetics of snails, fruitflies and humans in an attempt to understand this issue. Certain snails are very diverse in their shell characters, and I have collected hundreds of thousands of specimens from all over Europe in an attempt to find out why. I have also worked on fruit flies in variable environments, both in the wild and in the laboratory. At the moment I am particularly involved in looking at the interaction of thermal ecology and genetics in snails and in Drosophila.
I have for several years been involved with the media, largely in presenting scientific work but also in a more general context. I have appeared on BBC Radio on more than two hundred occasions. I gave the 1991 Reith Lectures on "The Language of the Genes" and have since then written and presented a long-running Radio 3 series on science, "Blue Skies", and a six-part TV series on human genetics, "In the Blood"; broadcast in 1996. I have also appeared in various other TV programmes, from Question Time to Late Review to Newsnight. In addition I have written extensively in the press on scientific issues and have a regular column in The Daily Telegraph - "View from the Lab".
Dr Michael Krings, Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology
I studied biology, history, music, and philosophy at the University of Münster, Germany, and I completed a PhD in botany in 1998. I am now the curator for palaeobotany at the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, Germany, and Lecturer for plant palaeobiology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. Moreover, I am also a Research Associate at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS (USA). My current research focuses on the palaeobiology and palaeoecology of late Paleozoic (Devonian-Permian) and early Mesozoic (Triassic) seed plants and microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria, algae, and fungi.
Graeme Lloyd, University of Bristol
I am currently a PhD student working on a project entitled "character acquisition through geological time". Although scientists of any discipline are often caught up in very specialised work science itself is about making generalisations. In this way my work is about reducing the complexities of the fossil record (the history of life on Earth preserved in the remains of animals, plants and their traces) to the sequence of characters that are acquired through time. In fossils a character might be the feathers on Microraptor, the cones from a pine tree or the ribs on a sea shell.
Although we can examine the distribution of these, and other characters in modern animals and plants I am interested in when they first appeared (evolved) and this can only be done by examining fossils. I am interested in various groups, but have devoted a lot of time to lungfish (literally fish with lungs that are eel-like in appearance). Lungfish are a famous example of a group who acquired their distinctive characters very rapidly some 350 million years ago, and that have changed very little since. Because of this similarity with much older fossil forms Charles Darwin termed them "living fossils". My main focus is to see if this pattern is really an unusual one - as most people assume - or if it is in fact more general.
I have also worked on mass extinctions (one of which saw the demise of T. rex and his chums at the end of the Cretaceous), phylogenetics (the family tree of life), and the quality of the fossil record (can palaeontology really tell us anything useful?).
Dr Stuart Longhorn
Hi. I'm a molecular biologist and entomologist. I study how arthropods (insects, spiders, etc) are related to one another. Arthropods, which have a tough outer skeleton and jointed legs, are very diverse creatures. They live in every habitat on earth, from the deepest ocean to mountain tops. I specialise in using laboratory techniques to compare molecules (characters in DNA and protein) across different groups of arthropods.
The picture is an american horse-shoe crab, with the scientific name Limulus. These strange creatures are actually a close relative of spiders and scorpions, and are unlike real crabs.
I have worked on insects, comparing major groups like flies, beetles and moths, to find shared features that can tell us how and when these groups appeared on earth. Nowadays, I'm working on another group of arthropods, called arachnids. These include spiders, scorpions and mites, plus many obscure types that scientists do not know much about [yet!].
In brief, I won't be answering questions about dinosaurs or fossils, but if you have questions about the evolution and features of insects and spiders, I will try my best to help.
Dr Christopher Lowry, University of Bristol
I am a Neuroscientist currently working at the University of Bristol. Our research group is interested in how the neurotransmitter serotonin regulates behavior and emotion. In particular, we are interested in understanding how serotonin regulates stress-related behaviors and emotional states such as anxiety. Serotonin-containing cells are found in the brain, but they are also found in other organs, including the gut and the lungs, and these cells in peripheral organs also play an important role in maintaining our physical and emotional health. Serotonin-containing cells appear to be directly sensitive to many different stimuli, including temperature, pH, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, and oxygen (O2) concentrations and therefore may function as "biosensors" in the body. Serotonin is an evolutionarily ancient molecule, found in both vertebrates and invertebrates and indeed has been found to be a potent modulator of behavior in animals from nematode worms to humans.
Dr Susie Maidment, Cambridge University
I am a PhD student at Cambridge University studying the systematics and phylogeny of the stegosaurian dinosaurs. I also research into the evolution of quadrupedality in ornithischian dinosaurs, cladistic methodology and the use of continuous characters in cladistic analysis, new methods of assessing metabolic regime in dinosaurs, and Lower Cretaceous high latitude ecosystems.
I have carried out fieldwork in the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, the Green River Formation of Wyoming, and the Morrison Formation of Montana.
Dr Lucy McCobb, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
I work as a fossil curator in a museum, which means that I help to look after lots of different types of fossils from various periods of the Earth’s history, ranging from trilobites, corals and ammonites, to plants, ichthyosaurs and dinosaurs. I also do research on fossil trilobites, looking at the evolution of this group of creepy-crawlies, which lived in the seas between 550 and 250 million years ago.
I also use fossil trilobites and brachiopods (shellfish also known as ‘lamp shells’) to help reconstruct what the world looked like when these animals lived (a branch of geology known as ‘Palaeogeography’). The plates that make up the Earth’s crust have moved around constantly throughout its history, rearranging the continents and redrawing the map of the world. When we find the same species of shallow water animals fossilised in rocks on two modern-day continents that are now far apart, we know that the continents must have been close to each other at the time when those animals lived, because the animals were able to swim between their coastal waters. When considered along with other geological evidence, fossils allow us to draw a map of the Earth as it was millions of years ago.
For my PhD, I worked on the exceptional preservation of soft tissues in fossils, such as muscle tissue and skin.
Dr Al McGowan
I am an analytical palaeontologist, which means that I apply statistics and computer models to analyze the fossil record to better understand the history of life. Another area of my work is the quantitative study of changes in the form of organisms, a field called morphometrics. My morphometrics research has focused mainly on ammonoids. The other major research area I work in is biogeography, which tries to establish whether there are 'rules' for the way in which animals and plants are distributed across the earth. My broader training is in earth sciences and evolutionary biology. I am a keen birdwatcher, and carry out field surveys for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
Charlotte Miller, Royal Veterinary College
I'm a PhD student at the Royal Veterinary College in London, working on elephant locomotion, foot function and anatomy. My background is in general biology, palaeontology, and the biomechanics of locomotion in birds and large animals.
Elephants are the largest living land animals, but they are nothing when compared with some of the largest dinosaurs. Our work concentrates on understanding what limits speed and style of movement in elephants, and can help build a realistic picture of the way very large extinct animals, such as dinosaurs and mammoths, may have moved.This involves measuring live elephants moving,dissecting dead ones to see how the muscles and bones operate together, and creating computer models to verify the results. Here an elephant has markers placed at its joints and is filmed walking to see how these move.
Professor Ken Miller, Brown University
I am interested in the detailed relationships of structure and function in biological membranes. One of the principal experimental systems which my lab has used is to investigate these relationships in the photosynthetic membrane. By using the freeze-etching technique, metal replicas can be prepared for the electron microscope which capture the fine details of membrane structure. These can be correlated with the polypeptide and lipid composition of the membrane.
I completed my undergraduate work at Brown, and earned a Ph D in 1974 at the University of Colorado. I spent six years at Assistant Professor at Harvard University before returning to Brown University in 1980. My research work on cell membrane structure and function has produced more than 50 scientific papers and reviews in leading journals, including CELL, Nature, and Scientific American. WithJoseph S. Levine, I have written three different high school and college biology textbooks which are used by millions of students nationwide. I also wrote the book Finding Darwin's God (A Scientist's Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution), published in 1999.
Professor PZ Myers, University of Minnesota
I'm a developmental biologist and neuroscientist with a special interest in the evolution of 'simple' model systems, science education, and the raging evolution-creation wars. I write a weblog, Pharyngula, where you can find me fulminating against fools and rhapsodizing over the amazing complexity of organisms.
Dr Darren Naish, University of Portsmouth
Hi, my name is Darren Naish and you might know of me from such films as Shriek of the Mutilated and Night of the Lepus. No, just kidding, I am supposed to be a vertebrate palaeontologist working on predatory dinosaurs, and for several years now I’ve been working mostly on the early tyrannosaur Eotyrannus. I’ve also produced technical work on sauropods (the giant long-necked dinosaurs), pterosaurs (the flying reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs), fossil turtles and other animals. My problem is that I’m not only interested in dinosaurs, but in fact in pretty much all vertebrate animals that aren’t fish, and to be honest I’d like to be considered as a zoologist rather than a palaeontologist. So pigs, snakes, bats, frogs, giant killer eagles and sea monsters hold my attention as much as do dinosaurs: if you want to see what is holding my interest right now, do check out my blog site, Tetrapod Zoology. I try my best to get hands-on experience with living animals at every occasion, and I have field experience with British lizards, amphibians, birds and mammals. Hey, I even have a Wikipedia entry! (and I'd like to know who wrote it).
I've contributed to some books that you might have heard of, including the Dorling Kindersley Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life, the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs: The Evidence, and the Palaeontological Association book Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight. I also regularly act as a consultant for Usborne's dinosaur books.
Jingmai O'Connor, University of Southern California
My research focuses on understanding the interrelationships of a particular group of Mesozoic birds known as the enantiornithines. These birds radiated during the Cretaceous in away comparable to modern birds, but succumbed to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction for reasons unknown. In order to decipher the interrelationships and evolutionary history of this group, I use a method known as cladistics, which uses computer programs to infer relationships based on shared characteristics and parsimony. Previous cladistic analyses have shown that enantiornithines share a sister-group relationship with Ornithurmorpha, a group that includes modern birds. I study aspects of the enantiornithines such as pneumaticity, feather patterns, size, specialization, and ecology, in order to understand how they differed from birds today, why they were so successful during the Mesozoic, and why they ultimately went extinct while modern birds survived. Understanding the selectivity of past mass extinctions is important in light of the current bird extinctions caused by humans. You can find out more on my home pages at the University of Southern Californinia and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Matthew Parratt, The Forrestry Commission
I'm a general biologist by trade. With roots in seed and crop science I've branched out in the last few years into tree seed and seedling biology/ecology and other areas of woodland ecosystems.
I currently work on a range of projects under the general heading of tree and shrub seed fate in British woodlands. In a nutshell we're looking at what happens between the time when a seed leaves it's parent plant and when it becomes an established sapling. So far this has involved looking at the effects of granivorous (seed eating) insects, molluscs and mammals and their feeding strategies.
I'm also involved in the conservation of rare and endangered trees and shrubs, mainly conifers, mainly from the Southern hemisphere but occasionally other parts of the world. This can be a *very* long process with some species taking 4 years or more to germinate!!
Outside of work my interests spread into all aspects of Natural history of the British Isles and other parts of the world.
Professor Andy Purvis, Imperial College London
Most of my research is into macroevolution (large-scale patterns in evolution, nearly always too big to study with experiments). In particular, I’m interested in why species are shared so unevenly among the branches of the Tree of Life. What are the diverse branches doing right? (Or, equally, what did the measly twigs do wrong?) I’m also interested in how and why rates of speciation and extinction have changed through time, and how morphological character evolve. I am currently writing a book on all this, to be called “Macroevolution”.
This work relies on knowing how many species are related to each other. I am therefore also interested in developing and using ways of working out the interrelationships among large numbers of species (see my homepage here). A third aspect of my research is extinction biology. Many species are currently threatened with extinction, and it turns out that knowing the evolutionary relationships helps with the study of this as well: we can compare threatened species with close relatives that are not at risk, and look for what the threatened species tend to share that the low-risk species don’t.
Dr Donald Quicke
I studied zoology at university and then worked on a variety of subjects including snail neurophysiology (for my PhD), sea anemone ecological genetics, and the chemistry and action of spider venoms. Since 1987 my research has focused on parasitic wasps, including their evolution, systematics, ecology and functional morphology.
Parasitic wasps constitute one of the most speciose groups of terrestrial organisms with probably 1 million species worldwide, the majority of them as yet undescribed. They are of major importance in both natural ecosystems and in agriculture and forestry since they are one of the most important factors in regulating the numbers of other insect species. Many have fascinating life histories and some tropical ones are very colourful like the one pictured which is from Uganda.
Dr Tom Reader, University of Nottingham
I am an ecologist and I am particularly interested in the population biology and behaviour of animals. The two questions that keep me awake at night are "why are there so many species?" and "why do animals behave in the way that they do?" I try to find answers by studying creatures (often, but not always, insects) in their natural habitats, and using mathematical models and computer simulations. I have a particular interest in the ecologically crucial processes of competition and predation, and a general enthusiasm for natural history.
The picture below shows caterpillars of the attractively named "black slug cup moth" in Sydney, Australia. I've spent many happy hours studying the social behaviour that they exhibit. Group size appears to be the result of a balance between the pressures of competition for food and a desire to be protected from attacks by predators".
Dr Alice Roberts, University of Bristol
Alice is an archaeologist and anthropologist who specialises in human evolution and anatomy. She might be familiar to you having been on TV in Time Team, Extreme Archaeology, and Coast and How Not to Die Young. However, she is writing a book at the moment and is very busy so this biography is a bit short for now: more to follow soon!
Sarda Sahney, University of Bristol
We share this planet with millions of species of animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms. 1.5 million have been identified and described but it is believed this number will at least double as we continue to catalogue remote and inaccessible parts of the planet. The excitement of discovery is however balanced by the knowledge that humans have witnessed the extinction of over 15,000 species in the last 100 years. This year we face the reality that the Baiji dolphin may be gone forever after a 40-day search of the Yangtze River failed to locate a single member of the species. In 2006 the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) declared four species of French Polynesian birds as extinct and in 2007 the United States Government plans to classify the polar bear as a threatened species. We have a very rich variety of fauna in the world today, much of which is threatened by human expansion.
I believe that our present situation can be better understood by studying the history of life through Earth's history. I am palaeontologist at the University of Bristol and where I study palaeoecology. This involves looking at which animals lived together in past communities and learning about how they interacted.
You can find out more about my research and that of my students at my website and read about palaeo news and current controversies on my blog, Fish Feet. Incidentally, I also designed the Ask a Biologist website.
Manabu Sakamoto, University of Bristol
I'm yet another palaeontologist at the University of Bristol and I study the interrelationships and functional morphology of carnivorous dinosaurs. I am particularly interested in the feeding mechanics of these fantastic creatures. Recently, I have also gained interest in the feeding mechanics of modern predatory animals, especially the monitor lizards. (Monitors actually have teeth that are similar in shape to predatory dinosaurs, so they may serve as pretty good analogues…).
I am an anatomist as well - my study involves a lot of dissections of modern relatives of dinosaurs, the birds and the crocodiles. After detailed studies in these animals to determine which muscles are present and where and how these muscles attach to bones, I can reconstruct the same muscles in the extinct dinosaurs to a certain degree of confidence. I can then use these muscle reconstructions to estimate the forces working on the jaws.
I am also a cell biologist – or used to be…I used to study surface molecules in T-cells as an undergraduate student. Surface molecules are crucial in recent studies like stem-cell research. When stem cells differentiate into different kinds of cells, gene expression is not the only regulatory factor; cell-to-cell interactions through surface molecules are equally important.
Laura Säilä, University of Bristol
I am both a biologist and a palaeontologist. Currently I am studying extinct reptiles called ‘procolophonoids’ for my PhD. Procolophonoids lived during the Permian and Triassic periods, had spikes on their heads and they might be related to modern turtles. I study how the different species are related to one another and their evolution and proposed high survival rate in the largest even extinction, the end-Permian mass extinction event.
Tanja Sanders
Going back in time is not only possible with fossils. As a geographer and dendroecologist I am working with tree rings to gain information about the past. The advantage is that by counting the rings is very precise. Trees (outside the tropics) build one ring each year, although depending on temperature, rainfall, soil type, and a range of other factors the width of the ring varies from year to year. We read these signals and then take a step back in time using wood samples from houses, ships, and even samples buried in moors and ice. Linking them together tree-ring records can be as long as a millennia. We get all sorts of information from these records: climate, growth conditions, insect attacks... depending on the most important factor for these trees.
But we can use the information as well to have a look in the future. Analysing the annual growth for a certain species today and running it through a growth model we get information about the growth under e.g. global warming scenarios. Are certain species going to suffer from drought? Is the timberline going to shift? Which species are the winners? We are working on the answers.
Do we have an upwards trend of the timberline? In other words, are trees growing higher up on mountains? This is another part of my research which i will investigate over the next few years.
Isabell Schwenkert
During my undergraduate and graduate work I studied molecular mechanisms in neurons, especially those that lead to diseases such as alcoholism (yes, it is a disease) and Alzheimer's disease. Then I went to work for a medical device company that sells equipment for the treatment of cancer patients; these days I'm trying to understand the mechanisms that lead to this actually quite frequent disease, and I'm also trying to find out how we can use this theoretical knowledge to come up with new cures for "uncureable" cancers such as malignant brain tumors or lung cancer.
Dr Seb Shimeld, University of Oxford
Research in my laboratory is focused on understanding major transitions in animal evolution and the origins of animal morphological diversity. This includes studies at several levels of biological organisation, from anatomy, embryology and developmental biology to genes, genome organisation and molecular evolution. A principal aim is to determine how the evolution of genes and their organisation underlies the evolution of new morphological features. Particular interests include the evolutionary origin of the vertebrates, and evolution of the left right asymmetry of animal bodies. At a practical level I study the developmental biology of a range of animal groups, including sea squirts and lancelets (the vertebrates nearest invertebrate relatives), lampreys (ancient jawless vertebrates) and dogfish. Many of these animals are the subject of ongoing genome projects, providing us with a wealth of information on their genes and the organization of their genomes.
The picture shows an adult amphioxus. This small animal shares its basic body-plan with vertebrates such as fish and mammals, but lacks important structures seen in vertebrates such as the skeleton and sophisticated sense organs. Click here to visit my homepage.
Lara Shychoski 
I am interested in osteology, which is the science of bones. Bones form the structure of vertebrate animals like you and me. If we didn't have bones for muscles to attach to, we wouldn't be able to move! Bones are living tissues that have the ability to change their shapes (although very, very slowly) in response to increasing or decreasing biomechanical stress. Basically, the more work you do, the stronger your bones will be and vice versa. This happens throughout evolution and development, allowing bones to maintain their strength during whatever function the animal is doing, for example, walking, running, biting, etc. I am particularly interested in what changes happened to Tyrannosaurus rex and his relatives as they developed from infants to full grown animals. Baby T. rex skulls are small enough to hold in your hands but full grown skulls are the length of an entire person! As his size increases, T. rex created a stronger and stronger bite and his bones also grew stronger so they didn't break when he attacked his prey. I use computer models to map and test skulls during growth stages to determine how stress patterns changed while T. rex fed. By learning how large dinosaurs developed biomechanically efficient bones, scientists can come closer to answering questions about the ultimate size limits of land animals. .
John Sibbick 
I have been an independent 'paleo artist' for over 25 years, working for publishers, museums, TV and anyone else who needs a reconstruction, My main aim is to bring scrambled fossil bones and traces to life, with an awful lot of help from paleontologists. I've worked on a lot of dinosaur and pterosaur projects, but these by no means reflect all my interests. All aspects of Prehistory from early invertebrates like the Burgess Shale creatures and coral reefs, to the rise of the vertebrates and the development of our own species: homo sapiens. I've been involved in a lot of books ranging from children's pop-up to Encyclopedias and academic books and magazines like the National Geographic and GEO. My greatest thrill is to see my work alongside the actual fossils in exhibitions such as in the Dinosaur Gallery at the Natural History Museum, London. You can see my illustrations on my website - www.johnsibbick.com.
Adam Stuart Smith, University College Dublin
I am a Ph.D. researcher in vertebrate palaeontology at UCD in Ireland. I moved here after studying palaeobiology in the UK. I study extinct marine reptiles – an eclectic bunch often wrongly regarded as ‘swimming-dinosaurs ‘– I prefer the term ‘sea-dragons’. In particular I study plesiosaurs, a group of reptiles with four flippers and often a very long neck. This is a little ironic because no plesiosaur fossils are known from Ireland and all of the specimens I study in the National Museum of Ireland are from outside Ireland.
My main aim is to understand how these animals are related to each other – I want to know their family tree. I run the website The Plesiosaur Directory:, all about these mysterious animals. In addition I am also a ‘palaeoartist’ who draws restorations of prehistoric animals for magazines and museums, and I also enjoy a good palaeontology excavation (I spent last Summer in Montana digging dinosaurs).
The plesiosaur in the picture is called Rhomaleosaurus and it is one of the specimens housed here in Ireland.
Michael P. Taylor, University of Portsmouth
In my day-job I am a humble computer programmer; but by night I don a colourful costume and study dinosaurs. I specialise in the sauropods (the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs like Diplodocus): the biggest of the big. I'm interested in how animals that weighed as much as whales could function on land. How did they hold their necks and tails up off the ground? How did they breathe? Could they rear up on their hind legs? How big did they actually get? Because sauropods are mostly known from very sparse remains (in many cases from single bones) a lot of guesswork is needed; and because sauropods were much more diverse than most people realise, what's true of one is not necessarily true of another. So it's a tricky area to work in, but well worth it.
(I use my middle initial because there is another vertebrate palaeontologist called Michael A. Taylor. He works on marine reptiles.)
Jack Tseng, University of South Carolina
I am a naturalist and an evolutionary biologist. I am currently working on my doctoral degree at the Natural History Museum and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, United States. My dissertation research focuses on structural properties of skulls and teeth in Cenozoic mammalian carnivores and their ecological implications; I am studying the living hyaenas, and extinct hyaenas and dogs in the Old and New Worlds, respectively. Through computer modeling of the cranium, together with examination of tooth enamel abrasion and microstructure, I am finding clues in fossils that reveal extinct lifestyles. My main inspiration for evolutionary research arises from observations of terrestrial vertebrates (birds, lizards, mammals, and amphibians) in their diverse ecological communities here in California. I am also interested in desert rodents (both extinct and living) for their adorable appearance and relatively rapid rates of evolution.
Dr. O. Erik Tetlie
I’m a palaeontologist specializing in eurypterids, also called sea scorpions. They were chelicerates, related to scorpions and spiders, but went extinct around 250 million years ago. I’m also interested in chelicerate phylogeny (how all the different groups of chelicerates: mites, spiders, scorpions, and their many chums are related to each other). But I’m also very interested in how other arthropod groups like insects, myriapods, crustaceans, trilobites and pycnogonids are related, although not specifically working on these problems myself. I also have a keen interest in solar system astronomy and the supply and demand situation of metals and energy resources, but do not expect to draw on that expertise in this forum.
P.S. The image is of a model made for the BBC. Sadly, eurypterids are extinct!
Paolo Viscardi, Bristol City Museum and & Art Gallery
My work focuses on making sure that biological specimens held in the
museum are accurately identified and have all their data recorded so
that they can be used for research. I also deal with pest problems in
the specimens - an ongoing task! I have a background in biomechanics
(how animals move - particularly how birds fly in my case) and
palaeontology (particularly taphonomy - what happens from the time an
animal or plant dies and the time it is found and studied). I've loved
dead animals and how their bones fit together and work since I was four
- pretty creepy really!
Dave Warburton
Although I currently work in Biological Conservation, my undergraduate work was in hominid evolution (how humans and the higher primates evolved). So I will be helping with any questions as to how and why humans are the way we are, why we walk upright, what the different races of modern human have evolved for, and so on.
My postgraduate research involved, like many on this page, the study of dinosaurs! I was looking at origin and evolutionary relationships of basal ornithischians (the small, 'bired-hipped' bipedal dinosaurs that include some of the oldest yet found).
The majority of my current work is involved with the protection and enhancement of habitats and their wildlife and helping the public understand the huge variety of life on their doorstep. Any natural history questions on anything from bats to birds, pond invertebrates to chalk grassland and everything in between, can be directed my way.
Amoret Whitaker, Natural History Museum of London
I'm an Entomologist based at the Natural History Museum in London. Over the 10 years since I've been here, I've worked on various groups of insects including hoverflies, parasitic wasps and fleas, and my Handbook of British Fleas is soon to be published by the Royal Entomological Society.
I've now swapped parasites of live animals for those living on dead and decaying ones, and I'm undertaking a PhD in Forensic Entomology. This mainly involves insect succession studies on stillborn piglets and laboratory studies breeding fly larvae, but has also involved field work in Knoxville, Tennessee in the USA to study the decomposition of human donor bodies and the associated insect fauna. In addition I work as a consultant to UK police forces, attending crime scenes and analysing insect evidence.
Dr Alastair Wilson, University of Edinburgh
I work as an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Edinburgh. Evolutionary ecology tries to understand the biodiversity we can see around us in natural populations of plants and animals. It’s about taking genetics out of the lab and trying to work out how genes and the environment act, and interact, in the wild.
Most of my research is based on long term studies of wild sheep. We use a combination of traditional ecological fieldwork and modern genetic techniques to learn as much as we can about each animal, keeping track of them throughout their lives. With this information we can test theories and ideas about evolutionary processes that are happening right now.
Professor David Wynick, University of Bristol
I am Professor of Molecular Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Bristol, and Consultant Physician to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Over the last 15 years we have been trying to better understand how the nervous system adapts to injury. My main interest is how and why chronic pain occurs after nerve injury, with a view to identifying new pain targets and the development of new treatments for pain. I am Professor of Molecular Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Bristol, and Consultant Physician to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Over the last 15 years we have been trying to better understand how the nervous system adapts to injury. My main interest is how and why chronic pain occurs after nerve injury, with a view to identifying new pain targets and the development of new treatments for pain.
Mark Young, University of Bristol
I’m a PhD student at the University of Bristol and the Natural History Museum in London. I’m looking at the skulls of sauropomorph dinosaurs, that’s the long-necked plant-eating dinos like Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Plateosaurus and Thecodontosaurus. What I’m trying to do is determine how they would have eaten, using techniques that bridge-builders and makers of replacement limbs use. Also, I’m going to be looking into the variation in shape of these guy’s skulls throughout their evolution.
The methods I’ll use to measure the variation in the dino skulls will be an extension of the work I did for my Master’s degree at the Natural History Museum in London. There I was looking at metriorhynchid crocodiles, really cool crocs from the Jurassic and Cretaceous that evolved flippers, a shark-like tail fin and lost all the dermal armour that we see in crocs today. What I did was to measure the variation in their skulls by using outline and landmark-based techniques, though I’m hoping to go 3-D with the dinos!
The picture I’ve put up is Dakosaurus maximus, the massive metriorhynchid predator of the Late Jurassic seas of Europe!
Carl Zimmer, Science Writer
I write about biology and paleontology for the New York Times and several magazines, as well as writing science books. I also write a blog about research on evolution called the Loom. You can find out more about all of my work at my web site, CarlZimmer.com.
I'm interested in just about anything that moves, from ancient whales with legs to wasps that turn cockroaches into zombies.