Dick Mol

Dick Mol, also known as “Sir Mammoth” Mol, is a leading Dutch palaeontologist specialising in the field of mammoths and is highly regarded worldwide. He has recently been made president of the WPZ (Werkgroep Pleistocene Zoogdieren). Their opening website statement is “Our remarkable key factor is that amateur and professional palaeontologists work closely together”. He is most famously known by the  Discovery Channel documentaries such as “Raising the Mammoth’ and internationally known for the trawler boats he uses to trawl hundreds of bones from the North Sea.

Dick Mol was born in Winterswijk, Gelderland (The Netherlands), in 1955. Mol could not afford to attend higher education after high school and he joined customs service in 1974. As the Netherlands implemented the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), Dick Mol was trained to be a CITES specialist, spending much time on the job studying bones, accumulating eventually ample knowledge to compensate for an academic career.

Dick has catalogued fossil remains dredged from the bottom of the North Sea, and published over fifty papers on his finds. His goal is to learn more about all of the Pleistocene fauna that lived on the Pleistocene Mammoth steppe, which included the Taimyr Peninsula, but also the North Sea, the low countries and the UK. The last years he has been co-operating with Professor Evangelia Tsoukala in Greece, excavating mastodons in Greek Macedonia. With Frédéric Lacombat he is studying the extinct Proboscidea of the Haute-Loire, Auvergne, France.

His work has brought him international recognition for his studies on Quaternary paleontology, the study of the Pleistocene and today’s Holocene Epochs

Dr Dean Lomax

Dean is an internationally recognised multi-award-winning palaeontologist, science communicator and author. He has travelled the globe and worked on many fascinating projects from excavating dinosaurs in the American West, to describing new species of extinct marine reptiles and winning a gold medal for excellence in science. An Honorary Scientist at The University of Manchester, Dean is passionate about communicating palaeontology with the public and regularly appears on television, including as series advisor and recurring on-screen expert presenter for ITV’s Dinosaur Britain. He has written two books, numerous scientific papers, and many popular articles.

Since January 2013, Dean has been affiliated with The University of Manchester as an Honorary Visiting Scientist (academic), which includes mentoring students as a specialist advisor. Despite initially holding off attending university, he now has an MPhil in palaeontology from the University of Manchester (an ‘MPhil’ is a Master of Philosophy degree, a postgraduate research degree that lies between an MSc and a PhD in the hierarchy of academic qualifications), which he obtained without having an undergraduate degree. This is rare, but the opportunity to study was based on his contribution to palaeontology.

Palaeontologist & Honorary Visiting Scientist, The University of Manchester
www.deanrlomax.co.uk

Dr David Penny

Dr David Penny has had a life-long fascination with all things creepy crawly and still vividly remember exactly how this came about. His qualifications include a BSc in Zoology, a doctorate (PhD) and higher doctorate (DSc) in amber palaeobiology.

David is an Honorary Lecturer in the Faculty of Life Sciences Preziosi Lab at the University of Manchester, UK. His expertise stems from more than two decades of research mainly in amber palaeobiology and fossil and extant spiders.

David is also a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, Fellow of the Linnean Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Chartered Scientist, a corresponding member of the Arbeitskreis Bernstein (Amber Council), Hamburg, Germany and a Patron of UKAFH.