Aussie STEM Stars: John Long
Fossil hunter
Age range 9+
John Albert Long is an Australian paleontologist who is currently Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. He was previously the Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He is also an author of popular science books. His main area of research is on the fossil fish of the Late Devonian Gogo Formation from northern Western Australia. It has yielded many important insights into fish evolution, such as Gogonasus and Materpiscis, the later specimen being crucial to our understanding of the origins of vertebrate reproduction.
His love of fossil collecting began at age 7 and he graduated with PhD from Monash University in 1984, specialising in Palaeozoic fish evolution. He held postdoctoral positions at the Australian National University, The University of Western Australia and The University of Tasmania before taking up a position as Curator in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Western Australian Museum and then as Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria.
Danielle Clode is the award-winning Australian author of In Search of the Woman who Sailed the World. Her writing includes natural history, essays, science-writing, historical fiction and best-selling children’s books. She grew up in the fishing town of Port Lincoln in South Australia before sailing around the coast with her parents on a boat known as ‘the pirate ship’. After finishing school in far north Queensland, she moved to Adelaide to study politics and psychology. Danielle worked as a zookeeper before completing her doctorate in zoology at Oxford University. She has been a freelance writer and researcher ever since and also teaches creative and academic writing across Australia.
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