Richard Fortey was a senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. His previous books include the critically acclaimedLife: An Unauthorized Biography, short-listed for the Rhône Poulenc Prize in 1998;Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2...

Richard Fortey was a senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. His previous books include the critically acclaimedLife: An Unauthorized Biography, short-listed for the Rhône Poulenc Prize in 1998;Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001; and** The Hidden Landscape,** which won the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993. He was Collier Professor for the Public Understanding of Science in 2002 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.