L-R Mike Habib, John Conway, Ross Elgin & Mark Witton
The contributors to Pterosaur.net are vertebrate palaeontologists, palaeontology postgraduate students or artists that work closely with professional researchers. Most of us have published pterosaur research in peer-reviewed journals, contributed to academic and popular pterosaur publications (from books to TV documentaries) and some of us are even respectable. Hopefully, this means that Pterosaur.net is one of the most reliable places for pterosaur information on the Internet. Accordingly, the articles, images and notes you see here are not based on out-of-date books or factually flawed TV shows, but sourced from primary scientific literature and first-hand observations on genuine pterosaur fossils. Here are some micro-biographies of the people who created and wrote Pterosaur.net and, in many cases, we have webpages or blogs where you can follow our more recent work and learn about us.
Mike Habib
I am an Assistant Professor of Cell and Neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. My undergraduate and Masters degrees in Biology come from the University of Virginia, and I hold a PhD in Functional Anatomy from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. I work primarily on the evolution and mechanics of flying vertebrates, including pterosaurs, focusing on the interactions between structural mechanics and aerodynamics. I am likely most well known for my work regarding the probable launch behaviors of pterosaurs.
David Hone
My undergraduate degree and Masters were in zoology before I transferred to palaeontology for my PhD on pterosaur origins at the University of Bristol. I have worked on pterosaur origins and systematics (relationshisps) and their flight mechanics and ecology while based at the famous BSPG in Munich where I organized a pterosaur research meeting. I am currently a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London and am working on theropod dinosaurs, though obviously I maintain my pterosaur research including work with several of the Pterosaur Net group.
Darren Naish
I am a vertebrate palaeontologist based at the University of Portsmouth in England. I mostly work on predatory dinosaurs, but also spend time on sauropods, marine reptiles and pterosaurs. Right now I am particularly interested in azhdarchoid pterosaurs and, together with Mark Witton and other colleagues, have been working on their phylogeny and palaeobiology. I am interested in all tetrapods (the limbed vertebrates) and write about everything from frogs and salamanders to giant killer eagles and baleen whales on my blog, Tetrapod Zoology.
Mark Witton
I fell into pterosaur research when wondering about the feeding habits of Istiodactylus as a third-year undergraduate palaeobiology student looking for a PhD project. The University of Portsmouth took me on to study not just this but several other aspects of pterosaur palaeoecology: unfortunately, I never finished looking at Istiodactylus habits but I did manage to review pterosaur gut content, have a stab at estimating some pterosaur masses, their postential for skim-feeding behaviour and, along with Darren Naish, take a fresh look at azhdarchid pterosaur palaeobiology. Along the way I also worked on some aspects of azhdarchoid taxonomy and systematics. Nowadays, I'm still based at the UoP and have somehow managed to land a job building life-sized pterosaur reconstructions for an exhibition at the Royal Society's 350th birthday bash in London, 2010. Note that we're planning on displaying the world's first grounded, giraffe-sized azhdarchids (at least, so far as we're aware - all other giant pterosaur models we know of are displayed to look like they're flying): please feel free to attend in June/July 2010 to gawp at their gigantic size for yourself.
Luis Rey
I'm a London resident but a Spanish/Mexican Artist graduating in Visual Arts at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico. After a long career as a surrealist and illustrator of (almost) everything, I started collaborating with palaeontologists worldwide in the early 90's. My first dinosaur book as an author was "Extreme dinosaurs!" and since then I has made a career in paleo-illustration with the likes of Robert Bakker, Per Christiansen, David Martill, Darren Naish, Henry Gee, Thom Holtz and Random House (and many more). I've been a Member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology since 1997 and Diacon of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (MYBTBHHA. Nothing in life is not really worth anything if it is not thrilling. Anatomy is my personal obsession and reconstructing any extinct animal represents the greatest thrill.
Ross Elgin
I completed my undergraduate degree in biology and geology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland before later moving to Bristol to attend their Masters program in palaeobiology. During my time in Bristol I began working on the flight dynamics of pterosaurs for the first time; with specific attention being paid to the cranial crests of several taxa. At present I am based in the Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, Germany, where I study the flight dynamics of short tailed pterosaurs as part of my PhD thesis. My main research interests are the origin of flight and the evolution of flight associated structures in pterosaurs. As part of my work i am constructing scaled models of large pterosaurs and simulating various flight conditions within a wind tunnel based at the Universiy of Karlsruhe (KIT).