PATRICIA VICKERS-RICH holds a Chair in Palaeontology at Monash University, where she lectures in the Earth Sciences Department. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University for work on the origin and evolution of the Australasian avifauna. Her main research interests are in Late Mesozoic vertebrates from Gondwana. She and her students are currently investigating the past geographic and environmental changes that have shaped the modern Australasian fauna and flora. Vickers-Rich is interested in making frontline science research accessible to young students, and she is currently Director of the Monash Science Centre, a science communication centre which she founded at Monash University.
THOMAS HEWITT RICH is Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museum Victoria (formerly the Museum of Victoria) in Melbourne. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University for work on fossil hedgehogs of the Northern Hemisphere. His primary research interests lie in Mesozoic faunas, especially dinosaurs and primitive mammals. His main efforts over the past ten years have been in elucidating the Early Cretaceous vertebrate faunas of Australia's Southeast and of Patagonia in Argentina. He is also interested in the philosophy of science and mathematical modelling in palaeontology.
FRANCESCO COFFA is a freelance photographer based in Melbourne. Born in Italy, he came to Australia at the age of ten, and later graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He began his photographic career in 1962 and has illustrated and contributed to many books and scientific papers. He has also produced videos, short films, and audio-visuals on diverse subjects such as dinosaurs, Egyptology, Aboriginal culture, and the environment. Until 1997, Coffa was the manager of photographic and audio-visual services at the Museum of Victoria.
STEVEN MORTON la the head of scientific photographic services for the Faculty of Science, Monash University. He is a graduate of the Photographic Department at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and holds a Master's of Applied Science in Photography. Morton developed a 360° panoramic camera of unique design. One of his first panoramas taken with this camera appears in this volume along with many other of his photographs. HIS lab at Monash has now migrated into computer graphics that enhance his conventional photography; some of those new applications have been used in this revised edition of Wildlife of Gondwana.
PETER TRUSLER is a Melbourne artist who has received International acclaim for his natural history paintings following the publication of Birds of Australian Gardens and his spectacular 1993 stamp series on Australian dinosaurs for Australia Post. He is a science graduate of Monash University and has contributed illustrations to many scientific and popular publications. The blending of his biological and artistic interests has proven particularly successful in presenting informative reconstruction of the past, and he is working currently with Tome and Pat Rich on a number of prehistorics projects.