Marc Emyr Huw Jones

Dr Marc Jones is a curator of fossil reptiles at the Natural History Museum London. He also has honorary positions at University College London and University of Adelaide.

A significant portion of Marc's research has involved the New Zealand tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) as well as its diverse fossil relatives which are known from deposits worldwide - including his homeland of Wales. He has also conducted research on a range of living and fossil animals including frogs, salamanders, lizards, dinosaurs, snakes, and sea turtles.

Marc is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was previously a lecturer at University of Adelaide. He has supervised two PhD students and several masters students.

His fieldwork experience includes searching for fossils in Spain, China, and Scotland, as well as searching for living lizards to measure in Namibia and Australia.

Marc is passionate promoter of science and education as demonstrated by his repeated contributions to public engagement events. Whilst at University of Adelaide, these contributions include leading the award winning Fantastic Plastic Reptile Skulls (#FPRSkulls) display at the School of Biological Sciences open day. This now ongoing initiative seeks to promote the greater awareness of reptile skull diversity by using attractive, accurate, and tactile 3D models. He delivered lectures and workshops in China as part of Darwin Now, a global initiative that explored the impact of Charles Darwin's remarkable legacy in the 21st Century organized by the British Council. He has also twice been an invited speaker for “Is there life after a PhD?” an annual event hosted by Cumberland Lodge (http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/), presented for Nature Live (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/community/nature-live), and has worked as an associate trainer for Think Write (http://www.thinkwrite.biz/).

Marc's education includes artistic training and he has won two international poster prizes. For many years he has been chair of the Colbert Student Poster Prize Panel for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

During his PhD studies (in October 2002) Marc formed a committee of eight students from four different universities and established the London Evolutionary Research Network (LERN) to facilitate greater interaction between students based in London who's research involved some aspect of evolution. During Marc's time as chairman he obtained funding from a variety of sources, built up a mailing list, contributed to the initial website, and helped organise over 20 talks from senior academics (e.g. Richard Fortey, Leslie Aiello, Andy Purvis, Janet Brown, Paul Upchurch, Adrian Lister, and Simon Conway Morris), 12 talks from PhD students, 2 student conferences, and 2 fieldtrips. After several successful committee handovers the society remains active with a continually expanding membership, and growing international reputation. In 2012 Marc was an invited plenary speaker at LERN's 10th student conference.