Dr Andrew Smith
has been a senior researcher in the Department of Palaeontology, the Natural History Museum, London, since 1981. He specialises in echinoderm systematics and evolution. His research interests include molecular phylogeny reconstruction, comparison of morphological and molecular evolution, and the derivation of evolutionary patterns from the fossil record.

Dr Paul Pearson
is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol. He has explored the history of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as ship-board micropalaeontologist with the Ocean Drilling Program. He studies the taxonomy, evolution and geochemistry of fossil plankton in the context of global environmental change.

Prof. Charles Marshall
is part of the Molecular Biology Institute at the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics UCLA. His main interests are in molecular and analytical paleobiology, with an emphasis on phylogeny reconstruction using molecular, morphological and paleontological data; the evolution of gene regulation; and quantitative methods for assessing incompleteness of the fossil record, with a focus on assessing times of origin and extinction.

Dr Mark E. Siddall
is in his final year as a Michigan Society Fellow at the University of Michigan where he received the 1998 Herman & Margaret Sokol Award for postdoctoral research. Mark and his students are primarily interested in the phylogeny and life-history evolution of leeches. Because leeches do not fossilize, his interest in palaeontology is unusual; but he has recently published a method (MSM, Cladistics 14, 201-208, 1998) for examining the fit of stratigraphy to phylogenetic trees. Mark is soon to begin a curatorial position at the American Museum of Natural History.

Prof. Blair Hedges
is in the Department of Biology at Pennsylvania State University. He is a member of Penn. State's Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, and their Astrobiology Research Center. His research interests include molecular phylogenetics, molecular clocks, vertebrate evolution, and the early evolution of life; he also has a field program in the West Indies where he studies Caribbean biogeography. In his research he explores the connections between earth history and evolutionary history.

Dr Jan Pawlowski & Colomban de Vargas
work in the Laboratory of Molecular Systematics, Department of Zoology and Animal Biology, University of Geneva. Jan Pawlowski specializes in the biology of foraminifera and initiated the study of their molecular systematics. His main interest is in using the foraminifera and other fossilizable protists to study the processes of molecular evolution. Colomban de Vargas is preparing his Ph.D. on molecular evolution of planktonic foraminifera. He is primarily interested in studying spatio-temporal speciation in the open ocean and its implications for the biodiversity, phylogeny and phylogeography of planktonic organisms.

Dr Peter Wagner
is currently an Assistant Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and a Lecturer for the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago. His research focuses on testing macroevolutionary hypotheses about rates of morphologic evolution, long-term trends, differential extinction across clades and morphologic grades, and speciation patterns. Most of these tests use estimated phylogenetic topologies, leading to a utilitarian interest in phylogenetic issues. His studies typically involve Paleozoic molluscs.

Prof. Chris Paul
has been in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Liverpool, where he is currently Professor of Palaeontology, since 1973. He is also currently president of the Palaeontographical Society. His principal research interests include palaeozoic echinoderms, fossil and recent non-marine molluscs, the adequacy of the fossil record and computer applications in palaeontology.

Dr Peter L. Forey
is a researcher into fossil fishes at The Natural History Museum, London. His overall research interests concern cladistic analysis of combined fossil and Recent morphological data in various groups of fishes. Lately, he has focussed on three systematic areas: 1. Coelacanth phylogeny and the patterns of speciation and morphological evolutionary trends within the group; 2. phylogeny of lower teleostean fishes and their distributional and ecological history throughout the Cretaceous; 3. the relationships of conodonts. Along side this empirical work, he is also interested in more theoretical aspects of missing data in cladistic analysis, methods of coding data and the theoretical and practical aspects of combining all data to a primary matrix.