Our People

Dr Scott Hocknull
Honorary Palaeontologist, Outback Gondwana Foundation, Senior Curator Geosciences, Queensland Museum and Lead Research Scientist, Eromanga Dinosaur Project. BSc (Hons 1A) University of Queensland, PhD University of New South Wales. Scott began his professional career in palaeontology in 1994 at the age of 16, when he published his first scientific paper, making him the youngest scientific author in Australia. Scott volunteered at the Queensland Museum for ten years during school and university, collecting numerous new localities for the museum, some of which are hailed as the most significant of their type in the last 30 years.

Dr Benjamin P Kear
Assistant Professor, Uppsala University, Department of Earth Sciences, Paleobiology, Assistant Professor, Uppsala University,Department of Earth Sciences, Paleobiology. Ben’s current projects include research into Cretaceous high-latitude biotas, the evolution of Australian-New Guinean Mammals, the Cenozoic herpetofaunas in the Aegean region, and the evolution and paleobiology of Gondwanan Mesozoic marine vertebrates. It is this last which has led him to being involved with the Outback Gondwana Foundation after the discovery of a turtle fossil on Plevna Downs by Robyn and Stuart Mackenzie in 2009.

Dr Timothy Pietsch
Research Fellow, Australian Rivers Institute, BAppSci (Hons), PhD.  Dr Timothy Pietsch has expertise in Fluvial Geomorphology and Optical Stimulated Luminescence (OSL). He has been involved at the 2012 OGF dig using the OSL technique to date the numerous megafauna fossilised skeletons discovered on the site.

Dr Christine Lambkin
Curator of Entomology, Queensland Museum, BSc (Hons) / PhD University of Queensland 2001, Postdoctoral Fellow, CSIRO Entomology Canberra 2001-2007. Christine Lambkin is a Curator of Entomology at the Queensland Museum and is responsible for the museum’s collections of Diptera (flies), Coleoptera (beetles), Orthoptera (grasshoppers), Hemiptera (bugs), Phasmatodea (stick insects), and a number of smaller insect orders.

Dr Alex Cook
Senior Curator, Geosciences, Queensland Museum, Project Palaeontologist, Eromanga Dinosaur Project, BSc (Hons) Geology (University of Wollongong), PhD Geology/Palaeontology (James Cook University of North Queensland). In 1992, Alex was appointed Senior Curator of Geosciences at the Queensland Museum, which introduced him to the fossil faunas and floras of Queensland’s Cretaceous Period. Alex now works on the 380 million year old sequences of northern Australia as well as the 110-95 million year old rocks of Australia’s Artesian Basin.