Mark Williams

I am an Earth scientist at the University of Leicester in the UK. I grew up in the Potteries in the English Midlands and from an early age was collecting fossil plants and ammonoids from the Carboniferous rocks where I lived. Those childhood experiences stayed with me, and I have spent a career exploring fossils – and the evolution of life on Earth – through the rock record of hundreds of millions of years of time. I have written several popular science books on climate change, life on Earth, and oceans here and on other planets, with my friend Jan Zalasiewicz. Most recently we worked together on the book ‘The Cosmic Oasis’, which examines the changes to our planet brought about by the actions of humans over millennia. I have also written extensively on contemporary biological change through the lens of the Anthropocene.