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Joe Bauwens: I was interested in fossils from an early age, spending much of my childhood collecting on the coasts of England. Having left school in the 1980s with little opportunity to go on to higher education, I worked for the family business, and travelled more widely in Europe and North Africa, before eventually emigrating to The Gambia to work in tourism in 1990. While working in West Africa I was recruited by a mineral exploration company, which gave me the opportunity to travel much more widely, as well as the confidence to go to university when I returned to the UK. I studied palaeobiology at the University of Portsmouth, geosciences at the Open University, and ecology at Christchurch University, before settling into a career in environmental chemistry. I have worked in commercial labs assessing water and soil quality, at schools and colleges, as well as the universities of Nottingham and Warwick, and am currently employed at the University of Northampton. I am still an enthusiastic naturalist and fossil enthusiast in my own time, and regularly visit sites of interest around the UK and beyond, and write pop-science articles for a range of publications.