Dr. Neville Hollingworth has always had an interest in the great outdoors. At age six, he was presented with a fossilized leaf, a replica drawn on sandstone as a prank. Undeterred, his first real find came five years later, an ammonite fossil discovered in Yeovil, southwest of England. He studied geology at Newcastle University followed by a PhD in paleontology at the University of Durham. Instead of academia, Neville pursued his interest in communicating about the sciences—everything from atoms to astrophysics—as a public engagement manager at the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Swindon.

Aside from fossil collecting, Neville is a keen scuba diver and underwater photographer. His perseverance to capture the extraordinary creatures inhabiting our blue planet likely stems from the same passion that lead him and his wife, Sally, to uncover one of the largest collections of marine fossils ever found in Britain. For Neville, “The sea is my church, both past and present, and it is great to live on a planet that buries its dead.”