Derek Briggs is Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Geology and Geophysics@Yale University and director of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. He is coauthor with Douglas H. Erwin and Frederick J. Collier of The Fossils of the Burgess Shale (1994) and coauthor with Christoph Bartels and Günther Brassel of The Fossils of the Hunsrück Slate: Marine Life in the Devonian (1998). He is also coeditor with Peter R. Crowther of Palaeobiology: A Synthesis (1990) and Palaeobiology II (2001). He is a former president of the Palaeontological Association and of the Paleontological Society. He completed his Ph.D. in 1976@the University of Cambridge. Address: Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208109, New Haven, CT 06520-8109. Internet: derek.briggs@yale.edu