Introduction

 Good evening all and welcome to my corner of the internet where I can sit and blabber on about mainly Palaeontology and hopefully share my passion with anyone who is also remotely interested. I thought I'd start this blog off with a more introductory post about myself, so you know who you're interacting with and listening to.

My name is Kieran and I am an aspiring Palaeontologist/Palaeobiologist from England, UK. Throughout my Palaeontology fascination I have went through many different stages of focus. For example, when I first developed an interest in Palaeontology at the tender age of around 2 ( Fun fact; I actually thought Palaeontology was actually Archaeology until like, 11 years old!) I was, like a lot of kids, obsessed with dinosaurs. So, naturally I went into Palaeontology as an adult back in 2019 wanting to study dinosaurs. My favourite kind of dinosaur at the time and to this day, is Pachycephalosaurids, so I wanted to eventually specialise in them after I finished my degree in the future. However, as I branched out, joined multiple social media groups, sites, forums regarding palaeontology I soon found myself in awe of a different kind of reptile, extinct marine snakes!

As my knowledge matured a little more and I started getting into the hobby of fossil collecting/hunting I also developed an obsession with collecting Palaeophis vertebrae. Palaeophid's were a family of small to large marine snakes that lived during the Cretaceous period before going extinct in the Eocene. Anyways, long story short I ended up getting about 8 loose vertebrae of varying sizes from auctions, fossil sites online, etc before I realised I should probably stop before I had enough to build my own snake.

Last but not least, my current obsession, is decapod crustaceans (crabs). I'm not entirely sure what it is about crabs that I've suddenly grown interested in but they are pretty rad creatures that are 100% taken for granted in our modern world. The main thing that makes me want to learn more about them is simply just the sheer lack of research into them. In 2002, Joe Collins, a self-taught scientist who specialised himself in decapod crustacea, created a taxonomic review of British decapods and noted that 'No collective work on British Jurassic decapods exists', which to me, is extremely sad since crustaceans are incredibly unique and interesting once you read into them a bit more. Sadly Joe Collins passed away in 2019 at the age of 92.

Anyways, there's a very rudimental breakdown of my Palaeontology life so far. I hope you enjoy the posts in the future!

Peace.