Richard Forrest
3 Chestnut Grove
Radcliffe-on-Trent
Nottingham NG12 1AH

Richard Forrest originally qualified and worked as an architect, but now makes his living by running a small business helping people with computers, and designing databases and web sites. He has a special interest in developing database-driven web sites using php and mySQL. He has spent a sizable proportion of his life grubbing for fossils in eroding cliffs, quarries and road-cuttings. A few years ago he attended a series of evening classes in a local pub run by Arthur Cruickshank, and under his mentorship developed a serious interest in plesiosaur palaeontology. Most of his research has been at New Walk Museum in Leicester. He has published several papers in this field, and is trying to complete a part-time PhD at Leicester University on the post-cranial anatomy of plesiosaurs, though this is on hold at the moment for personal reasons. He has run the SVPCA web site for several years, and helped to organise the event in Leicester in 2004. His interest in creationism was sparked when his web site was flamed by creationists because it did not acknowledge the existence of living plesiosaurs and that such a survival would falsify all evolutionary theory. He takes an active and unhealthy interest in contributing to on-line forums on the subject, and has been referred to by one contributor as "the worlds greatest expert on decaying basking sharks". He denies that this is the case.