Dave Bottjer did his undergraduate geology major at Bryn Mawr College (1973), and received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1978. Since 1979 he has been at the University of Southern California, where he is now Professor and Chair of Earth Sciences as well as Professor of Biological Sciences. When not visiting a Lagerstätten, he is engaged in unraveling the causes and consequences of mass extinctions, particularly those in the mid-Phanerozoic, as well as trying to better understand the early evolution of animals in the late Precambrian.