Mikael Fortelius
University of Helsinki
Department of Geosciences and Geography
P.O. Box 64
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Prof. Mikael Fortelius is palaeontologist with special interest in plant-eating mammals and their relationship with habitat and climate change. He is particularly fascinated by mammalian teeth, how they form, how they work, how they wear down, and how their shapes evolve in evolutionary time. His first academic training was in biology, and his teacher in palaeontology was Björn Kurtén, who had a deeply organismic attitude to fossils. He has the conviction that past organisms and ecosystems can only really be understood in relation to the living world. He feels that we cannot hope to understand the living world without sound and detailed knowledge of its stupendously long history.