A new start after 60: becoming a palaeontologist at 62

Craig Munns bought a large model T. rex with a magazine subscription two decades ago. Sitting in a study dense with books, sticky notes and evolution posters, he decided to enrol as a part-time student after taking a job at the public library in Canberra. He graduated at 62, with honours in palaeontology from the University of New England in Armidale, NSW.

Now 65, Munns works at Geoscience Australia, monitoring mineral deposits, but he is most animated about a palaeontology paper on two drill cores extracted east of Alice Springs in the late 90s and left in storage. He is examining the biostratigraphy — the biology found at each strata and the progress of specimens through the layers — and describes the practical work of splitting cores along lines where fossils might appear.

Dinosaurs are not his main passion; he prefers invertebrates — worms, insects, lobsters. On a video call he held up a 500m-year-old trilobite that used to roll into a ball, with about 30 legs and eyes on the top of its head.

Australia, Canberra, Armidale, Alice Springs

craig munns, palaeontology, trilobite, biostratigraphy, geoscience australia, alice springs, drill cores, invertebrates, armidale, canberra