Bob Spicer obtained his first degree in Botany at Imperial College London, followed by a PhD in Geology also at Imperial College. He then spent three years at the U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California as a Lindemann Fellow and Research Associate of the California Academy of Sciences. On his return to the UK he taught at Goldsmith's College London in the Life Sciences Department, was a Fellow of St Hugh's College and University Lecturer in Earth Sciences at Oxford, before joining the Open University as Professor in 1994. Since 1976 he has had active research programmes in the Arctic where his main interests have been the Cretaceous fossil floras and the polar environment during the Mesozoic extreme "greenhouse" climates. He has published over 100 papers, books and articles.

email: R.A.Spicer@open.ac.uk