Sean Henry McMahon was born in Ascot, England in 1987.

I am British, a science-lover, fossil collector and enthusiast.

I became fascinated by fossils when I was six years old, partly because of my Dad's interest in dinosaurs. I still think they are wonderful, and over the years I've grown to love the rest of geology too. I have written articles in magazines, won the national Rockhound Challenge prize, excavated mammoths, worked in two museums, met the TV naturalist David Attenborough and the great dinosaur palaeontologist Dr. David Norman, and finally made this website!

I created Palaeopedia because I wanted to help people understand the fascinating science of palaeontology. I think it's important that people appreciate how ancient and extraordinary life is, to enrich their own experiences of being alive. When I look at a fossil, I see not a boring rock but a fragment of an ancient, mysterious world, preserved for an unimaginable timespan against all the odds. To own a fossil is a priceless privilege regardless of its actual monetary value. I want to share this feeling of awe.

The original name was the cringingly naff "Cyberfossils" - I worked on it, along with my other websites, between school and homework, eventually renaming it Palaeopaedia, and then cutting out the third "a" to make it less confusing and more cosmopolitan.

Because of huge breaks when I got lumbered down with other things, It took me a ridiculous amount of time (six years) to finish this site. The work mainly involved graphics editing, researching, consulting various people, browsing the internet and typing. Sometimes it's been a hard slog along with all the schoolwork I have (*tip - don't pick GCSE Graphics*), but at the same time it felt like a worthwhile use of my time and I hope it is useful to you. I've had to learn a lot of things about geology that I didn't know, too.

The graphics are all made with the excellent Paint Shop Pro 7, which allows you to do just about everything with pixels. The pages are designed with Microsoft FrontPage 2.0, which is pretty "palaeo" in itself, but does the job.

make my day

Enjoy this site!