Dr Billy de KlerkDr W. de Klerk is Emeritus Curator of Earth Sciences at the Albany Museum, Makhanda, South Africa. Originally from Johannesburg, he completed his BSc(Hons) degree at Rhodes University in 1975 and his early career was spent as a geologist on platinum mines in the Rustenburg district. During this time he obtained his MSc (1982) which was followed by a brief spell as a nuclear geologist with the SA Atomic Energy Corporation. In 1985 he moved to Makhanda, where he took up the position of Curator, Earth Sciences at the Albany Museum. He completed his PhD at Rhodes in 1991. As a result of his close involvement with the historically important fossil collections at the Museum, he changed his research focus from economic geology to vertebrate palaeontology, with a special interest in the upper Permian therapsids (mammal-like reptiles) of the Karoo Basin. Prior to his retirement in 2015 he worked on dinosaur discoveries made in the Lower Cretaceous (135Ma) Kirkwood Formation of the Algoa Basin and the lower Jurassic (200Ma) sediments of the Karoo Basin. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of South Africa and has served two terms as President of the Palaeontological Society of Southern Africa.