Lance Grande has been doing paleontological fieldwork in the Fossil Butte Member of southwestern Wyoming for more than thirty years and is one of the world’s foremost authorities on this amazing locality. He is also a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, where he conducts research on fishes, paleontology, geology, and evolutionary biology. He is the award-winning author of more than one hundred books and scientific articles. His book Gems and Gemstones: Timeless Natural Beauty of the Mineral World (2009), published by the University of Chicago Press, won the 2009 PROSE Award in Earth Sciences, and in 2012 he received the Robert H. Gibbs Award for an Outstanding… Body of Published Work in Systematic Ichthyology. He is a Lecturer at the University of Chicago, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois. At the University of Chicago he also serves on the Council of the Graham School, and on the Committee on Evolutionary Biology. He is a board member for the Chicago Council on Science and Technology, and serves on the Executive Steering Committee for The Encyclopedia of Life.