Principal and Owner of Hills of Hame
Alistair.mcgowan@Glasgow.ac.uk
2012 Cruciblist

Alistair uses his skills as an academic researcher in palaeobiology and Earth Sciences and as a lifelong natural historian to complement his experience and qualifications as a Hill and Moorland Leader. For more information on Al and Hills of Hame, see his website
Alistair is a palaeobiologist and geologist whose major research focus is the application of quantitative and statistical techniques to palaeontological problems. Alistair’s present research project, funded as a RSE/Scottish Government Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, involves applying spatial sampling techniques from ecology to the problems of estimating biodiversity in the fossil record, which he carrys out in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow and with the British Geological Survey.

Alistair has been involved in projects that have analysed the evolution of a range of biological groups (flying vertebrates, dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonoids, plants) in space and time, as well as work developing computer programs for analysing evolutionary patterns and processes. He has worked or studied in Scotland, England, the United States and Germany. His taxonomic specialization is the Ammonoidea but Alistair studys all cephalopod groups. Alistair is an editor on the Scottish Journal of Geology and Historical Biology. He is also a keen avocational ornithologist and British Trust for Ornithology Fellow, contributing to a number of volunteer surveys. Alistair also works on a number of outreach and citizen science projects.

Beyond his palaeobiological research, Alistairs other major interests is geodiversity, the diversity of abiotic nature, which encompasses the diversity of rocks, soils, fossils, minerals and landforms and their impact on biodiversity and human culture and heritage. The latter point touches on his wider life, which has included spells as a mountain footpath builder and a continuing infatuation with the high mountains of Scotland as a hill runner, walker and climber. Scotland has a particularly rich geodiversity for its size and Alistair has been working with a number of volunteer efforts to attempt to raise awareness of geodiversity and the need to record and conserve it (Lothian and Borders GeoConservation, Scottish Geodiversity Forum).