John Long is the strategic professor of paleontology at Flinders University, one of Australia's largest paleontological research groups. The former vice president of research and collections at the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, Long has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, some 25 books and over 150 popular science articles. His groundbreaking research work on the evolution of fishes and the origins of sex has appeared in the magazines Nature, Science, and Scientific American.