Professor Ken McNamara, formerly Senior Curator of Palaeontology and Head of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the WA Museum for 30 years, Ken has spent the last 10 years as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge in the UK, where he was also Director of the world’s oldest geological museum, the Sedgwick Museum. He returned to WA last year and is now an Adjunct Professor at UWA. "Although much of the rocks of the Darling Range are extremely old and formed before plants evolved, there are a number of rather unusual fossil plant sites on the range that tell the story of the evolution of the flora of the south-west over the last 40 million years. In the talk I will describe the different types of rocks that have preserved the fossil plants and explain what they tell us about environmental conditions at the time. I will show the wide variety of fossil leaves, fruits and even a possible flower that have been preserved and explain what they tell us about changing climate conditions over the last 40 million years. As well as a cornucopia of photos I will have some specimens of fossil plants available for people to see."