About Us

Matthew Richardson was born in Richmond Hill, Ontario, on January 16, 1966, but was raised in the town of Markham, north of Toronto. His early unpublished works include a biography of Gerald Durrell and the massive, four-volume Living Primates series that would later be adapted into other works. In 2001 he published The Royal Book of Lists: An Irreverent Romp Through Royal History from Alfred the Great to Prince William. For much of the next decade he worked as a primatologist / taxonomist for the U.S.-based NGO Conservation International, co-authoring various books and academic papers. Notable among these were Lemurs of Madagascar (book) and the primate volume (volume 3) to the Handbook of the Mammals of the World series (for which he also produced all the maps). He also lived and worked, for a time, at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands, helped to catalog the Royal Ontario Museum's primatology collection, gave lectures, and has served as an active member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group (past), and the IUCN Conservation Planning Specialist Group. He is currently working on Threatened and Recently-extinct Vertebrates of the World (Cambridge University Press, in press).

Branden Holmes is a researcher specialising in recently extinct, missing, extinct in the wild and rediscovered taxa, based in Two Rocks, Western Australia. He has co-authored two peer-reviewed papers and edited a volume on the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger published by CSIRO Publishing. His main interest though is in creating online resources and datasets that benefit scientists and the public alike. He founded and runs the Recently Extinct Plants and Animals Database (REPAD), as well as collaborating with Matthew Richardson on this project.