Professor Tim Coulson is a British zoologist and evolutionary ecologist. He holds the title of Professor of Zoology at University of Oxford and is a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford.  His research explores how changes in predator populations influence ecology and evolutionary dynamics across systems. His field sites include Yellowstone National Park, the frrshwater streams in Trinidad and oceanic islands off Australia.  He earned his BSc in Biology from University of York and his PhD from Imperial College London.  Tim is also a science communicator, podcast co-host and author of a popular science book. 

Three quarters of a billion years ago the first simple animal evolved. It probably looked like a small sponge, but no fossils of it have been found. A couple of hundred million years later, ocean chemistry changed, and this allowed simple animals to make hard parts: teeth, skeletons and shells. Once these had evolved, animals had the means to eat one another and so began arms races between predators and their prey that have played out ever since. These arms races have shaped life on earth, even making us human. Tim Coulson takes us on this gripping journey through half a billion years of life-and-death struggles between hunter and hunted. From ancient shark leviathans to lions on the African plains, from the rise of Homo erectus to our own role as the planet’s most dangerous killer, this talk explains how predation shaped the very fabric of life and could yet save humanity’s future.