Charles Wellman is a professor of Paleobiology at the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield, UK. He received a B.Sc. from the University of Southampton in 1987 and a Ph.D from Cardiff University in 1991 (A NERC CASE award with the Natural History Museum, London). Charles' Ph.D. research involved a study of early land plant microfossils from Scottish Silurian-Devonian 'Lower Old Red Sandstone' deposits. Subsequently, Charles' research has diversified to investigate various aspects of the colonization of the land, including work on both fossil and living plants, and a consideration of what lived on the land before the land plants.