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John A. Long

John Albert Long is an Australian paleontologist who is currently Emeritus Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, where he was previously the Strategic Professor in Palaeontology (2012-2025). Before then he was Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He is also an author of popular science books. His main area of research is on the fossil fish of the Late Devonian Gogo Formation from northern Western Australia. It has yielded many important insights into fish evolution, such as Gogonasus and Materpiscis, the later specimen being crucial to our understanding of the origins of vertebrate reproduction. Further research on Gogo fishes included a perfect new colecanth Ngamugawi wirngarri, which showed through detailed analysis how coelacanth evolution had been influenced by plate tectonic movements.