I received my Undergraduate and Masters Degrees at the University of Auckland. Soon after I became a Consultant Archaeologist spanning a 10 year period during which I worked on a number of prehistoric and historic period faunal assemblages in New Zealand. In 2009 I switched to academia focusing on early Neolithic interactions with fauna in the Vanuatu Archipelago in the Pacific and recently was awarded my PhD by The Australian National University. For the last two and half years I have been a Postdoctoral Research Associate on an Australian Research Council funded Laureate project titled: From Sunda to Sahul. This project is investigating the early movement of modern humans from Asia to Australia and adaptations to changing tropical island environmental conditions during dispersal and settlement over the last 50,000 years. I have worked on several faunas including reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish and bird archaeological deposits throughout the Pacific region but am most well known for the discovery of an extinct giant land turtle in Vanuatu and several new species of extinct fruit bat.