Dr. Mike Simms

Curator of Geology

Background

Mike found his first fossils near his hometown of Cheltenham at the age of 6, more than 50 years ago. He developed a similar passion for minerals a few years later and, by the age of 9, had decided to become a geologist. He made many visits to local museums (Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bristol) as a teenager to help identify their Jurassic fossils.   

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Mike has a First-Class degree in Geology with Zoology from Bristol University. He studied at Birmingham University for a PhD on Jurassic crinoids, an interest that he developed as a schoolboy.   

He joined the Ulster Museum in 1996 as Curator of Palaeontology. This followed various research, lecturing and curatorial posts in Britain and Ireland.   

Mike has been closely involved in some of the most successful exhibitions at the Ulster Museum. He was lead curator (and a cartoon character!) for Dippy on Tour when it visited the Ulster Museum in 2018. He devised and curated the immensely popular Elements exhibition that opened in 2014.

Research interests  

Mike’s research on the museum’s collections has included fossils as diverse as echinoderms, brachiopods, ammonites, and the only dinosaur remains known from Ireland. He has also published articles on caves and landscape evolution; on meteorites and giant meteorite impacts; and on aspects of Northern Ireland geology from Castle Espie to the Giant’s Causeway. In 1987 (with his co-author Dr Alastair Ruffell, now at QUB) he discovered the Carnian Pluvial Episode. This was a major climate change that was synchronous with a mass extinction event 234 million years ago. It has become the subject of research worldwide, and the subject of a recent Japanese TV documentary.   

Fossil honours 

As if having his own cartoon character isn’t enough, Mike has had four fossils named after him by other palaeontologists.  

• A chimaeroid fish (the oldest one known) called Eomanodon simmsi, based on a tooth which he discovered when aged just 15 
• A cockroach called Alderblattina simmsi, described from a fossil wing found when he was 23. 
• Two fossil crinoids called Fusicrinus simmsi and Democrinus simmsi.    

Broader interests

Mike is a geologist, first and foremost, but his interests have broadened over the years. His interest in caves goes back to the mid-1980s when he first took up caving. Since 2003 he has been interested in meteorites and the early history of the Solar System. Mike’s interests extend into the living world, and he has been a keen lichenologist since 1990. He has contributed more than 25,000 records to the British Lichen Society and Lichen Ireland databases. He is interested too in land snails and freshwater molluscs, and bryophytes (mosses and liverworts). Mike enjoys exploring hillsides, wooded glens and other places in search of these (when not distracted by geology!) and has amassed an enormous library of reference photographs of lichens and bryophytes (and geology, of course).   

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During the lockdown of 2020, he compiled a list of all living species inhabiting his garden, and the 1km square in which he and his family live. Currently, it stands at more than 340 species for the garden and 470 for the square.