Phil was born and raised in northwest Indiana and moved to Florida in 1973. He is retired from law enforcement and enjoys raising his young daughter, Little Helen, and occasionally volunteers in the FLMNH Invertebrate Paleontology Division lab and Simpson Library.  Phil has been collecting fossils since the early 1980s and has donated numerous specimens to both the invertebrate and vertebrate collections at the FLMNH and the Smithsonian Institution.  He is a past President of FPS and prior recipient of the FLMNH’s Howard Converse award (1991).  Although he loves finding vertebrate fossils and studying post cranial osteology, he will pick up a shell if it’s in front of him.