R. Timothy Patterson is a professor of geology at Carleton University, where he is Director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow in the School of Geography, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He holds a B.Sc. in Biology, B.A. in Geology, both from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia and a Ph.D. in geology from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).