Scott Hocknull (born 1977) is a vertebrate palaeontologist and Senior Curator in Geology at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. He was the 2002 recipient of the Young Australian of the Year Award.^[1]

He is the youngest Australian to date to hold a museum curatorship and has described and named 10 new species and four new genera.^[2]

Early life

Scott Hocknull was born in Adelaide, South Australia. His family moved to Brisbane when he was 12. He enrolled in a B.Sc. at the University of Queensland in 1996, majoring in zoology and geology. He took his degree with Honours in 2000.^[3]

Career

Hocknull worked at the Queensland Museum during his university studies. After graduation he became a curator in geosciences at the Queensland Museum. He became senior curator in 2002.

He took his doctorate from the University of New South Wales, in 2009.^[3][4]

In cooperation with the original finder Robyn Mackenzie, Hocknull published the description of Australotitan cooperensis.^[5]

Awards

• Young Australian of the Year for Queensland, 2002
• National and Queensland Career Achiever, 2002
• Queensland Science and Technology Achiever, 2002
• National Career Achiever, 2002
• Centenary Medalist, 2003
• Neville Stephens Medal, Geological Society of Australia, 2005
• Riversleigh Medal, 2009
• Queensland's best and brightest - The Courier Mail, 2009
• Rising Stars of Queensland Science, 2015
• 10 Best of the Best of Queensland's 50 Top Thinkers, 2015