Charles Helm

Charles Helm was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1957. He graduated with an MBChB at the University of Cape Town in 1981. He moved to Canada in 1986, settled in Tumbler Ridge in northeastern British Columbia in 1992, has practised there since then as a family physician, and is a Fellow of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Following the discovery of Cretaceous dinosaur trackways near Tumbler Ridge by his eight-year-old son and a friend in 2000, he was a founding member of the Tumbler Ridge Museum in 2002, and through this organisation he helped establish a local palaeontology research centre, which specialises in ichnology. He has served on the museum board of directors as president, vice-president and secretary. He has made Cretaceous dinosaur trackway discoveries and Triassic fish and marine reptile discoveries. He led the drive for the successful designation of the Tumbler Ridge Unesco Global Geopark. He is the author of nine books, one of which is a book on dinosaurs for children.

He has applied the palaeontological knowledge he acquired in Canada to his native South Africa since 2007, documenting the wealth of Pleistocene fossil trackways that he and his research team have discovered along a 350km stretch of coastline, and has led research publications on these findings. Discoveries include four hominin track sites and evidence that patterns made in sand by hominins are now preserved in rock surfaces.

He is a research associate with the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, where he is currently pursuing his PhD in the Department of Geoscience. He has helped to pioneer the emerging discipline of geomythology in southern Africa. He has given numerous talks on palaeontology, ichnology and geomythology to audiences in Canada and South Africa.