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We are very grateful to John Stewart for agreeing to write for ZOOARCH this short memorial for Fran Hernandez Carrasquilla. Here it is: Francisco Hernandez Carrasquilla 1964 – 2003 Francisco (Fran) Hernandez Carrasquilla died on the 15th of March of this year after a long illness. This has robbed the zooarchaeological and indeed ornithological community of a talented and individual scientist. In his own words, for Fran birds were his “life and his passion”. This passion was the theme which ran through his working life whether as a zooarchaeologist and palaeontologist or latterly as a bird population scientist. He completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid before embarking on a PhD (at the same institution) in the Quaternary birds of a number of Spanish archaeological localities, chief amongst which was the Cueva de Nerja. During his time as a PhD student he co-organised the first, and very successful ICAZ bird remains working group meeting, of which there have now been four. It was at the UAM that he collaborated with a team to publish some of the Cretaceous birds from Las Hoyas, published in Science in 1997. His publications on fossil and subfossil birds ranged from the indispensable catalogues of Spanish Quaternary localities yielding bird remains to a paper on the change in the subspecies of cormorant now living in the Baltic (with Per Ericson). After finishing his PhD he worked a preparatory at the Natural History Museum in Madrid and was responsible for significantly improving the collections. This was followed by a move back to his first love which was bird ringing when he began to work as the co-ordinator at the office of migratory species at the ministry of the environment and subsequently for the SEO/Bird Life. Writing an obituary for a friend and colleague of my own generation was not something I envisaged doing at this time of life. This emphasises the tragic nature of Fran’s loss at the age of a mere 38. He was a serious scientist of more than usual ability and had a cynical approach to what had gone before. His seriousness about his subject however should not mask his humour and sense of fun that was quite wicked at times (both in the old and new sense of the word). He will be greatly missed by those of us who regularly asked for his advice on matters both professional and personal. He leaves a wife (Ana Isabel Saldaya) and two young children. John R. Stewart Umberto Albarella Dept of Archaeology University of Durham Durham DH1 3LE, UK tel.+44-191-3341119 (please note: this has changed!) fax +44-191-3341101 (please note: this has changed!)