David C. Evans

David C. Evans

Curator, Vertebrate Palaeontology (Dinosaurs)

Area: Natural History, Fossils & Evolution

Exhibitions & Galleries: Temerty Gallery of the Age of Dinosaurs

Bio

B.Sc., Integrated Sciences Program, University of British Columbia, 2003
Ph.D., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 2007

David Evans is a Curator in Vertebrate Palaeontology and oversees dinosaur research at the ROM. He is also a cross-appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.

David was born in Ontario and grew up in Kelowna, British Columbia. He first laid eyes on dinosaur skeletons in the galleries of the ROM and has been fascinated with dinosaurs and palaeontology ever since. As an undergraduate student David spent several summers working as a field technician for the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, where he studied the duck-billed dinosaur Corythosaurus for his undergraduate thesis. David’s doctoral dissertation focused on skull growth and evolution in crested hadrosaurs, with an emphasis on the striking diversity of these animals from Alberta, Canada. Since the ROM has one of the best collections of these dinosaurs in the world, it was natural that David chose to do his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto.

David's research has led to publications on systematics and evolution of dinosaurs, functional morphology, and phylogenetic methods and theory. His research program at the ROM focuses on the evolution, historical biogeography, and palaeobiology of dinosaurs and their role in Late Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems. His aim is to clarify the evolutionary relationships and diversity of dinosaurs, and to evaluate patterns of their evolution and biogeography as they relate to environmental changes leading up to the end Cretaceous extinction event. David is also known for his re-discovery of a giant Barosaurus skeleton within the museum’s own collection, which became the centre-piece of the Temerty Gallery of the Age of Dinosaurs in 2007. He is also the Lead Curator of the ROM's major travelling exhibition Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants from Gondwana.

Because new fossil discoveries have the potential to change our perception of the history of life, David is also active in the field searching for and collecting dinosaurs and other vertebrate fossils. He has organized and led fieldwork to the Sahara Desert, Mongolia, South Africa, Alberta, and the Canadian arctic. Current fieldwork includes a systematic survey of the Milk River region of southern Alberta, which is part of a multi-year collaborative field research project organized and initiated with colleagues from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Royal Tyrrell Museum, as well as exciting field exploration of the Sahara desert in northern Sudan. These projects have the potential to reveal new dinosaur species and to contribute to our knowledge of a poorly known aspects of Late Cretaceous dinosaur evolution.