Scott Sampson

Scott Sampson is a Canadian dinosaur paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science communicator who presently serves as Research Curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History, University of Utah.  His research focuses on the ecology and evolution of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs, and he has conducted fieldwork in Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Madagascar, Mexico, the United States, and Canada.  

Currently, he is serving as the lead researcher on a large scale project in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah, which has yielded abundant remains of a previously unknown assemblage of dinosaurs.  Sampson has published numerous scientific and popular articles, and has lectured extensively to audiences of all ages on dinosaurs, evolution, and astronomy.  In addition to continuing dinosaur research, he is now pursuing a range of new projects focused on science education.  Sampson was the primary scientific consultant and on-air host of the four-part Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet, and he is presently serving the same pair of roles for the PBS children’s series Dinosaur Train, produced by the Jim Henson Company.  

Sampson recently completed a general audience book, Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life (University of California Press, 2009), and is presently working on another book pertaining to the epic of evolution.