Scott D. Sampson

Sampson was born in the neighborhood of Dunbar-Southlands in Vancouver, British Columbia. He attended Point Grey Secondary School. Sampson graduated from the University of Toronto in 1993 and worked for a year at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Then he worked for five years as an assistant professor of anatomy at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine on Long Island. where Sampson has been a curator since 1999. As seen in the photograph these former exhibits were dismantled in 2011 when the museum moved to the new Rio Tinto Center and changed name to Natural History Museum of Utah. Sampson is featured as "Dr. Scott the paleontologist" on the PBS television series, Dinosaur Train. In this television series, he mentions he gave Masiakasaurus its name, and that he participated in naming Kosmoceratops. In 2003, he hosted Dinosaur Planet, a series of four animated nature documentaries which aired on the Discovery Channel. The series was narrated by Christian Slater. His first book, Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life was published by University of California Press in 2009. The book, aimed at the general public reconstructs the odyssey of the dinosaurs from their origins on the supercontinent of Pangaea, and explores the way in which dinosaurs ecologically interacted in an expansive web of relationships with other organisms and their natural environment, underscoring "paradigm shifts", which conceptualize the nature of the dinosaurian world. ==Research==

Aside from his research conducted in museums, Sampson has undertaken paleontological fieldwork in countries such as Zimbabwe, South Africa and Madagascar as well as the United States and Canada. In 1995 he made a phylogenetic analysis of the Centrosaurinae and Ceratopsidae in the state of Montana and produced two papers on these horned dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous. Sampson also published a paper documenting the discovery of the first Tyrannosaurus specimen found in Utah, as well as the first evidence of coexistence between Tyrannosaurus and sauropods. ''. Sampson has studied fossils of this dinosaur in Madagascar In 1998 he conducted thorough paleontological studies into the Cretaceous period in Madagascar and published several papers on it. These include Predatory dinosaur remains from Madagascar: Implications for the Cretaceous biogeography of Gondwana. and The theropodan ancestry of birds: New evidence from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar, both published in 1998. In 2001 he returned to Madagascar and conducted some important research into the evolution of Gondwanan theropods, publishing a paper on it, entitled A bizarre predatory dinosaur from Madagascar: implications for the evolution of Gondwanan theropods. In 2007 he published Dental morphology and variation in Majungasaurus crenatissimus (Theropoda: Abelisauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Sampson stresses the importance of evolution in understanding the dynamics of ecology in everyday life and that is underplayed in modern society: Below is a list of taxa that Sampson has contributed to naming: == Bibliography ==

• Sampson, S. D. 1995. Two new horned dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana; with a phylogenetic analysis of the Centrosaurinae (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 15(4): 743–760. • • • • • • • • • • • • • ==Personal life==

He has two daughters and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Toni. ==References==