David Evans was born in Ontario and raised in Kelowna, British Columbia. He received his B.Sc. from the Integrated Sciences Program of the University of British Columbia in 2003, where he completed an undergraduate thesis on skull growth and variation in the hadrosaur Corythosaurus. Over the course of his undergraduate degree, Evans worked as a field technician at the Royal Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller. He then completed his Ph.D. in 2007 under the supervision of Canadian paleontologist Robert Reisz at the University of Toronto in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology on development and phylogenetic relationships of lambeosaurine hadrosaurs. Following the completion of his Ph.D., Evans was hired as a curator by the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, where he currently serves as the Temerty Chair in Vertebrate Palaeontology. He has been part of the faculty in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto since 2007 and currently holds the rank of Associate Professor. He is also the owner of a male Shiba Inu named Doug.
Academic contributions
David Evans' research focuses primarily on the evolution and paleobiology of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs, particularly in North American ecosystems. He has published extensively on various aspects of hadrosaurs, following his undergraduate and doctoral dissertations, including phylogenetics, development, biostratigraphy, and anatomy. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and has several publications in leading scientific journals, including Biological Reviews, Current Biology, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, and Science, and has contributed book chapters to several edited volumes. Evans' current research interests focus primarily on the vast majority of the well-known Late Cretaceous dinosaur clades found in western North America, and he maintains active fieldwork programs in Alberta and Montana. He has also conducted research on dinosaur material from Mongolia and tetrapod-bearing deposits in Sudan. Evans has also been involved with both fieldwork and research of the Early JurassicsauropodomorphMassospondylus from South Africa and has conducted research on pelycosaurian-grade Permian synapsids, Permian temnospondyls, the iconic Pleistocene felid Smilodon, and choristoderes. Evans has been a part of various teams that have named over a dozen new genera or species of dinosaurs. New ceratopsians named by Evans and colleagues include Xenoceratops foremostensis Ryan, Evans, & Shepherd, 2012; Gryphoceratops morrisoni Ryan, Evans, Currie, Brown, & Brinkman, 2012; Unescoceratops koppelhusi Ryan, Evans, Currie, Brown, & Brinkman, 2012; Mercuriceratops gemini Ryan, Evans, Loewen, & Currie, 2014; Wendiceratops pinhorensis Evans & Ryan, 2015; Spiclypeus shipporum Mallon, Ott, Larson, Iuliano, & Evans, 2016; and Ferrisaurus sustutensis Arbour & Evans, 2019. Evans was also involved in the naming of the ornithopodsAlbertadromeus syntarsus Brown, Evans, Ryan, & Russell, 2013; Plesiohadros djadokhtaensis Tsogtbaatar, Weishampel, Evans, & Watabe, 2014; and Gobihadros mongoliensis Tsogtbaatar, Weishampel, Evans, & Watabe, 2019; the pachycephalosaurians Acrotholus audeti Evans, Schott, Larson, Brown, & Ryan, 2013; and Foraminacephale brevis Schott & Evans, 2016; the dromaeosauridAcheroraptor temertyorum Evans, Currie, & Larson, 2013; the ankylosauridZuul crurivastator Arbour & Evans, 2017; and the troodontidAlbertavenator curriei Evans, Cullen, Larson, & Rego, 2017. Evans has also been involved with the naming of various new non-dinosaurian taxa, such as the Devonianonychodontiform fish Onychodus eriensis Mann, Rudkin, Evans, & Laflamme, 2017; the CarboniferousparareptileErpetonyx arsenaultorum Modesto, Scott, MacDougall, Sues, Evans, & Reisz, 2015; and the Cretaceous baenidturtleNeurankylus lithographicus Larson, Longrich, Evans, & Ryan, 2013. As a professor at the University of Toronto, Evans supervises numerous graduate students in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Former M.Sc. students include Arjan Mann ; Ryan Schott ; Chris McGarrity ; and Collin Van Buren. Former Ph.D. students include Nicolas Campione ; Caleb Brown ; Kirstin Brink ; Thomas Cullen ; Mateusz Wosik, and Kentaro Chiba. Evans also serves on the editorial board of several academic journals, including FACETS and Biology Letters, and has previously served as an editor at PLOS ONE.
Evans has been featured in numerous documentaries, including the History Channel's 2015 documentary Dino Hunt Canada and various episodes of Daily Planet and radio and TV interviews, as well as appeared in the TVOKids series Dino Dan: Trek's Adventures. He has also helped to develop several exhibits, including the traveling "Ultimate Dinosaurs" exhibit in 2012, the permanent James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs at the Royal Ontario Museum, and temporary exhibits at the ROM, including "Dinosaur Eggs & Babies: Remarkable Fossils from South Africa" and "Zuul, Life of an Armoured Dinosaur". Evans has also served on numerous committees of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
