Best of Story Collider: Bad Days in the Field

The Story Collider

This week, we bring you two stories about frustrations in the field, whether it's a failure to find dinosaur fossils or a struggle with a painful medical condition.

Part 1: Paleontologist David Evans and his team start to feel defeated after three days of searching fruitlessly for fossils.

Part 2: After cave geologist Gabriela Serrato Marks develops fibromyalgia, exploring caves becomes a challenge.

David C. Evans holds the Temerty Chair in Vertebrate Palaeontology and oversees dinosaur research at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. David is an Ontario-born researcher who is recognized as an authority on the rich dinosaur fossil record of Canada. As a curator, David helped develop the ROM's dinosaur galleries, and was Lead Curator of the major travelling exhibition Ultimate Dinosaurs. He has been featured on numerous television shows, and most recently, David was co-creator of the HISTORY series Dino Hunt Canada. David’s research focuses on the evolution, ecology and diversity of dinosaurs, and their relationship to environmental changes leading up to the end Cretaceous extinction event. Active in the field, he has participated in expeditions all over the world, including the Africa, Mongolia, and Canada, and has helped discover 10 new dinosaur species in the last five years- including the remarkable horned dinosaur Wendiceratops from southern Alberta, and the wickedly armoured Zuul named after the Ghostbusters movie monster.

Gabi is a science communicator with a passion for expanding inclusion in STEM. As a co-founder of Stellate Communications, she helps academics multiply the impact of their research and engage with new communities. She also co-edited Uncharted, an anthology of personal stories from disabled scientists (Columbia University Press). Gabi is based in Boston and spends her free time drinking iced coffee with her husband and two cats, Spock and Moose.

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