Palaeontologist Dean Lomax on the mighty marine reptiles that might have been the largest creatures ever to roam the planet – and on having the determination to follow your dreams
Have you ever been told you aren’t good enough to do something, then gone ahead and proved the naysayers wrong by doing it anyway – in glorious, headline-grabbing style?
That is the satisfying story of Dr Dean Lomax. Dean grew up in Doncaster with a passion for fossils but after failing various school exams, was told by teachers that he’d never make it as a palaeontologist. Undeterred by leaving school with no qualifications, Dean sold his childhood Star Wars collection to fund a fossil-hunting trip to America that changed his life – after which a chance discovery led to him publishing his first ever scientific paper at the age of just 20.
Today, he’s an expert on ichthyosaurs – the massive marine reptiles that once inhabited our seas – and has discovered and named several new species, written books for both adults and children, and brought the prehistoric world to life on TV. Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Dean discusses dinosaurs as a ‘gateway science’, discovering the Rutland Sea Dragon and the importance of cutting out noise from nay-sayers to follow your dreams…
