Scientists and explorers
The DinoDawn Expedition Team
The scientists and explorers who search the red hills of the Algarve for Triassic fossils, and study what they find.
The 2026 Team
The scientists lead the research. The PaleoDiscovery Team leads field operations and works the dig beside them.
Lead Paleontologist
Ricardo Araújo, PhD
Instituto Superior Técnico
He directs the expedition’s research and leads its field science team. He founded PaleoMoz, which gave Mozambique its first paleontology laboratory, and has named 7 new species. He is a professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, a National Geographic Explorer and a Fellow of The Explorers Club. In 2022 he co-led, with Romain David, a study in Nature on the origin of warm blood in mammals, and in 2025 he won a 2 million euro Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.
PaleoDiscovery Team Lead
David Isserman
He leads the expedition with Ricardo Araújo and heads the PaleoDiscovery Team, which runs field operations and logistics. An explorer and conservationist based in Lisbon, he has been a Life Member of The Explorers Club since 2002, is a former Director of its Board and sits on the board of its Portugal chapter. He is also an advisory trustee of the Academy of Science of St. Louis.
Scientific Team
Filippo Bertozzo, PhD
Instituto Superior Técnico
A paleobiologist and Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Instituto Superior Técnico, he specializes in the biology, behavior and way of life of ornithischian dinosaurs, and in ancient injuries and diseases in extinct animals. His current project looks at the metabolism of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, the flying reptiles, near the start of their evolution.
Scientific Team
Leonardo Bonelli
Sociedade de História Natural
An Italian paleontology graduate with a master’s degree in paleontology and systematics from Sorbonne University, he now volunteers at the Sociedade de História Natural. He is passionate about vertebrate paleontology and evolution, has lived in several countries, and joins DinoDawn for a new adventure that can reveal more about the evolutionary history of vertebrates.
Expedition Photographer
Marc Bryan-Brown
A British documentary photographer based in New York, he is known for pioneering digital expedition photography. He documents the expedition and brings logistics and production skills to the field team.
Microvertebrate Team
Bruno Camilo
Sociedade de História Natural and Instituto Superior Técnico
He has spent 30 years studying dinosaurs and other fossil vertebrates in the Upper Jurassic of Portugal. He reads the microscopic structure of bone to learn how dinosaurs grew, and has coordinated field campaigns in Torres Vedras for many years.
Triassic Fauna Lead
Hugo Campos
Geoparque Algarvensis
He works on the Triassic animals of the Algarve and is the Geopark’s science communicator. In 2018 he reported the first placodont known from Portugal.
Microvertebrate Team
Victor Carvalho
Sociedade de História Natural and Instituto Superior Técnico
A paleontologist and scientific illustrator at the Sociedade de História Natural, he studies Mesozoic mammals and the tiny fossils they left behind. His paleoart won the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s Lanzendorf–National Geographic PaleoArt award for scientific illustration in 2021, and he is now a PhD candidate at Instituto Superior Técnico, researching how vertebrates became warm-blooded.
Palynology
Lígia Castro, PhD
NOVA FCT and GeoBioTec
She dates rock from the fossil pollen, spores and dinoflagellate cysts inside it, and the team is using that method to date the beds. She is a professor of palynology and stratigraphy.
Scientific Team
Hilde G.B. Desmet
Sociedade de História Natural
A geography teacher in Belgium, she went back to university to study paleobiology at the University of Opole and spent years working on the Late Triassic of Krasiejów in Poland. She joined the Sociedade de História Natural in 2022 and now divides her time between Late Jurassic fossils of the Lusitanian Basin and Devonian brachiopods from Belgium, entirely at the service of science.
Fossil Prospecting
Luís Domingos
Sociedade de História Natural
He works in public administration and develops web applications. He takes part in excavations with the Sociedade de História Natural in Torres Vedras, but what drives him most is prospecting, walking the land in search of fossils and new fossil sites for the thrill of discovery.
Geology
Paulo Fernandes, PhD
Universidade do Algarve
A stratigrapher and palynologist with more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, he is Assistant Professor at the University of the Algarve and a researcher at CIMA. He holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin.
PaleoDiscovery Team
Dave Finnegan
The Explorers Club
An anthropologist by training, he built a career in marketing, private equity and board leadership and now works on how the expedition’s findings reach the press and the exploration community.
PaleoDiscovery Team
Lars Finskud
On the expedition he helps lead field operations and logistics across the field sites. He is a Danish strategist based in Lisbon and advises global brands.
Histology
Klara T. Gerken
University of Bonn
She studies how teeth attach to the jaw in temnospondyls and ichthyosaurs as a Master’s student in paleontology. In the field she is looking for more of Metoposaurus algarvensis.
Fossil Preparation
Lucas Gietzen
University of Münster
He studied geosciences at the University of Münster, where he then began an apprenticeship as a geological and paleontological preparator. During his bachelor’s degree he spent almost a year at the Sociedade de História Natural in Torres Vedras through an EU program, gaining experience in fossil preparation and fieldwork.
Geology
José Carlos Kullberg, PhD
NOVA FCT and GeoBioTec
A structural geologist, he works on tectonics, basin analysis and the Mesozoic and Cenozoic history of the West Iberian Margin. He is Professor of Earth Sciences at NOVA School of Science and Technology.
Paleontology Team
Miguel Marx, PhD
Instituto Superior Técnico
A postdoctoral researcher, he studies the inner ear and the origin of warm blood in several groups of four-limbed animals. He earned his PhD at Lund University in Sweden with work on plesiosaurs and has done fieldwork in Wyoming, Lourinhã and Angola.
Design and Visualization
Beth Moore
A customer and user experience leader who has guided transformation and AI strategy for major retailers, healthcare companies and manufacturers, she helps bring the Triassic Algarve to life on this site, one pixel at a time. She has always dreamed of joining a dinosaur dig, and now she is part of one.
Scientific Team
Ignace R. Nerinckx, PhD
Sociedade de História Natural
He holds a doctorate in biology from the University of Leuven in Belgium and a master’s in paleontology from the University of Opole in Poland. His main interests are fieldwork and fossil preparation, especially of fossils that show anomalies, and he has studied the Triassic vertebrates Metoposaurus and Stagonolepis.
Science Communication
João Neves
Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa
He is a geology student about to specialize in fossil fish, with wide experience in science communication and environmental education.
Photo: Marc Bryan-Brown
Mammal Origins
Sofia Patrocínio
Instituto Superior Técnico
A paleontologist with a master’s degree from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, she wrote her dissertation on the docodonts, an early branch of the mammal family. Her doctoral research on how mammals became warm-blooded is part of the DinoDawn project.
PaleoDiscovery Team
Pedro Quinteiro, PhD
Lusófona University
He has been with DinoDawn since the 2024 prospection season. He is an Associate Professor and the author of more than 40 scientific works on leadership and teamwork.
Fossil Prospecting
Kirill Trifonov
Sociedade de História Natural
A technology professional with more than 19 years in IT leadership and management, he pursues his passion for paleontology alongside his career. With the Sociedade de História Natural in Torres Vedras he has taken part in many excavations, and his main interest is prospecting for and discovering new fossil localities.
Scientific Team
Marco Turcato
Sociedade de História Natural
The team’s main fossil preparator, he is working on the material collected in the 2025 season. He earned a bachelor’s degree in geological sciences at the University of Padua and a master’s in geological sciences and technologies at the University of Pisa. He focuses on the techniques of fossil preparation and on taphonomy, what happened to the bones between death and discovery.
Photo: Verena Fuchs
Environmental Science
Sandra Willert
Sociedade de História Natural
She is an environmental scientist with a master’s degree in biodiversity and environmental education from Karlsruhe University of Education, and volunteers at the Sociedade de História Natural. Her work spans interdisciplinary projects, biodiversity research and non-formal education.