John Foster is a paleontologist at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal, Utah. He has conducted fieldwork and research in the Morrison Formation throughout the Rocky Mountain region for 30 years, starting while a graduate student at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the University of Colorado, Boulder. He previously worked as executive director of the Moab Museum in Moab, Utah, and curator of paleontology at the Museums of Western Colorado in Fruita, Colorado. He is also author of Cambrian Ocean World: Ancient Sea Life of North America.