in paleontology from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and his Ph.D. in geosciences from the University of Rhode Island, as a student of paleontologist David Fastovsky [de] [2][3] He is an Assistant Professor of Geology in the Biology/Chemistry Department at Liberty University, where he is also the Assistant Director of the Center for Creation Studies.
Ross, along with Fred Heeren (an old Earth creationist), attended the Kunming conference in China with grants from the Institute.
The conference was notable for being secretly funded by the Discovery Institute in a failed attempt to gain scientific legitimacy for intelligent design.
This is in contrast to his previous position as reflected when he earned his Ph.D. in geosciences from University of Rhode Island with a dissertation about "the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago.
[6] In 2011, Steven Newton's cover story in Earth discussed Ross using minor appearances at academic conferences, where he uses standard science, as a way to bolster claims that creationists challenge mainstream geological consensus when they are not presenting young Earth creationism at the conferences.