David Hosbrook Dunkle (September 9, 1911 – January 3, 1984) was an American paleontologist. Dunkle was curator of

vertebrate paleontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord. It also tries to connect, by us ...

for the

Cleveland Museum of Natural History The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum located approximately five miles (8 km) east of downtown Cleveland, Ohio in University Circle, a 550-acre (220 ha) concentration of educational, cultural and medical instit ...

and later associate curator for the

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

. Dunkle's research and published works focused mainly on fish fossils. The

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

Dunkleosteus ''Dunkleosteus'' is an extinct genus of large armored, jawed fishes that existed during the Late Devonian period, about 382–358 million years ago. It consists of ten species, some of which are among the largest placoderms to have ever lived: ...

'' is named in his honor.

Biography

Dunkle was born in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...

, Manitoba, and grew up in

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

, United States. He attended the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. T ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. At Harvard, he studied under

Alfred Romer Alfred Sherwood Romer (December 28, 1894 – November 5, 1973) was an American paleontologist and biologist and a specialist in vertebrate evolution. Biography Alfred Romer was born in White Plains, New York, the son of Harry Houston Romer an ...

and earned a PhD in 1939. Afterwards, he worked at the

(CMNH) as a curator of

. There, he studied and published papers about

arthrodires Arthrodira (Greek for "jointed neck") is an order of extinct armored, jawed fishes of the class Placodermi that flourished in the Devonian period before their sudden extinction, surviving for about 50 million years and penetrating most marine ...

from the

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

area. In the 1940s, he led two trips to the west to bolster the museum's collection of

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s. A notable object he collected for the museum was CMNH 7541, a dinosaur

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

upon which the controversial proposed

'' Nanotyrannus'' is based on. After Dunkle collected the skull in 1942, it was first described as a new species in the tyrannosaur genus ''

Gorgosaurus ''Gorgosaurus'' ( ; ) is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period (Campanian), between about 76.6 and 75.1 million years ago. Fossil remains have been found in the Ca ...

'' by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946. In 1946, Dunkle left his post at the CMNH to work as associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the

, although he continued working with the CMNH. In the 1960s, he acted as a scientific consultant to the CMNH on an operation salvaging fossils from

Interstate 71 Interstate 71 (I-71) is a north–south Interstate Highway in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes/Midwestern and Southeastern region of the United States. Its southern terminus is at an interchange with Interstate 64 in Kentucky, I-64 and ...

. He retired from the National Museum in March 1968 and worked at the CMNH until retiring in 1975. After retirement, he moved to Burgess, Virginia. He died in Tappahannock on January 3, 1984. He was survived by his wife and daughter.

Legacy

Through his lifetime, Dunkle published around fifty papers that mostly deal with the fossils of fish. The genus ''

'' was named after him while still working at the CMNH, then as curator of vertebrate paleontology, in 1956.

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunkle, David 1911 births 1984 deaths University of Kansas alumni Harvard University alumni Vertebrate paleontologists American curators Smithsonian Institution people