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 and later associate curator for the
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
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 n ...
''
Dunkleosteus'' 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 ...
, 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. Tw ...
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
Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) as a 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 ...
. There, he studied and published papers about
arthrodires 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 ...
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, t ...
upon which the controversial proposed
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 n ...
''
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 ...
'' 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
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, 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/Midwestern and Southeastern region of the United States. Its southern terminus is at an interchange with I-64 and I-65 (the Kennedy Interchange) in Louisvill ...
.
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
Tappahannock is the oldest town in Essex County, Virginia, United States. The population was 2,375 at the 2010 census, up from 2,068 at the 2000 census. Located on the Rappahannock River, Tappahannock is the county seat of Essex County. Its name ...
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 ''
Dunkleosteus'' 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