Doctoral Students


Frankie Dunn (2015 - Present)

Frankie is exploring the development and morphogenesis of Ediacaran macro-organisms, an endeavour that we hope will ultimately enable us to constrain their phylogenetic affinities. Frankie joined us from the University of Warwick, and has a background in developmental biology. She is co-supervised by Prof. Phil Donoghue (University of Bristol), and Dr Phil Wilby (British Geological Survey), and funded by a NERC GW4 DTP / CASE+ studentship.



Emma Landon (2016 - Present)

Emma is investigating the sedimentology and taphonomy of microfossil assemblages of the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation, China. Emma is primarily supervised by Prof. Phil Donoghue (University of Bristol), and is funded by a NERC GW4 DTP studentship.






Masters Students

Alavya Dhungana (2018)

Alavya is studying the spatial distributions and taphonomy of the Ediacaran discoidal fossil Aspidella from Newfoundland, Canada, to test the hypothesis that they represent the holdfast discs of frondose organisms. He is co-supervised by Dr Emily Mitchell (University of Cambridge).



Christos Psarras (2015)

Christos investigated the 3-dimensional nature of material from Siberia claimed to be the oldest evidence for bioturbation on Earth (Rogov et al., 2012). He has compared this material to tubular body fossils from latest Ediacaran strata in Spain, to resolve previous suggestions that the Siberian material may instead record body fossil assemblages (cf. Brasier et al., 2013). Christos was co-supervised by Prof. Phil Donoghue (University of Bristol) and Dr Dima Grazhdankin (IPGG, Novosibirsk). We are grateful to Prof. Soren Jensen (Universidad de Extremadura) and Prof. Rachel Wood (University of Edinburgh) for providing body fossil material for palaeontological comparison.




If you are interested in Ediacaran palaeobiological research and would like to discuss potential avenues for a future PhD in this area, please get in touch. Applications for October 2019 entry at the University of Cambridge will open in September 2018.