Professor Philip Donoghue

Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Bristol

Professor Donoghue’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of major evolutionary transitions, bringing together evidence from the fossil record and comparative genomics. He introduced synchrotron imaging (a type of x-ray) into palaeontology, using it to draw links between the fossils of now extinct marine creatures and the fossilised embryos of early animals and their relatives. Professor Donoghue also led on the use of fossil data in molecular clock analyses, which has established evolutionary timescales for major groupings of organisms, including the entire tree of life.