Dr Dunn’s research is concerned with understanding the origin and early evolution of animals and how the fossil record informs our view of those events. Specifically, she works on a group of organisms colloquially termed the Ediacaran Macrobiota. These organisms appear in the fossil record ~570 million years ago and may represent some of the most ancient records of animal life. However, the morphology of these fossils is unlike anything within the repertoire of living animals and so many aspects of their (palaeo)biology remain contentious.
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Frankie Dunn is a research fellow at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, supported by both the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and Merton College, where she holds a Junior Research Fellowship.
Prior to this, Frankie completed her PhD (2015-2019) at the University of Bristol, where she studied Ediacaran macrofossils under the supervision of Professor Philip Donoghue, Dr Alexander Liu and Dr Philip Wilby.
