
Professor Philip Donoghue
B.Sc.(Leic.), M.Sc. (Sheff.), Ph.D.(Leic.)
Current positions
Professor of Palaeobiology
School of Earth Sciences
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
My research is focused on the relationship between evolution and embryology, integrating living and fossil organisms, developmental biology, and knowledge of their evolutionary relationships, to provide an holistic understanding of major episodes in evolutionary history.
I have particular interest in the evolutionary emergence of vertebrates, and of ecdysozoans, but also in the evolutionary emergence of animals and plants more generally. This entails classical palaeobiology, but also molecular genetics – to calibrate the Tree of Life to time using molecular clock theory, and to determine the role of genetic regulators of development in effecting organismal-level evolutionary change.
My group has facilities for rock digestion, high-end computed tomography, animal culture facilities and a molecular laboratory for RNA and DNA library preparation, gene cloning, and in situ hybridisation.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Efficient computational technologies to resolve the Timetree of Life: from ancient DNA to species-rich phylogenies
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Earth SciencesDates
01/08/2024 to 31/07/2027
Between rocks and clocks: evolutionary history of Hymenoptera during the radiation of flowering plants
Principal Investigator
Description
The order Hymenoptera encompasses ants, wasps, and bees and is a textbook example of a diverse clade, known from more than 120,000 living species, that display extraordinary morphological, taxonomic, and…Managing organisational unit
School of Earth SciencesDates
04/03/2024 to 31/05/2024
Evolutionary dynamics of Neuropterida and the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Earth SciencesDates
01/04/2022 to 31/03/2024
Thesis supervisions
Estimating a timescale for the tree of life using integrated fossil and genomic methods
Supervisors
Whole Genome Duplication and the Evolution of the Land Plant Body Plan
Supervisors
Palaeobiology and Preservation of the Ediacaran Weng'an Biota
Supervisors
Growth and Development in the Ediacaran Macrobiota
Supervisors
Modelling fossil and molecular data to establish the timescale of animal evolution
Supervisors
Investigating tricky nodes in the Tree of Life
Supervisors
Isolating evolutionary phenomena in analyses of disparity
Supervisors
Evolution of the Eumetazoan Body Plan
Supervisors
The Role of Mechanical Function in the Evolution of Skeletal Morphology
Supervisors
The evolutionary origin of teeth
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
16/01/2025A timescale for the evolutionary history of sea spiders (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida)
Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society
CAT-Posterior Mean Site Frequencies improves phylogenetic modeling under Maximum Likelihood and resolves Tardigrada as the sister of Arthropoda plus Onychophora
Genome Biology and Evolution
Functional optimality underpins the repeated evolution of the extreme "saber-tooth" morphology
Current Biology
The emergence of metabolisms through Earth history and implications for biospheric evolution
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The evolution of herbivory, not terrestrialisation, drove morphological change in the mandibles of Palaeozoic tetrapods
Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society