DUNKLE, DAVID HOSBROOK (9 Sept. 1911-3 Jan. 1984) was an internationally known palentologist. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he grew up in Indiana and attended the University of Kansas. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1939, where he studied under famed paleontologist Alfred S. Romer, Dunkle joined the staff of the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. There he turned his attention to the Museum's collection of arthrodires (a type of extinct armored fish) from Devonian age rocks of the Cleveland area. He soon began to publish a series of papers, most in collaboration with assistant Peter A. Bungart (1876-1948), describing these fish. He also led two western trips in the 1940s in order to collect dinosaurs and fossil animals for the museum. Dunkle left Cleveland for a position as a vertebrate paleontologist at the U.S. National Museum of Natural History in 1946. While at the national museum, he continued an association with the Cleveland museum and, during the 1960s, acted as advisor for that museum's Interstate-71 fossil salvage operation. He retired from the National Museum in 1968 and returned to the Cleveland museum. He again retired in 1975 and moved to Burgess, VA. Dunkle died in Tappahannock, VA and his ashes were placed in a family plot in Linden, IN. He was survived by his wife, Helena (Heckart) Dunkle, and his daughter, Ann David. Dunkle's greatest legacy is his published work, consisting of about 50 scientific and non-technical papers, most dealing with fossil fish. Dunkleosteus, a genus of large armored fish found in the Cleveland shale, is named in his honor.
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