Graham Budd

Budd's research focuses on the Cambrian explosion and on the evolution and development, anatomy, and patterns of diversification of the Ecdysozoa, a group of animals that include arthropods.

Life and work

Budd was born on 7 September 1968 in Colchester (Essex). He obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge and remained there, in the Department of Earth Sciences, to continue his studies at a doctoral level by investigating the Sirius Passet fossil lagerstätte from the Cambrian of North Greenland. He finished his doctorate in 1994, with one of the findings being a new species of lobopodian, Kerygmachela. Budd then moved to Sweden as a postdoc along with his PhD supervisor John Peel.

Together with Sören Jensen he reintroduced the concepts of stem and crown groups to phylogenetics and is a major critic of molecular clocks current usage in determining the origin of animal and plant groups.

He has edited Acta Zoologica together with Lennart Olsson; he has also edited the Geological Magazine.