Some of The FOSSIL Project team are in New Zealand at the moment (lets call it a working vacation), so it seems entirely appropriate that todays amazing woman paleontologist (for Womans History Month) hails from down under. Joan Wiffren (1922-2009) is famous for discovering New Zealands first dinosaurs at a time when conventional wisdom held that the country just didnt have dinosaurs. Joan liked fossils as a child, but had little reason to think she would study them professionally. Her father thought higher education was wasted on girls, and his views limited her secondary education. However, things changed when she reached middle age. Joans husband had enrolled in a geology course, but illness kept him from attending some of his classes, so she went in his place. Wiffen became motivated to learn more about paleontology after seeing after students showing off their prize finds. Joan found an old geologic map describing reptilian bones not far from her home. She and her husband began prospecting in 1972, but it took a further three years before she found a small bone fragment, which was later identified as belonging to a theropod dinosaur. This amateur paleontologist found New Zealands first confirmed dinosaur fossil! Wiffen and her mentor Ralph Molnar (Museum of Queensland) began working together, resulting in discoveries of pterosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, armored ankylosaurs, and several other dinosaur species. In 1994 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Massy University, in 1995 was made a Commander of the British Empire in honor of her discoveries, and in 2004 won the Morris Skinner Award from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Not bad for the daughter of a dad who didnt believe in educating girls!
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 09:34:33 +0000
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