Joan Wiffen
Joan Wiffen (born February 4, 1922 , † June 30, 2009 in Hastings (New Zealand) ) was a New Zealand amateur paleontologist and pioneer for dinosaur finds in New Zealand.
Life
Wiffen grew up in Havelock North and King Counties, New Zealand, and left school at 16 to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in New Zealand, where she served during World War II. After that she was an office worker. In 1953 she married Pont Wiffen and had two children with him, a son and a daughter. She lived in Haumoana near Hastings. The couple collected fossils, minerals and shells in their spare time on extensive trips to New Zealand and Australia. In addition, Wiffen took evening courses in geology.
Joan Wiffen discovered the first dinosaur fossils in New Zealand in 1975 in Hawkes Bay on the North Island (Maungahounga Valley). In doing so, she followed references to reptile finds in an old geological map. First she found the tail bone of a late Cretaceous theropod , then hypsilophodonts , pterosaurs , an ankylosaurs , mosasaurs (she named Moanasaurus after the Maori word for sea) and plesiosaurs, and in 1999 the vertebra of a titanosaur . Most of their finds are located in the state GNS Science Institute.
Altogether there are four known sites of dinosaurs in New Zealand (Hawkes Bay, which is remote and because it is located in a private forest requires a permit to be visited, Port Waikato, where the toe of a theropod was found, Chatham Islands, footprints on the coast at Farewell Spit ), where a systematic state-sponsored search for dinosaurs has not taken place today (2016).
She received the 2004 Morris Skinner Award from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology . In 1995 it became CBE . In 1994 she received an honorary doctorate from Massey University .
She published around a dozen academic papers and the book Valley of the Dragons .
Fonts
- Valley of the dragons: The story of New Zealand's dinosaur woman , Random Century 1991
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wiffen, Joan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | New Zealand paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 4, 1922 |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 30, 2009 |
| Place of death | Hastings (New Zealand) |