Dinosaur lady Joan Wiffen has been awarded the prestigious Morris Skinner Award by the United States-based Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology at its 64th annual meeting in Denver.
The award is made for outstanding and sustained contribution to scientific knowledge through the making of important collections of fossil vertebrates.
Mrs Wiffen, of HavelockNorth, who has been awarded a CBE and an honorary doctorate for her work, discovered fossils in an isolated part of Mangahoranga Stream in Northern Hawke's Bay.
Entirely self taught, Mrs Wiffen led a small team of largely amateur palaeontologists that documented virtually all New Zealand's known dinosaur fauna.
She was nominated for the award by Mike Caldwell, University of Alberta, a specialist in fossil marine reptiles who brought a National Geographic-funded team to New Zealand to work with Mrs Wiffen some years ago.
Her nomination was supported by letters of recommendation by Norton Hiller, curator of Canterbury Museum, and Chris Hollis and other palaeontologists at the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (IGNS) at Lower Hutt.
The institute said her scientific endeavours spanned arduous field work, painstaking fossil preparation, taxonomic description and palaeontological interpretation.
"Her contributions are extremely important nationally and give New Zealand geographic position, internationally," the institute said.
She also promoted palaeontology through contributions to popular books and articles, public lectures and school presentations.
Her work figures prominently in Te Papa and the Hawke's Bay Museum which has a Once Were Dinosaurs exhibition.
