New Zealand's best known amateur fossil hunter has died. Joan Wiffen, who became known as the Dinosaur Lady, was 87.
Born in 1922 and brought up in the King Country and Hawke's Bay in the Depression, Joan Wiffen had only a brief secondary education - her father believed higher education was wasted on girls.
She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II and in 1953 married Pont Wiffen, raising their two children at Haumoana near Hastings.
The family hobby was rock collecting and Joan and Pont travelled widely in New Zealand and Australia, collecting minerals and fossils.
In 1975, during a dig in the Maungahouanga valley in northern Hawke's Bay, she found a fossil bone which was later identified as coming from a dinosaur seven metres long. The discovery proved her theory that dinosaurs had once roamed New Zealand.
Mrs Wiffen's discoveries continued and she subsequently found three more species of dinosaurs. Her work was recognised internationally and in New Zealand.
In 1994, she received an honorary doctorate from Massey University and the following year a CBE. In 2004, she accepted the Morris Skinner award for outstanding and sustained contributions to scientific knowledge.
Mrs Wiffen was the author and co-author of more than a dozen scientific papers and wrote of her achievements in her book Valley of the Dragons.
Mrs Wiffen died suddenly in a Hawke's Bay hospital on Tuesday. She is survived by her son and daughter and a stepson and their families.
