Joan Wiffen
| Joan Wiffen | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Joan Pederson 4 February 1922 |
| Died | 30 June 2009 (aged 87) Hastings, New Zealand |
| Nationality | New Zealand |
| Fields | Paleontology |
| Known for | First discovery of dinosaur fossils in New Zealand |
| Notable awards | Morris Skinner Award |
| Spouse | Montagu Arthur "Pont" Wiffen (m. 1953) |
Joan Wiffen CBE (née Pederson, 4 February 1922 – 30 June 2009) was a New Zealand amateur paleontologist.
Wiffen was born in 1922 and was brought up in Havelock North and King Country. She only had a very short secondary school education as her father believed that higher education was wasted on girls, so he made her leave. At the age of 16, Wiffen joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II where she served for six years.
In 1975 Wiffen discovered the first dinosaur fossils in New Zealand in the Maungahounga Valley in Northern Hawkes Bay. Her first discovery was the tail bone of a theropod dinosaur. Her later finds included bones from a hypsilophodont, a pterosaur, an ankylosaur, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. In 1999, Wiffen discovered the vertebra bone of a titanosaur in a tributary of the Te Hoe River. The fossils Wiffen found are primarily held in a GNS Science collection.
Fossils were first found in New Zealand in 1865.
Wiffen was awarded an honorary DSc by Massey University in 1994. In the 1995 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to science. In 2004, she won the Morris Skinner Award from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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