Dr Susan Turner has written two contributions to the Encyclopaedia on the History of the Geological Sciences (editor Dr Greg Good) due to be published by Garland Press (USA) next year: one a brief history of palaeontology in Australia and another on women palaeontologists in Australia.
The latter subject she returned to at a meeting on the History of Natural History organised by the Royal Society of Queensland held on October 14 at the Queensland Museum. She spoke particularly of the contributions to Queensland palaeontology made by Emeritus Professor Dorothy Hill and recently retired Museum Curator of Geology/Invertebrate Palaeontology Dr Mary Wade as well as the involvement of women and girls in collecting fossils in the State. An article resulting from this talk will be placed in a forthcoming issue of Australasian Science magazine.
In 1995, with the help of Vivienne Waterworth of PN Technology
of Brisbane, Sue devised a MAC Filemaker database on women involved
in fossil collecting and palaeontology in Australian history.
She hopes this database will be used in the future by historians
and will complement the rich resource of the Tom Vallance card
file now kept by David Branagan in Sydney. Oral history and artifacts
are also being collected, some of which may be used in an exhibition
of Women Collectors in Queensland mooted to celebrate Women's
Day in 1997. Any useful information on, anecdotes about, lists
of people, or information on objects (whereabouts of collections/cabinets,
hammers, photos, notebooks etc.) relating to women palaeontologists
in Australia will be gratefully received. Transmit to Dr Sue Turner,
c/o Queensland Museum, PO Box 3300, S. Brisbane, Qld 4101, Fax
07 846 1918, email:
s.turner @mailbox.uq.oz.au
Thanks especially to those who have already helped, notably David Branagan, Joan (Crockford) Beattie, Betty Ripper, Professor June Phillips-Ross, Mrs Susanna Huessler, Oliver Chalmers, Larry Harrington and Jack Jell.