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Shona M. Bell

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Shona Margaret Bell (married name Grant-Taylor, 19 April 1924 – 7 December 2011) was a New Zealand palaeontologist.[1][2]

Bell was born on 19 April 1924 in the Auckland suburb of Birkenhead.[3] Her parents were Dorothy (née Ambrose) and Lionel Bell, who had married in 1922. Her mother was a school teacher from Christchurch and her father worked for the Union Bank in Auckland.[4][5] By the early 1930s, the Bell family was living in Waipukurau in the Hawke's Bay, where her father was the manager of the Union Bank.[6] In March 1938, the Bell family moved to Wellington, where her father had been appointed to a head office position at the Union Bank.[7]

At the end of 1939, Bell matriculated from a school in Wellington, achieving a medical preliminary entrance.[8] She studied towards a Bachelor of Science at Auckland University College, passing her exams in geology at the University of New Zealand towards the end of 1945.[9] She studied the fossils of the Corbies Creek area of North Otago[10] and the Benmore Dam area.[11] The 1954 Directory of New Zealand Science records her as an assistant palaeontologist at the Geological Survey of New Zealand.[12] She was employed by GSNZ from 1948 to 1950, but resigned on her marriage to Tom Grant-Taylor, as was expected at the time.[13][14]

Bell's husband died in 1982.[15] She died at the Heretaunga Care Centre in the Upper Hutt suburb of Silverstream on 7 December 2011.[2]

In 2011 a newly discovered genus of fossil in the Codiaceae family was named Shonabellia in her honour by Gregory Retallack. The type species Shonabellia verrucosa was found near Benmore Dam, an area where Bell was the first to describe fossil plants.[11]

The standard author abbreviation S.M. Bell is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[16]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Bell, Shona M." Index of Botanists. Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  2. ^ a b "Death Notice & Guest Book Preview for Shona Grant-Taylor". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  3. ^ "Births". The New Zealand Herald. Vol. LXI, no. 18689. 21 April 1924. p. 1. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  4. ^ "Women's corner". The Press. Vol. LVII, no. 17331. 17 December 1921. p. 2. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  5. ^ Birth Search (registration number 1924/15366), Department of Internal Affairs, www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz
  6. ^ "Local directory". Waipukurau Press. Vol. XXVIII, no. 128. 25 May 1932. p. 6. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  7. ^ "Personal items". Waipawa Mail. Vol. LXVI, no. 67. 23 February 1938. p. 2. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  8. ^ "Matriculation". The Evening Post. Vol. CXXIX, no. 22. 26 January 1940. p. 4. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  9. ^ "Students' success". Auckland Star. Vol. LXXVI, no. 304. 24 December 1945. p. 3. Retrieved 20 July 2024.
  10. ^ Gair, Harry; Gregg, Donald; Speden, Ian (1962). "Triassic fossils from Corbies Creek, North Otago". New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics. 5: 94. doi:10.1080/00288306.1962.10420112. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  11. ^ a b Retallack, Gregory (1983). "Middle Triassic megafossil marine algae and land plants from near Benmore Dam, southern Canterbury, New Zealand". Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 13 (3): 129–154. doi:10.1080/03036758.1983.10415325.
  12. ^ Scientists, New Zealand Association of (1951). Directory of Science of New Zealand. p. 52.
  13. ^ Simon Nathan (May 2020). "Women in New Zealand Geoscience". GSNZ Journal of the Historical Studies Group. 65. Wikidata Q104980956.
  14. ^ "Current notes". The Press. Vol. LXXXVI, no. 26031. 7 February 1950. p. 2. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  15. ^ "Grant-Taylor, T. L. (Thomas Ludovic), 1923–1982". Library of Congress. Retrieved 21 July 2024.
  16. ^ International Plant Names Index.  S.M. Bell.
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