| Joan Wiffen | |
| Birth Date: | 4 February 1922 |
| Birth Name: | Joan Pederson |
| Death Place: | Hastings, New Zealand |
| Nationality: | New Zealand |
| Fields: | Paleontology |
| Known For: | First discovery of dinosaur fossils in New Zealand |
| Awards: | Morris Skinner Award |
| Spouse: | Montagu Arthur "Pont" Wiffen (m. 1953) |
Joan Wiffen (née Pederson; 4 February 1922 – 30 June 2009) was a self-taught New Zealand paleontologist known for discovering the first dinosaur fossils in New Zealand.
Wiffen was born in 1922 and was brought up in Havelock North and the King Country.[1] She only had a very short secondary school education as her father believed that higher education was wasted on girls, resulting in her education opportunities being limited during her youth.[2] At the age of 16, Wiffen joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II where she served for six years.[2]
In 1975 Wiffen discovered the first dinosaur fossils in New Zealand in the Mangahouanga 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.[2] In 1999, Wiffen discovered the vertebra bone of a titanosaur in a tributary of the Te Hoe River.[3] The fossils Wiffen found are primarily held in a GNS Science collection.
Wiffen was awarded an honorary DSc by Massey University in 1994.[4] 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.[1] In 2017, Wiffen was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.[5]
In 1953 she married Pont Wiffen and they had two children. Joan Wiffen died at the age of 87 on 30 June 2009 in Hastings Hospital.[2]