Shirley Coryndon Explained

Shirley Cameron Coryndon (1926–1976) was a British paleontologist and authority on fossil hippopotami.

In the 1950s she studied paleontology with Donald MacInnes at the Museum of Nairobi.^[1]

Coryndon was the paleontological assistant to Louis Leakey at the Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology.^[2] She also participated in excavations at Olduvai Gorge. She was previously married to Roger Coryndon, son of colonial administrator Robert Coryndon,^[3] and in 1969 she married British paleontologist R. J. G. Savage, whom she had met in Kenya in 1955.^{[4] [5]} She is commemorated in the names of the fossil hippopotami Hexaprotodon coryndonae^[6] and Kenyapotamus coryndonae,^[7] as well as the fossil bovine Ugandax coryndonae.^[8]

Books

• Book: L. S. B.. Leakey. R. J. G.. Savage. S. C.. Coryndon. 1973. Fossil Vertebrates of Africa. 3. Academic Press. New York & London.
• Book: R. J. G.. Savage. S. C.. Coryndon. 1976. Fossil Vertebrates of Africa. 4. Academic Press. New York & London.

References

• Obituary, Shirley Savage (nee Coryndon). Sutcliffe. A.. Newsletter of the Association of the William Pengelly Cave Research Centre. 28. January 1977. 26.

Notes and References

1. Weedman. Kathryn. Who's "That Girl": British, South African, and American Women as Africanist Archaeologists in Colonial Africa (1860s–1960s). African Archaeological Review. 2001. 18. 1. 16. 10.1023/A:1006793522666. 161967941.
2. Book: Virginia Morell. Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings. 11 January 2011. Simon and Schuster. 978-1-4391-4387-2. 229–.
3. Book: Richard E. Leakey. Bethwell A. Ogot. Shirley Coryndon Savage (1926–1977). Proceedings of the 8th Panafrican Congress of Prehistory and Quaternary Studies: Nairobi, 5 to 10 September, 1977. 1980. International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute for African Prehistory. 8.
4. Web site: Leakey. Richard E.. Richard Leakey. Obituary: Professor R. J. G. Savage. The Independent. 29 May 1998. 2015-08-14.
5. Michael. Benton. 1998. Obituary: Robert J. G. Savage (1927–1998). Nature in Avon: Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists' Society. 58. 14–18.
6. Book: Geze, R. . 1985. Repartition paleoecologique et relations phylogenetiques des Hippopotamidae (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) du Neogene d'Afrique orientale. Environment des hominides au Plio-Pleistocene. 81–100. Foundation Singer-Polignac. Paris.
7. Pickford. Martin. On the origins of Hippopotamidae togetherwith descriptions of two new species, a new genus and a new subfamily from the Miocene of Kenya. Geobios. 1983. 16. 2. 193–217. 10.1016/S0016-6995(83)80019-9. 1983Geobi..16..193P .
8. Gentry. A. W.. A new bovine (Bovidae, Artiodactyla) from the Hadar Formation, Ethiopia. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. 2006. 61. 2. 41–50. 10.1080/00359190609519952. 2006TRSSA..61...41G . 85046738.