Jenny was a leading palaeontologist who specialised in the earliest tetrapods (land vertebrates), and made many important and lasting contributions to her field (see this documentary here) . Perhaps the most famous was her discovery in Greenland of many fossils of the early tetrapod Acanthostega gunnari, reporting that the creature had no fewer than eight not five not six not seven but eight yes eight count ‘em eight digits on its forelimbs.
Quiet and reserved, she bore her last illness with characteristic stoicism. She was, however, not above a sly sense of humour such as when she sent a paper to Nature describing a tetrapod from the Carboniferous of what is now Central Scotland. Back then the region was dark, swampy, volcanic and very smelly, probably much as it is today. Jenny insisted on naming the creature (against my advice) Eucritta melanolimnetes - the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
I shall remember Jenny from when I knew her best, when I was a graduate student at Cambridge, where she was very kind to me during a sticky patch in my life (I used to be a fly) -- and when, clad in figure-hugging leathers, she would roar into the quad astride a powerful motorcycle.
Despite being a biker she was profoundly averse to rock music, so when her student Per Erik Ahlberg and I (graduates together) were going to see a Motörhead concert, Per described the group to her as ‘a chamber ensemble playing contemporary music’. She is survived by her husband Rob and no doubt a number of cats and motorbikes.
We shall miss you Jenny.
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