Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach, 1811–1855
Ernest Dieffenbach was the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand. In the late 1830s he documented New Zealand’s first fossil locality with his description of an outcrop on Chatham Island.
Learn more at the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
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John Davies Enys, 1837–1912
Amateur naturalist John Enys and his brother were early runholders in the Castle Hill basin, inland from Christchurch. In 1868 he found beds of marine fossils from the Tertiary period among the limestone of Castle Hill.
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James Hector, 1834–1907
Geologist and versatile government scientist, James Hector made an important contribution to the early understanding of New Zealand fossils by ensuring that Geological Survey staff made fossil collections around the country.
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Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand von Hochstetter, 1829–1884
Hochstetter was the first to describe and interpret many features of New Zealand geology. His early collections of Triassic fossils from Nelson, and Jurassic ammonites and belemnites from Kāwhia and the Waikato Heads, formed the basis for further advances in the study of New Zealand’s fossils. He arranged for many of his fossil collections to be described by colleagues in Vienna, Austria.
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Alexander McKay, 1841–1917
Geologist Alexander McKay collected over 120,000 fossils while working under James Hector, director of the Colonial Museum and New Zealand Geological Survey.
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