Professor Dianne EdwardsCBE, FRS, FRSE, FLS, FLSW (born 1942[1]) is a palaeobotanist, who studies the colonisation of land by plants, and early land plant interactions.
Early life
Edwards was born in Swansea, South Wales, and spent much of her time at her parents' bungalow on the Gower Peninsula.[2]
Career
Edwards' work has centred on early plant fossils, the majority of which have been retrieved from the UK.[3] Her interest in early plants was initiated after she studied plant fossils preserved in three dimensions in the mineral pyrite (fools' gold).[3]
Much of her later work has centred on the Rhynie chert and charcoalified fossils, large and microscopic, from the Welsh borderlands and South Wales.
Among Edwards's most notable works, are the discovery of vascular tissue in Cooksonia,[7] the description and analysis of stomata in early land plants,[8] and very early liverwort-like plants.[9] The charcoalified nature of many of her fossils have enabled her to prove that wildfires took place in the Siluruan period.[10]
She has also worked on several enigmatic fossils such as Nematothallus,[11]Tortilicaulis[12] and Prototaxites.[13]
She is the author or co-author of a considerable number of botanical names of fossil plants, such as Danziella D.Edwards (2006)[14] and Demersatheca C.-S. Li & D.Edwards (1996).[15]
Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales[20] and in July 2010 was appointed as its inaugural Vice-President for Science, Technology and Medicine.
^Edwards, D.; Kerp, H.; Hass, H. (1998). "Stomata in early land plants: an anatomical and ecophysiological approach". Journal of Experimental Botany. 49 (Special Issue): 255–278. doi:10.1093/jexbot/49.suppl_1.255.
^Glasspool, I. J.; Edwards, D.; Axe, L. (2004). "Charcoal in the Silurian as evidence for the earliest wildfire". Geology. 32 (5): 381–383. Bibcode:2004Geo....32..381G. doi:10.1130/G20363.1.
^Edwards, D. (1979). "A late Silurian flora from the Lower Old Red Sandstone of south-west Dyfed". Palaeontology. 22: 23–52.
^Burgess, N. D.; Edwards, D. (1988). "A new Palaeozoic plant closely allied to Prototaxites Dawson". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 97 (2): 189–203. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1988.tb02461.x.
^Edwards, Dianne (2006), "Danziella artesiana, a new name for Zosterophyllum artesianum from the Lower Devonian of Artois, northern France", Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 142 (3–4): 93–101, doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2006.04.008
^Li, C.-S. & Edwards, D. (1996), "Demersatheca Li et Edwards, gen. nov., a new genus of early land plants from the Lower Devonian, Yunnan Province, China", Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 93 (1–4): 77–88, doi:10.1016/0034-6667(95)00120-4