http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/12156 (tip’o’the’hat to Simon C.)

Description and Identification of Turtle Fossils from the Canterbury Museum, Griffin, B. W. 2016.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to acknowledge the help of my supervisors Dr. Catherine Reid and Dr. Paul Scofield. Without your patience, expertise, and ability to decipher my ramblings this would have been a very different thesis, probably with a lot more errors and a lot less science. I couldn’t have done it without you… well I could but let’s face it; it would be a bit of a mess with a few more dinosaurs.

I would also like to thank Thomas Schultz and Herman Voogd for their time and assistance with their collections. Honestly I didn’t expect you to be as prompt with your replies or as helpful as you were, the measurements and comparisons your assistance has allowed me to make have been invaluable. I would especially like to thank Herman Voogd for sending replies and notes in English, after the amount of French I’ve had to try translate this year I don’t think I could have handled another foreign language.

I would like to thank my officemate for keeping the office at a toasty 40°+, I know that’s a bit of an exaggeration but the point stands. Thank you for the advanced training at surviving extreme heat conditions; one day I will be able to survive in there long enough to actually work before dehydration claims me. Your help with the editing process was exceptional, even if you have weird ideas about how the English language works.

I would like to thank Vanessa at the Canterbury Museum without whom I would still be trying to convince Paul that the penguin was not a turtle (although you can’t say I didn’t try my best to make that hypothesis work) but I digress, your ability to spot an eroded bird femur is unparalleled and for that I thank you. I would also like to thank all the people at the Canterbury Museum front desk for dealing with my mindless wanderings while I waited for my meetings, I’m sorry for the disturbance.  I would like to thank the Radiology department at St. George’s hospital for allowing us to put rocks through your CT scanner. As this was kind of a core aspect of my thesis I cannot thank you enough.

Jacob Blokland deserves thanks for being a fellow Palaeontology post grad. Learning how to use Mimics and bouncing ideas off you was crucial for getting this thesis started. I wish you luck with your penguins, should one turn into a turtle be sure to let me know.

I would like to thank my parents, Mark and Cathy without whom this thesis simply wouldn’t exist for a variety of reasons that I’m sure you can work out and remind me about later. And yes I am aware that neither education nor food is cheap.

As for my friends: for listening to me deal with this thesis and getting me out of the house, what remains of my sanity thanks you. I promise to be more fun now. I would like to thank Square Enix for Final Fantasy XIV, without this game and it’s constant new patches this would have been done long ago but the distraction was most definitely appreciated.

I would also like to thank myself; I knew you could do it. Finally and probably most importantly I would like to thank my turtles for dying in appropriate places for fossilisation, except for you Palaeocene specimen; you know what you did. I expect the thanks for the Cretaceous specimen technically goes to that Mosasaur but I’m sure the turtle meal made up for the effort. Regardless without your foresight this thesis would have been impossible, if only your skulls had been so considerate