Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan


Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan is a South African vertebrate paleontologist known for her expertise and developments in the study of the microstructure of fossil teeth and bones of extinct and extant vertebrates. She was the head of the Department of Biological Sciences, at the University of Cape Town from 2012 to 2015.

Education and career

Chinsamy-Turan received a B.Sc. from the University of Witwatersrand in 1983 and a B.Sc. Honours in 1984, a U.H.D.E. from the University of Durban-Westville in 1985, and a Ph.D. from Witwatersrand. She then proceeded to do a postdoctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.
She is the author of four books; two academic works, The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bone - Deciphering Biology Through Fine Scale Techniques, published in 2005, by the Johns Hopkins University Press and Forerunners of Mammals -Radiation. Biology published by the Indiana University Press in 2012; a children's book, Famous dinosaurs of Africa, published in 2008, and a popular level book, Fossils For Africa, published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press.

Awards

Chinsamy-Turan won "Distinguished Women Scientist Award" from the South African Department of Science and Technology in 2002, and won the "South African Woman of the Year Award" in 2005. The National Research Foundation of South Africa awarded her its "President's Award" in 1995 and the "Transformation Award" in 2012.
In 2013, she won The World Academy of Science Sub-Saharan Prize for the Public Understanding and Popularization of Science.

Selected publications