Abstract

Abstract: Emily Dix was a leading British palaeobotanist during the first half of the 20th century to deal with the stratigraphical distribution ofmacrofloras. She helped transform the use of fossil plants in defining biostratigraphic units in the Carboniferous strata in Bri in; her plant-based zona-tion remains the foundation of Carboniferous macrofloral biostratigraphy today. She addressed several problems that came to dominate Carboniferous stratigraphical research during the second half of the century, including the mid-Carboniferous boundary and the Westphalian-Stephanian boundary. Her career was tragically cut short by mental illness when she was only in her early 40s. During the first half of the 20th century, anumber of women made significant contributions to palaeo-botany in Britain. Perhaps the most notable was Margaret Benson, Professor of Botany at Royal Holloway College, London, and one of the first women to be elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. She published a series of papers, mainly in Annals of Botany, dealing with Carboniferous