Victoria Louise "Tori" Herridge, born 1980, is a

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

at the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

in London and one of the founders of TrowelBlazers, which celebrates women archaeologists, palaeontologists and

geologists A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...

Career

Herridge graduated with a first class degree in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

from

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

in 2002. After a master's degree at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, she returned to University College London to gain a doctorate with a thesis titled "

Dwarf Elephant Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes (around ) in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Dwarf elephants are an example ...

s on Mediterranean Islands: A Natural Experiment in

Parallel Evolution Parallel evolution is the similar development of a trait in distinct species that are not closely related, but share a similar original trait in response to similar evolutionary pressure.Zhang, J. and Kumar, S. 1997Detection of convergent and paral ...

". Her research addressed evolution of island mammals during the Pleistocene period and their responses to extreme climate change. She is a founding editor-in-chief at the open access journal '' Open Quaternary''.

Science communication

Herridge delivered the 2012 Charles Lyell Award lecture at the

British Science Festival The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...

and co-wrote ''Who Do You Think You Really Are?'' for the

. The film was a Premier Award Winner in 2011. As well as her academic output she is a popular science writer: her work includes a piece on the ethics of cloning

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...

s versus the importance of saving endangered elephants, and one on the importance of studying the history of women in science (with Brenna Hassett, Suzanne Pilaar Birch and Becky Wragg Sykes), both published in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''. In November 2014 Herridge co-presented the

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

documentary about the autopsy of the Maly Lyakhovsky Mammoth (aka "Buttercup"). She presented the 2016 Channel 4 series ''Walking Through Time'' and co-presented three series of '' Britain at Low Tide'' (2016, 2018 and 2019; series 1 with archaeologist

Alex Langlands Alex Langlands is a British archaeologist and historian, also known for his work as a presenter of educational documentary series on British television and a lecturer of medieval history at Swansea University. Education Langlands has degrees ...

). In January 2020 she presented ''Bone Detectives: Britain's Buried Secrets'' on Channel 4.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Herridge, Victoria British palaeontologists Women paleontologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) British television presenters Alumni of University College London British women archaeologists