Carlotta Joaquina Maury, palaeontologist, was the daughter of Reverend Mytton Maury and his wife Virginia, born Draper. She studied geology
and zoology, first at Radcliffe College for a year and then at Cornell
University, receiving the degree Bachelor of Philosophy (PhB) in 1896. With the
help of a scholarship she continued her studies at the University of Paris,
France, and was awarded the degree Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) by Cornell
University in 1902, with a thesis titled A
comparison of the Oligocene of Western Europe and the southern United States.
During 1904-1906 she worked for some periods as assistant in palaeontology for
special work at Columbia University, New York, and from 1907 to 1909 as
geologist at the Geological Survey of the State of Louisiana. In 1909 she was
appointed as lecturer in geology at Barnard College for Women, New York, a post
she held for three years. During that time she also served as palaeontologist
of the Venezuelan geological expedition led by A.C. Veatch in 1910-1911.
In 1912 Maury was appointed professor of geology and zoology
at Huguenot College, Wellington, in the Western Cape, a post she held for three
years. In 1913 she presented 50 named fossil shells from the United States to
the Albany Museum, in exchange for fossils from the farm Redhouse, near Port
Elizabeth (which had been collected by Mrs F.M. Paterson*). Also in 1913 she
presented a paper at the annual congress of the South African Association for
the Advancement of Science, on 'The bearing of recent discoveries of early
tertiary shells near Trinidad Island and in Brazil on hypothetical land routes
between South America and Africa'. The paper was published in the Association's
Report for that year. A few years
later she reported on 'A calcium carbonate concretionary growth in Cape
Province' (American Journal of Science,
1917).
From about 1918 Maury was an official palaeontologist to
the Geological and Mineralogical Survey of Brazil. In that position she specialised in the stratigraphy
and fossil fauna of Brazil, Venezuela and the West Indies. In her numerous
papers and reports she described new genera and species of fossil fauna from
Brazil, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and other territories in the region. She was also
a consulting and research palaeontologist and stratigrapher for the Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum Company, Venezuelan Division, from 1910 to 1937. In 1916 she undertook her own palaeontological
expedition to the Dominican Republic.
Maury was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of
America and of the American Geographical Society. She was not married, had a pleasing personality, and made enduring friends wherever she went.
