Ode to Antje Schreuder | A passion for palaeontology

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Dear Mrs Schreuder, dear Antje,

I am writing this letter because I have been following you and your work for a while now, because of our shared passion for palaeontology. I want to show you my appreciation and let you know that I would love to meet you.

I saw your passport photo from January 1932, in which you are 44 and, as is often the case, wearing a nice hat. I myself am also turning 44 this January. I am delighted to see what you have achieved in that time and to see where I am now myself. Not as successful in palaeontology as you, but then palaeontology has changed. The world has changed.

What I see and read in your work, and what is recognisable to me, is how you always make your own choices, draw your own plan, do not go along with the masses, in both your lifestyle and career. You enjoy helping others, while preferring to remain modestly in the background yourself. And meanwhile, with your perseverance, you know how to achieve a lot. This does not go unnoticed. You are an inspiration to women to study palaeontology in a predominantly male world.

You were allowed to work for the still famous professor Eugène Dubois. I chose Leiden University, where I could work close to the Dubois Collection at Naturalis. It is regrettable that you never received the deserved recognition for your important contribution to this collection, but it also graces your modesty.

During your work, you had nice correspondences with, among others, Dorothea Bate in London, who was researching the fossil remains of dwarf elephants of the Mediterranean region. I wrote my doctoral thesis on those dwarf elephants in comparison to fossils from the Philippines. I am sure it would interest you.

I am now my own boss, draw my own plan, and still try to include palaeontology in that. I want to present our beautiful field to an even wider audience, because beautiful discoveries keep coming up. For example, you already discovered that felines also walked in Tegelen in the Pleistocene. We now know that the sabre-toothed cat also walked through the Netherlands in the Ice Age, as did lynx and wildcat, among others. And the giant beaver Trogontherium, on which you did your PhD, is again a hot topic now that more finds of it have been made. Enough to fill a whole book with it, with your thesis still the first aid for identification!

I recently spoke to your second cousin, Jenneke. You will surely remember her mother well. She affectionately called you Auntie Pu. She proudly showed me your photos and drawings and read your letters and stories. That's how I felt I got to know you better. And there are still more people getting interested in your work and you as a person. We like to talk together, respectfully, about you and your work, and want to make sure you still get the recognition you deserve. In a modest way, of course, that suits you well.

I wish we could meet for a cup of tea, at the Groote Museum of Artis. Then we would take a tour of the zoo and talk about the evolution of mammals, the development of palaeontology in the Netherlands and maybe even joke about your professor Eugène Dubois and my companion Dr John de Vos (curator of the Dubois Collection for many years).

Thank you for all you have done for palaeontology, for setting the example that anyone can study palaeontology if you want, that with hard and honest work you can get far even if you don't leave your hometown. And thank you for wanting to be an ambassador for the giant beaver Trogontherium, during my National Ice Age Mammal project.

Kind regards,

Nike Liscaljet