TRIBUTES have been paid to a former Bolton School pupil who became a world-renowned expert on dinosaurs.

Professor Jenny Clack, who passed away on March 26 aged 72 after living with cancer for five years, was a pioneering palaeontologist who made evolutionary history by discovering how we on earth went from water to land dwellers.

Prof Clack worked and taught at the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge for 39 years until she retired in 2015. Her achievements were celebrated in 2012 in a documentary on her work in the BBC Four series Beautiful Minds. In 2009, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

“In the Museum, we were greatly saddened to hear of Jenny’s death,” said the director of the Museum of Zoology, Professor Rebecca Kilner. “Jenny was such a longstanding member of the Museum’s community, and such a wonderful colleague in the wider Department too, that it is hard for all of us to imagine life without her.”

Prof Clack was born in Manchester on November 3, 1947 and attended Bolton School, before receiving a BSc in Zoology from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1970. A keen biker, she met her husband Rob at a motorcycle club in 1976.

Prof Kilner added: “Jenny was lauded internationally for her research yet she wore her exceptional scientific achievements with great modesty.

“She was a warm and gently supportive colleague who quietly got on with her work, making brilliant discovery after brilliant discovery. Jenny’s immense scientific legacy includes several current stars of palaeontology, who were trained in her lab. Her work lives on in the Museum through the many specimens she collected and prepared, and through some of the displays in our public galleries.”