Denise Sigogneau-Russell completed her PhD in 1969 on therapsids - the forerunners of mammals - from South Africa, where she spent two years. In 1976 a Belgian amateur fossil hunter brought her a mammal tooth from a quarry in eastern France, and this inspired her to change direction and begin research on mammals from the Mesozoic.[2] She subsequently studied them in France, Portugal, Madagascar, Morocco, and England. Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska said that due to Sigogneau-Russell's "scholarship and diligence, she has contributed enormously to the knowledge of early mammal evolution.".[2]
She was married to Donald E. Russell, also a palaeontologist specialising in mammals, with whom she carried out field projects and collaborated.
Sigogneau-Russell has published on many mammals and their predecessors, but she is best known for her work on Triassic triconodonts and morganucodontans, haramiyids and multituberculates, and British Cretaceous mammals with collaborator, Percy Butler. She has also written reviews of the anatomy and taxonomy of synapsids[3] and therapsids, as well as co-authoring papers on more recent fossil mammals.[4][5]
In 1983 Sigogneau-Russell published her first review of the mammals from Rhaetian rocks in Saint-Nicholas-de-Port in Lorraine, France.[6] She later published on more material from this area, including over 200 teeth obtained by screen-washing sediment. In 1991 she published a book on Mesozoic mammals, Les mammifères au temps des dinosaures[7]
She has authored over 56 research papers and contributed many more articles on palaeontology. She has named at least 3 orders and families, 5 genera, and 5 species of Mesozoic mammal from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
^ abKielan-Jaworowska, Z. 2013. In Pursuit of Early Mammals. Indiana University Press.
^Sigogneau-Russell, D. and Sun, A.L., 1981. A brief review of Chinese synapsids. Geobios, 14(2), pp.275-279.
^Gingerich, P.D., Russell, D.E., Sigogneau-Russell, D. and Hartenberger, J.L., 1979. Chorlakkia hassani, a new middle Eocene dichobunid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from the Kuldana Formation of Kohat (Pakistan)
^MARSHALL L. G., MUIZON C. de & SIGOGNEAU-RUSSEL D. 1995. — Pucadelphys andinus (Marsupialia, Mammalia) from the Early Paleocene of Bolivia. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, 164 p. (Mémoires du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle ; 165).
^Sigogneau-Russell, D., 1983. Nouveaux taxons de Mammifères rhétiens. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 28(1-2).
^Sigogneau-Russell, D., 1991. Les mammifères au temps des dinosaures. Masson.
^ abSigogneau-Russell (1991), "First evidence of Multituberculata (Mammalia) in the Mesozoic of Africa". Neues Jahrb Geol Paläontol, Monatshefte, p. 119-125.
^ abP. M. Butler, D. Sigogneau-Russell and P. C. Ensom (2011). "Possible persistence of the morganucodontans in the Lower Cretaceous Purbeck Limestone Group (Dorset, England)". Cretaceous Research. 33: 135–145. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2011.09.007.
^ abcD. Sigogneau-Russell, R. M. Frank, and J. Hemmerlé. 1986. A new family of mammals from the lower part of the French Rhaetic. The Beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs: Faunal Change Across the Triassic–Jurassic Boundary. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 99-108
^ abcSigogneau-Russell D. 2003. Docodonts from the British Mesozoic. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 48(3)
