Marjorie Chandler (1897–1983) was a British paleobotanist who made her own reputation as a scientist after a long partnership with Eleanor Mary Reid, as a research assistant.
[2] In her retirement she was a keen gardener and involved with church related activities while still keeping in contact with the scientific world through other paleobotanists.
After six years they published Bembridge Flora which was an extensive description of Cenozoic plants and particularly those found on the Isle of Wight.
Reid described the changing climatic conditions in the Tertiary period using the remains of the flora seen in different aged rocks.
Her research examined the "angiosperm fruits and seeds of the Palaeocene floras ... and those of the London Clay not previously described.
Chandler was recognised internationally as she extended the work she and Reid had done as partners to other aspects of the Eocene and Oligocene periods.
Chandler's own research described the historic plants of Dorset and Bournemouth and she created a supplement to the London Flora which ran to hundreds of pages.
This publication functions as the second part of the Catalogue of Cenozoic Plants in the Department of Geology at the British Museum of Natural History.
The clays and marls, by oxidation and weathering, give rise to red clay-ironstone nodules; and various stages in the consolidation of these may be observed.
Chandler had the opportunity to examine the beds, which at this time had fresh material which revealed a larger fossil flora than what Reid had originally suspected.
The main focus of this publication was to prove that the plant deposits were formed prior to the end of the Upper Palaeolithic times.
[9] Miss Marjorie Elizabeth Jane Chandler had an opportunity to investigate the Barnwell Pit, in which she would examine material that revealed the existence of larger fossil flora than first believed.
This discovery allowed her to write an article named “The Arctic Flora of the Cam Valley at Barnwell, Cambridge” in which she could record the results from that investigation at Barnwell Pit.There had been few records of these Arctic Flora growing at latitudes this low, many of these plants were not recognized in the fossil state at the time of this discovery.
Mr. S. Hazzledine Warren made the initial discovery of these results in 1916, at which point Clement Reid started looking into them more thoroughly.