Mary Anning Rocks

On This Day in Herstory, March 9th 1847, Mary Anning, an English paleontologist, fossil collector and dealer, known for the significant discoveries she made that changed scientific understanding regarding the history of Earth, died in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England; she was 47 years old.

Mary Anning was born on May 21st 1799, in Lyme Regis, to Mary Moore and Richard Anning. Her father was a carpenter, and both of her parents were amateur fossil hunters. The family was very poor and had nine children, though only Mary and her brother survived into adulthood. Mary was named after an older sister who died in a house fire before mary was born. Mary neary died herself when she was only a baby; she was in a field when a thunderstorm rolled in, the woman holding her sought refuge under a tree, and when a bolt of lightning struck the tree the woman died, yet Mary escaped unharmed. Mary had a few years of education, and taught herself how to read and write. But, much of her time was spent at the beach; her father frequently took her there and taught her the art of collecting fossils. These trips were almost always prosperous, as the cliffs of Lyme Regis date back more than 230 million years, a time when the area was much closer the the equator, and was inhabited by many very large creatures. The family relied on the sale of the fossils they found as a source of income. This income became even more necessary in 1810, when her father, the family’s main breadwinner, fell off a cliff and died. Just a year later, near where her father died, Mary made her first significant discovery; she found the skull, and then entire skeleton of the first known ichthyosaurus specimen.

By 1817, Mary’s discoveries attracted the attention of the British fossil collector Lieut. Col. Thomas Birch, who financially supported the family by purchasing a number of the specimens. Later, he auctioned off many of these items and then donated the proceeds to Mary’s family when they fell on particularly hard times. She taught herself geology, anatomy, paleontology, and scientific illustration; and though she lacked formal education, her discoveries, knowledge of the area, and her skill at fossil classification earned her a good reputation in the male dominated field of paleontology. Her most famous find occured in 1824, when she uncovered the first intact Plesiosaurus skeleton. After the find was authenticated, the scientific community began to recognise the importance of all the fossils that Mary recovered. She became quite the celebrity amongst paleontologists, and collectors; and as a result Lyme Regis was flooded with tourists who came to buy from her. Over her career, she discovered several Ichthyosaurus and plesiosaur skeletons, as well as a pterosaur, which became known as Pterodactylus (or Dimorphodon) macronyx, the first of its kind found outside of Germany. Additionally, she discovered the skeleton of Squaloraja, a fish thought to be a member of a transition group between sharks and rays. Many people believe her discoveries partially contributed to the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin. Despite her innumerable discoveries, and the name she made for herself, Mary was often not given credit for the items she recovered. The collectors who purchased from her who went on to donate the specimens are often still credited with the item’s discovery. Many journals were written detailing her discoveries at length, yet they never even mention her name.

WHAT: a whole month of aquatic paleontological fun! make art and read about your favorite aquatic organisms from long ago!

SCHEDULE:

APRIL 1: precambrian day

a whole 24-hour period dedicated to precambrian everything! from cyanobacteria to snowball earth, we have you covered

APRIL 2: MEGA TRILOBITE TUESDAY

24 HOURS OF NONSTOP EXTREME TRILOBITE ACTION!!!

APRIL 3-13: paleozoic palooza

from the cambrian to the permian, 10 individually themed days centered around favorite critters from the paleozoic era! see calendar.

APRIL 14-20: mesozoic week

a whole week about jurassic, triassic, and cretaceous aquatic creatures (AND a whole day dedicated to the one and only mary anning)! see calendar.

APRIL 21-25: cenozoic time

5 days dedicated to aquatic organisms from the cenozoic, ranging from megaladons to basilosaurs! see calendar.

APRIL 26-27: you pick!

pick any aquatic organism, aforementioned or not, and make content about it for an ultimate aquatic april collage!

APRIL 28: living fossils

ceolocanths, gingko, and more! all your favorite really old clades that are still kickin!

APRIL 29: pride!

LGBT-themed paleoart! transtaalik greatly appreciated!

APRIL 30: fossil specimen

post any specimen you own/have found!

Mary Anning was born in 1799 in the town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset Coast to parents Richard and Molly Anning. Out of at least nine children born to the Annings, only Mary and her older brother Joseph survived past childhood. This is despite Mary herself being struck by lightning at only 15 months old as she was being carried by another woman. Three women were killed in the lightning strike but miraculously, Mary survived.

The Anning family were poor and working class- the bottom of the pile in society. On top off this, the family were dissenters, protestants who had separated from the Church of England, who were often ostracised by other Christians. She attended a school run by the Congregationalist dissenters, though the education she received here did not extend far past reading and writing.

[Image of a drawing finished in 1842 showing the fossil shop and home Mary purchased in Lyme Regis]

Mary and her brother would frequently join their father, a cabinet maker by trade, on fossil hunting expeditions along the coastline, which they would then sell for extra money. This was a dangerous occupation and in 1810, when Mary was just 10, their father died of a combination of injuries contracted from a cliff fall and being weakened by tuberculosis. The family was left with his debts to pay and had to rely on parish support to survive.

Mary was left to take over the fossil business to provide for her family while Joseph became an apprentice upholster. Even though she lacked formal education, Mary taught herself geology and anatomy and the rest is history (and will be covered more in a Mary: the Scientist post!).

She was highly successful and by 1826 had saved up enough money to buy her own home and store, Anning’s Fossil Depot.

Once again, the dangers of Mary’s trade were shown when she narrowly avoided being crushed in a landslide in 1833 while she was out fossiling and sadly, she lost her dog, Tray, that day. In a letter, she wrote: “Perhaps you will laugh when I say that the death of my old faithful dog has quite upset me, the cliff that fell upon him and killed him in a moment before my eyes, and close to my feet … it was but a moment between me and the same fate”

In her personal life, it is well known that she was good friends with fellow fossil collector and palaeontologist Elizabeth Philpot. The two often worked together and it was Philpot who first discovered that the ink sacs Mary had discovered in belemnites could be revived and used for writing and drawing.

Another childhood friend of Mary’s, Henry de la Beche was so inspired by Mary’s finds that he painted the famous Duria Antiquior, which he then sold prints of to help in supporting Anning through her continuing financial difficulties.

[Oil on canvas reproduction of Duria Antiquior painted in 1850, based on de la Beche’s earlier 1830 watercolour]

This is the first ichthyosaur to be correctly identified as such on display at the London Natural History Museum and it was discovered by the Anning family!

In addition to donating straight to the cause, you can also pick yourself or a friend (or parent, or child, or partner, or teacher, or a stranger you think has kind eyes…) up one of our t shirts! All the money raised from the sale of the shirts goes directly towards funding the statue we hope to erect of Mary Anning in her home town of Lyme Regis.

This is a drawing of Mary Anning’s famous ichthyosaur skeleton (the first complete one recognized by European scientists). The skull was discovered by her brother in 1811, nearly a year before she found the full body, but didn’t cause much fuss, because everyone assumed it was from a crocodile (go to explanation for teeth and fossil fragments at the time).

Scientific progress was impeded when the skeleton fell into the hands of Sir Everard Home,  who made such a mess of describing it that one contemporary (Jospeh Pentland, who was working with Cuvier) called his papers “abstruse, incomprehensible, and for the most part, uninteresting.”

First Home mistook the germ teeth (characteristic of reptiles) for mineral deposits, and decided that it couldn’t be a reptile, so it must be a bird. A giant, aquatic bird with fish-like spine structure, swim paddles, and saurian teeth. Then he backpedaled, saying it was a fish, but “by no means wholly a fish.”

Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a British paleontologist whose findings of Jurassic fossil beds contributed greatly to scientific knowledge of prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. She made crucial discoveries such as the first ichthyosaur skeleton or the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever found and identified.

Forgotten Women Friday #38

Mary Anning- 1799-1847- England

“Persevering Paleontologist”

Mary Anning was a woman whose discoveries helped change our views on prehistoric life and and the history of earth. Anning was born in 1799 in Dorset, Great Britain and her father was a cabinetmaker who also mined the coastal cliff-side for fossils to sell to tourists. She often accompanied her father on his fossil-collecting trips down the cliffs and she became fascinated a young age with the burgeoning science. However, in 1810 her father died after falling from the cliffs, and he left the family in significant debt. The family continued to sell fossils to make money and one year later, Mary’s brother Joseph found an unusual skull while digging at the cliffs. 12-year-old Mary searched for months for the rest of the skeleton, eventually finding it and therefore discovering the first ichthyosaur fossil. The ichthyosaur discovery shocked Western society, as it was still widely believed at this point that the Biblical account of earth’s creation was correct and the planet was only a few thousand years old.

Anning continued the dangerous work of scaling the cliffs for fossils. In 1823, an article in the Bristol Mirror said of her, “This persevering female has for years gone daily in search of fossil remains of importance at every tide, for many miles under the hanging cliffs at Lyme, whose fallen masses are her immediate object.” That same year Anning discovered the first complete Plesiosaurus and in 1828 she found the first British flying lizard known as pterosaurs. In 1826, she opened her own store, Anning’s Fossil Depot. However, despite her scientific success, Anning was largely shut out from the scientific community since she was a poor, working-class woman. The influential Geological Society of London did not allow her to join their ranks and men often took credit for her discoveries in scientific journals. Anna Pinney, a young woman who sometimes accompanied Anning on her expeditions, wrote, “She says the world has used her ill … these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages.“

endless list of favourite historical figures ( 2/∾ )     ↳ mary anning

Mary Anning - Women Who Changed Science. And The World.

Paleontologist who made important finds in Jurassic marine fossil beds.