Meet the team

Kindly provided to Discovering Fossils by Dan Quinsey © 2008

Mary Anning was born on May 21, 1799 in the town of Lyme Regis, a small seaport on the English Channel in the southwest corner of the county of Dorset. Her parents, Richard and Molly, had at least 10 children but only Mary and her older brother Joseph survived childhood. In those days nearly half the children under the age of five died, mostly from smallpox or measles.

Mary was named both after her mother Molly, whose given name was Mary, and an older sister who was killed at the age of four in a house fire during Christmas 1798.

Famine struck soon after Mary's birth. England and France were locked in a war, and French war ships blocked the coast of England, which slowed imports and drove up the cost of food. Poor and working-class people now spent almost half their income on bread alone. Determined to end price gouging and mass starvation, a mob gathered In Lyme in March of 1800. Led by Richard Anning, they attacked several estates and a mill. The government put down the riot and those who were put on trial were soon released, as no one in Lyme would testify against them.

On August 19, 1800, the Anning's nurse, Mrs Haskins, took Mary, who was weak and sickly, to a horse show in hopes that the fresh air might help her. Heavy rain interrupted the show, and Mrs Haskins and Mary took shelter under an elm tree along with two teenage girls. When lightning struck the elm, everyone was killed except Mary.

Mary's childhood was filled with calamities. Richard Anning's best friend John Cruikshanks was so discouraged by money problems, he killed himself by leaping from Gun Cliff, which was right in front of the Anning home. The following year, the 'Great Fire of Lyme' consumed Crossman's bakery, a cloth factory, and forty-two homes. The Anning's home was spared.

About 1,450 people lived in Lyme. Mary's home was located on top of a huge stone sea wall called Gun Cliff after the large cannons that lined it. Her window faced the sea. Below, a walkway called the Marine Parade spanned the River Lym down to the Cobb. The Cobb, which means 'rounded island' in the local dialect, was a 600-foot-long stone curved jetty that created one of the oldest artificial harbours in England.

Lyme Regis was one of the best places in the world to find curiosities. Since the sixteenth century, people had called anything dug out of the earth 'fossils', from the Latin word for 'dug up' from the ground.

Richard Anning struggled as a cabinetmaker and supplemented his income by selling curiosities he found on the beach. He took Mary to the beach on many occasions looking for loose spiral-shaped stones called snake stones or Ammon's Horns. Some of the Anning's neighbours believed these stones had magical healing powers. Richard used part of his cabinet shop to clean and display these curiosities.

Richard taught Mary how to increase the value of a fossil by cleaning it with a needle and a tiny brush. He also taught her how to polish fossils and display them in fine wooden boxes.

The Anning's were Dissenters, those who disagreed with the Anglican Church or the Church of England. Mary started attending the Dissenters Sunday school in Lyme sometime near her eighth birthday. There, she learned to read and write. Joseph gave her a bound volume of the Dissenters theological magazine and Review. Mary kept this book her entire life. One essay insisted God created the universe in six days, while another urged Dissenters to study geology. Many people believed studying the earth's layers could help prove the Biblical account of Creation.

In 1807, Richard Anning was seriously injured one evening when he tumbled over a cliff at Black Ven and fell over 100 feet. He never fully recovered and died on November 5, 1810. Richard owed more than 120 pounds, more than he made in a year. Without his income, the Anning family went on parish relief - three shillings a week - barely enough to prevent starvation.

Molly was depressed by her husband's death and paid little attention to Mary. Ignored by her grieving mother, Mary started wandering the shores on her own. She showed a lady an Ammon's horn she had found. The woman liked it and bought it. Mary was convinced she could earn money selling fossils.

Molly had sometimes complained Richard's fossil hunting was a waste of time, but Mary's sales would soon change her mind.

In 1811, Mary's brother Joseph found an odd looking fossil embedded in rock that had fallen on the shore. It was four feet long and looked like a lizard's skull. Mary was determined to find the rest of the animal. It took her nearly a year to find the rest of the beast. The creature had flippers like a dolphin and teeth like a crocodile.

Henry Hoste Henley, Lord of the Manor of Colway, bought the fossil for twenty-three pounds and donated it to William Bullock's London Museum of Stuffed Animals. Mary and Joseph's discovery quickly became a popular exhibit. Scholars and others came from near and far and paid a shilling to see the fossil.

Neither fame nor fortune came to the Annings. The twenty-three pounds would feed the Anning family for six months, but the fossil soon resold for twice as much as the Annings had received. Although Mary continued looking for, and selling curiosities, the Annings remained on parish relief.

In 1812, England's new war with the United States brought even more hardship to the area. Jobs such as shipbuilding, lace making, and hand weaving vanished. Sailing ships had become so large, they could not fit into the harbour, and the shipyards soon went out of business.

During this period, fortunes were made in textile and mining industries. With more leisure time, the wealthier middle-class began to flock to seaside resorts. Lyme Regis with its beautiful sunny bay and mild climate soon became an inexpensive vacation spot.

Mary and her mother sold curiosities set out on a round table outside the window of the carpentry shop. Mary searched the shores early each morning looking for fossils. Rains seeped through the clay and limestone of the cliffs, and great chunks of rock slid into the ocean, which uncovered layers of earth, stone, and fossils.

In 1813, Mary received her first geology book from Mrs Stock, a woman she ran errands for. Mary began borrowing and reading everything she could find about the new science of geology and the even newer science of palaeontology. Mary also studied modern creatures. She dissected dead squid and cuttlefish in an attempt to learn how the muscles of ancient sea creatures might have worked.

Mary had a friendship with three well-to-do sisters, Mary, Margaret and Elizabeth Philpot. Elizabeth, the youngest, was nineteen years older than Mary Anning. They all helped each other learn much about fossilised creatures.

As a teenager, Mary Anning often guided William Buckland, an Oxford University clergyman who vacationed in Lyme. In those days it was not unusual to be both a preacher and a scientist; geology was then seen as a romantic and spiritual science. This attitude, however, would change as new geological discoveries raised many questions about the history of the earth and challenged previous assumptions.

Mary also guided Henry de la Beche. Mary, William, and Henry scoured the cliffs looking for fossils on many occasions. Mary found fossils, Henry drew them, and William wrote about them for other scholars.

After the French Emperor Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, the economy of Dorset collapsed. The war was over, and it was not necessary to pay for a large army and navy. The government abolished income taxes levied on the rich and increased indirect taxation on food and other necessities, primarily paid by the lower classes. Despite her success in finding fossils, Mary Anning and her family continued to face poverty.

Charles Konig purchased the creature Joseph and Mary had found in 1811, from William Bullock, and placed it in the British Museum. Charles suggested it looked like a fish lizard. Putting the Greek words for 'fish' and 'lizard' together, he suggested the name Ichthyosaurus, meaning 'fish lizard'. Even though it turned out to be neither a fish nor a lizard, but a swimming reptile, the name stuck.

Concerned about the Anning's poverty, a retired lieutenant colonel, Thomas James Birch, auctioned his collection of fossils at Bullock's London Museum to raise funds for the family in 1820. The auction attracted many buyers including Georges Cuvier from Paris. The sale gave the Anning's fossil business much needed publicity. Four hundred pounds was given to Molly Anning and - for a short while - the family had no worries about money.

In May 1821, Mary uncovered two more Ichthyosaur skeletons, one five feet long and another nearly twenty feet long. Based on the teeth, scholars determined they were different species. These finds touched off the very first fossil frenzy.

The Anning's continued to struggle. Mary regretted having been born a woman and being deprived of the life and position she might have had as a man.

By 1823, Mary began to receive a little recognition. She sold a fine ichthyosaur to a group of geologists who donated it to the new Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science. Mary's name was never mentioned as the person who found the specimen. This prompted George Cumberland, English writer, fossil collector, and amateur artist, to write to the Bristol newspaper praising the preserving industry of a young female fossilist, of the name of Hanning… He had spelled her name the way the local people pronounced it.

Mary Anning's first Plesiosaur

Mary stunned the scientific world in December 1823 when she uncovered a creature nine feet long and six feet wide with a head less than five inches long. Hearing of Mary's discovery, William Conybeare, a clergyman and a member of the newly formed Geological Society of London, described the find and, with the help of de la Beche, concluded that another large ancient sea creature besides ichthyosaur must have once lived. They named it Plesiosaurus, which means 'almost like a lizard'.

The fossil was sold to the Duke of Buckingham for 110 pounds. Once again, Mary received little praise. Conybeare gave a speech to the Geological Society thanking the Duke for letting scientists see the fossil. He praised the scientific public for the discovery, rather than Mary. However, Conybeare did credit Mary for the discovery when he described the creature to the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Society.

The New Monthly Magazine called Mary Anning the well-known fossilist, whose labours lately have enriched the British Museum as well as the private collections of many geologists. Finding Plesiosaurus firmly established Mary's reputation as a first rate fossil hunter.

Mary continued digging up fossils. She found 'fish-spears', the fin-bones that protected the primitive shark Hybodus. She also discovered four species of ammonites. Mary wrote to the British Museum in 1824 to ask for a full list of its collection and taught herself French so she could read Cuvier in his original language.

As time passed, Mary learned more about the fossils she collected; her knowledge surpassed that of many gentlemen fossilists. However, it was always they who formally studied her specimens, publishing their findings in learned journals, often without mentioning her name. This would not have been an issue with Mary during the early years, as she struggled in relative obscurity. But as she grew intellectually and her discoveries won her acclaim and celebrity, she naturally became resentful. It has been claimed that William Buckland who was now Oxford University's first professor of geology, was a target of her scorn.

Thomas Allen, a banker and amateur geologist from Edinburgh met with Mary Anning and purchased a fine specimen of Hybodus she had uncovered. Allen entered in his journal for June 1824, "the scientific are entirely indebted to her for the preservation of some of the finest remains of a former world that are known in Europe." So confident was she of her skills, he added, "she is perfectly acquainted with the anatomy of her subjects, and her account of her disputes with Buckland, whose anatomical science she holds in great contempt, was quite amusing."

Mary had some recognition for her intellectual mastery of the anatomy of her subjects from Lady Harriet Silvester, an English noblewoman. After meeting Mary in 1824, she recorded in her diary, "The extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself as thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour - that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom."

In July 1824, the French geologist Louis-Constant Prévost and the young Scottish lawyer and amateur geologist Charles Lyell visited the celebrated Mary Anning and witnessed the discovery of a beautiful ichthyosaurus only two feet long.

In 1826, Mary used the benefits of her growing fame and purchased a house on Broad Street just down from the Philpot's. Moving uphill in Lyme Regis meant climbing in status. The front of the house was turned into a shop. A little white sign in front read 'Anning's Fossil Depot.'

Hardship hit once again when sixty English banks went bankrupt during 1825 and 1826. Many of those who had purchased fossils in the past were affected, and the price of fossils fell. Mary managed by putting her fossils in shops on consignment and improving her marketing skills. She concentrated on excavating smaller fossils as they were much more affordable.

Mary often forced scholars to look at familiar objects in new ways. She was the first to discover a tiny chamber of purple powder inside belemnites that looked like dried ink. When ground up and added to water, Mary discovered she could draw with it. William Buckland was startled one day to receive a sketch of one ancient creature, an ichthyosaur, drawn with the ink made from another.

Even some of Mary's smallest finds revealed secrets of the past. 'Bezoar stones' shaped like the gallstones of Bezoar goats were frequently found on the beach. Most were dark gray, two or four inches long, and an inch or two in diameter. They were tightly twisted and some had black spots. Having found these inside the skeletons of ichthyosaurs, Mary was the first to recognise they were fossilised clumps of undigested food that stayed in the animals intestines when it died, or was expelled at death. William Buckland named them Coprolites or 'dung stones'.

Mary's discovery of coprolites led to the understanding of how fossils were made. If something as soft as undigested food could be preserved, then some fossils must have been created by the sudden entombment of animals before even the softest tissue could decay.

Coprolites were a window to the past. One of William Buckland's students, John Shute Duncan, who later became the head of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, wrote a poem:

Approach, approach, ingenuous youth
And learn this fundamental truth
The noble science of Geology
Is bottomed firmly on Coprology.
 

In November 1828, Mary made another significant find, a jawless fish Dapedium politum. In December of that same year, she uncovered the first flying reptile ever found in England. William Buckland told the Geological Society of London this unknown species was the size of a raven, three and a half feet long with skin-covered wings stretched from its body out to the long fingers of its forearms. Its enormous head had massive but lightweight jaws with four big sharp teeth at the front and smaller equally sharp teeth at the back. Eventually scholars named this pterosaur Dimorphodon, which means two forms of teeth.

With the discovery of Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Dimorphodon, Mary Anning's fossil business was now famous among British scientists and was becoming well known elsewhere. In 1829, Mary found another complete plesiosaur and another new species of fish later named Squaloraja.

More hardship befell the Anning family in 1830. With revolution in Belgium and France and more bread riots at home, those who had money were reluctant to spend it. Fossil prices continued to fall. To raise money for the Annings, Henry de la Beche drew a picture called An Earlier Dorset. It showed how he imagined prehistoric life. Along with some reptile dung, he packed in all the creatures the Annings had found.

In December 1830, Mary made another great discovery, a plesiosaur with a much larger head and even more neck bones. It was purchased by William Willoughby. Richard Owen thanked Willoughby for letting him examine it, but failed to mention who had found it. He referred to it as 'Hawkins plesiosaur' because Thomas Hawkins, an eccentric collector, had proposed a name for it.

In the following years, Mary continued to find more ichthyosaurs and various fossils. Scholars frequently overlooked the significance of Mary's finds. Geologists at Cambridge lost the coprolite Mary had collected with an ichthyosaur skeleton not realising the importance of this tiny object. The British Museum somehow misplaced all but the head of Mary and Joseph's first ichthyosaur, as well as most of a large one Mary found in 1832.

In 1832, the worldwide cholera epidemic reached Lyme. Mary and most of her friends were spared. The following year, fire swept through Lyme, but once again, Mary was not hurt.

Mary faced a close call one day in 1833 when tons of rock fell around her while she was fossil collecting at the base of the cliffs on the beach. She was stunned by the loss of her dog Tray, who was by her side at the time. Later that same year, Mary narrowly escaped death once again when a run-away cart pinned her against a wall.

Upset by these close calls, Mary found comfort in the Bible. This was during a time when many were leaving the church as the discovery of ancient fossils undermined faith in the book of Genesis as a literal description of the creation of the world. For some, visiting the Fossil Depot was upsetting.

In 1834, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot helped the Swiss palaeontologist Louis Agassiz study fossil fish. Mary and Elizabeth showed him how to match the backbones with teeth found in the same layer of the limestone.

In his pioneering book Studies of Fossil Fish, Agassiz honored both Mary and Elizabeth by thanking them for their help in unlocking the secrets of prehistoric fish. Louis Agassiz eventually became one of the most important scientists of the nineteenth century. By describing and drawing prehistoric fish, he provided evidence that life on earth passed through great catastrophes.

Mary Anning's work continued to have an enormous impact on life in Victorian England. At the time, it was generally believed the earth was only 6,000 years old, but Mary's fossils caused scientists to question whether the earth was actually much older.

Mary was now known internationally. The British Association for the Advancement of Science and the British government gave her a 'Civil List Pension' of twenty-five pounds a year in appreciation for her work. Between this and the fossils she sold, Mary and her mother finally lived comfortably.

In September 1839, Richard Owen came to Lyme to see Mary Anning. She led Owen, Buckland, and Conybeare on a geological excursion. Owen was impressed with the way Mary scrambled over the cliffs. Owen later described Mary's remarkable find, Plesiosaurus macrocephalus, to the Geological Society of London; however, he never mentioned her name.

After the death of her mother, Molly, in 1842, Mary found herself living alone for the first time. Mary tended the now famous Fossil Depot by herself. In 1844, King Frederick Augustus of Saxony came to Lyme with his doctor, Carl Gustav Carus, who later helped develop the idea of species evolution. The King paid Mary fifteen pounds for a six-foot-long skeleton of a baby ichthyosaur for his natural history collection in Dresden - and then asked her for her autograph. In signing her name, Mary also wrote, 'I am well known throughout the whole of Europe.'

That same year, another fire swept through Lyme. Once again, Mary and her home were spared.

Mary learned she had breast cancer in 1845. The members of the Geological Society of London took up a collection for her, and the new Dorset County Museum elected her their first honorary member. These gestures reassured her she was not forgotten.

Mary Anning, the unsung heroine of Lyme, had been the first loss among the fossilists. She died on March 9, 1847 at the age of forty-seven. Her body was buried in St. Michael's Parish church of Lyme Regis, within site and sound of the sea.

The year following her death, her lifelong friend, Henry De la Beche, concluded his anniversary address as president of the Geological Society of London with a short eulogy, later published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society. He referred to her as one who had not been 'placed among even the easier classes of society, but who had to earn her daily bread by her labour...' He acknowledged how she 'contributed by her talents and untiring researches…' to the knowledge of marine reptiles, and other animals, and how her talents and good conduct had won her many friends.

The obituary was quite short, but it was remarkable in itself because she was not a member of the society - the society did not admit women members until 1904. This was the only time an obituary was ever given for someone who was not a member. William Gray's portrait of her, painted around 1842, welcomes visitors to the marine reptile gallery.

Mary was commemorated by her hometown in 1850 with the installation of a stained-glass window in St. Michael's Parish Church. It depicts the corporal works of mercy… feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting prisoners, and visiting the sick. An inscription reads: 'This window is sacred to the memory of Mary Anning of this parish, who died 9 March AD 1847 and is erected by the vicar and some members of the Geological Society of London in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology, as also of her benevolence of heart and integrity of life.'

In her last years, Mary enjoyed scientific recognition, financial security, and a deepening religious faith. Though poor, she was rich in spirit and had formed friendships with wealthy collectors and geologists. Uneducated, she had aided in the development of palaeontology. Although she never left Lyme Regis, she was known everywhere.

More than fifty years after the death of Mary Anning, Terry Sullivan was inspired to write the familiar tongue-twister:

She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore,
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I'm surer
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I'm sure she sells sea-shore shells.

Two hundred years after Mary Anning's birth an international delegation of geologists, palaeontologists, historians, fossil collectors, authors, and other interested parties gathered in Lyme Regis to celebrate her life and times. The event was hosted by John Fowles, Lyme's celebrated novelist. And what might she have said if she had witnessed the 1999 meeting held in her honour? 'At last', John Fowles offered.

Mary Anning lives on. Not only in memory and in the legacy of the fossils she discovered, but also in the work of the contemporary collectors of Lyme.

Where are they now?

The Lyme Regis Museum has an exhibit about Mary and presents lectures on her life each summer.

The skull of the first ichthyosaur Mary and Joseph discovered can be seen at the Museum of Natural History in London (previously called the British Museum). The plesiosaur she found in 1823, her Dimorphodon, and part of the enormous ichthyosaur she discovered in 1832 can also be seen.

One of her ichthyosaurs is at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur Thomas Wilson bought are displayed at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia though it is not certain which specimens are hers.

One of the best 'stone lilies' Mary ever found, a Pentacrinus briareus, and a particularly fine Ichthyosaurus communis, are at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution.

The National Museum of Natural History in Paris has a Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus Mary uncovered.

The ammonite called Oxynoticeras that Mary found in 1838 is at the Somerset County Museum in Taunton.

Several fossil specimens collected by Mary can be seen at the Sedgewick Museum in Cambridge.

All of Mary's fossils in the Lyceum of Natural History in New York City were lost to fire when the museum burned to the ground.

Several of her finds were destroyed during the World War II bombing raids.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Alberta Palaeontological Society for keeping my mania in palaeontology alive and the Scott family for their help with editing.

Bibliography

Goodhue, Thomas W. Curious Bones: Mary Anning and the Birth of Palaeontology, North Carolina: Morgan Reynolds, 2002.

McGowan, Chris. The Dragon Seekers: How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Discovered the Dinosaur and Paved the Way for Darwin, Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2001.

Cadbury, Deborah. Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the Birth of a New Science, New York: Henry Holt, 2001.

Cadbury, Deborah. The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry the Discovery of the Prehistoric World, Great Britain: Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc, 2000.

Gould, Stephen Jay, and Rosamund, Wolf Purcell. Finders Keepers: Eight Collectors, New York: Norton, 1992.

Alic, Margaret. Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

Torrens, Hugh S. 'Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme: The Greatest Fossilist the World Ever Knew', 'British Journal for the History of Science 28 (1995): 257-284.'

Websites

Lyme Regis Museum: Mary Anning and the Birth of Geology http://www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/fossils.htm

Southhampton University: Geology of the Dorset Coast http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/lyme.htm

University of California at Berkeley: 'The greatest fossilist the world ever knew' http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/anning.html

A great family day out...

Left: Participants on various Discovering Fossils and Junior Geo fossil hunting events. Right: Families handle some real fossils at the event base.

Join us on an organised fossil hunt! Discovering Fossils and JuniorGeo have joined forces to provide a series of exciting prehistoric experiences for families and individuals of all ages and levels of knowledge. Our events include an introduction to the geology and fossils, followed by a group fossil hunt where everyone has an opportunity to find and collect a variety of fossils. To find out more CLICK HERE.

 

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