Mary Anning
One of the pleasures of a trip to London is an opportunity to visit the
Natural History Museum, one of the world’s great treasure houses of
zoology, mineralogy and paleontology. Amongst its many wonders
is a corridor called “Marine Fossil Reptiles”, along the walls of
which are numerous specimens, remarkable for the beauty of their
preservation, of skeletons of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and other
associated fossils from the Early Jurassic of southern England. Some
of the most spectacular specimens were collected by a remarkable
woman and pioneering fossil collector in the early 19th century –
Mary Anning.
Mary was born in 1799 in the town of Lyme Regis on what is
now celebrated as the Jurassic Coast of southern England. Lyme
Regis attracts many visitors today, both professional and amateur,
interested in the fossils that are abundant in the Early Jurassic
sediments forming the cliffs and shoreface either side of the town.
Indeed Lyme Regis was a centre for those interested in “curiosities”
when Mary was born – her cabinet-maker father ran a side-line in
selling “snake stones”(ammonites), “ladies fingers” (belemnites) and
the like to well-heeled visitors. Unfortunately, her father died when
she was only ten and the family struggled to make ends meet. Thus,
necessity drove her to develop with her mother and elder brother
Joseph the family business in collecting and selling fossils.
The romanticised notion of Mary Anning is that when only a young
girl of about the age of eleven or twelve she found the first-ever
ichthyosaur skeleton and sold it to save the family from destitution. In
fact there was much more to Mary’s geological contribution than this
slightly exaggerated story. It was clear that she had an exceptional
eye for locating and excavating spectacular fossil specimens and
together with her brother she did indeed excavate a well-preserved
Monmouth Beach at Lyme Regis.
ichthyosaur skeleton when she was young (and sold it for £23, about
£600 in today’s money – it’s interesting to note that such skeletons
would sell for many thousands of pounds today). She made four
other major discoveries – in 1823 she found the first complete
plesiosaur which was followed by a further specimen in 1830 that
was sold for 200 Guineas. Both, along with famous ichthyosaur
skull from her youth are now in the Natural History Museum. In
1828 she made the first discovery of a pterosaur in Britain – this
“flying dragon” excited the public imagination and secured her
fame as an exceptional fossil collector. In 1829 she discovered a
new type of fossil fish, later named Squaloraja. Alongside these
major contributions to the understanding of Jurassic life, she
found further ichthyosaurs and a variety of fossil fish, crustaceans
and molluscs. Because the collectors of important fossils in the
early 19th century were rarely credited for their discoveries in the
subsequent scientific description, there are probably many fossils
found by Mary Anning that exist in museums, but we cannot be sure
can be attributed to her. This is evident from this published remark
on Mary by Bristol-based fossil enthusiast George Cumberland in
1823: “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….to her exertions we owe nearly all the fine
specimens of Ichthyosauri of the great collections…”
The early 19th century saw the first blossoming of the science of
geology. With the discovery and promotion of deep time by James
Hutton and others, the significance of fossils as more than trivial
“curiosities” became clear. They helped understand Earth history
and gave an insight into past life on the planet. So the fossils that
Mary Anning found in the cliffs around Lyme Regis were of great