Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter of the 1800’s

In the early 1800’s Charles Dickens was born, Jane Austin was in the middle of her career, and a young girl named Mary Anning was about to unearth a fossil.

Mary Anning was born in 1799, to a poor family living in the coastal town of Lyme Regis in Dorset, England. Her father, Richard, was a cabinetmaker who supplemented the meager family income by selling fossils, or “curiosities” to tourists. Richard must have adored his daughter, because from the age of 5 or 6 Mary joined him on his fossil hunting expeditions to the cliffs nearby, despite how unusual this would have been at the time. Unfortunately, when Mary was just 11 years old, her father died leaving the family finances yet more precarious.

When Mary was less than 2 years old a woman named Elizabeth Haskings offered to take her to a horse show for some fresh air and entertainment. While there, a sudden storm came crashing in and lightning struck Elizabeth as she held the baby in her arms. Mary was taken from poor Elizabeth’s body and rushed to the local doctor who declare it a miracle that the baby had survived.

Soon after their father’s death, Mary’s brother Joseph, was out searching for fossils when he found a 4 foot long skull of what he took to be a gigantic alligator. He took it back to the house as an interesting, but not particularly important, find. Joseph soon took up an apprenticeship to help earn money for the family, challenging Mary to find the remainder of the skeleton. She took up the challenge. Almost a year later 12 year old Mary found the remaining bones of the “alligator.”

Imagine the scene, a young girl, in worn, hand-spun clothing, tapping at the rock face with a pick and chisel, carefully carving away the eons of materials encasing the bone fragments. Over the course of several months she unearthed the entire skeleton of what was clearly not an alligator. It was so large she needed the help of several of the village men to bring it to her home. She recognized the importance of the find and carefully cleaned and mounted the specimen. When news of the find spread a collector came to view, and eventually purchase, the skeleton. A few years later it was recognized as a new creature and was named Ichthyosaurus.

This was just the beginning for Mary. Over the course of her lifetime she unearthed any number of fossils, including the first full skeleton of a Plesiosaurus giganteus, a new fossil fish species (Squaloraja,) and a new type of pterodactyl. She gained a reputation for her ability, not just to find fossils, but for her knowledge of the anatomy of the different species. She was also fastidious about cleaning, mounting and framing the specimens. She took meticulous notes and made drawings of her finds which she used to tempt collectors and inform her friends.

This was an age when science and religion were fighting over the origin of the earth. According to the Bible (and prominent theologians) the earth was approximately 4000 years old and had remained as it was created. However, there were some problems with this theory.

Mary’s fossils were part of the problem. How to explain these bones? Where did these monsters come from? Why had no one ever seen one before? Presumably a creature as large as some that she and others were finding would have caught someone’s attention at some point in history. Was it possible these animals no longer existed? It was at this time that the debate about evolution was heating up and fossils became a part of the argument in favor of a changing world. According to her journals and letters Mary wasn’t interested in the philosophical debate, but rather was fascinated by the creatures themselves. She read what she could and corresponded with many prominent scientists of the day.

Although she remained poor, Mary eventually earned enough to open a small shop at the front of the house she lived in with her mother. There she met many of the men, and the few women, studying the new science of paleontology. She often became friends and corresponded with them over the years including with Henry De La Beche, Louis Agassiz, Richard Owen, and The Philpot sisters: Mary, Elizabeth and Margaret. Elizabeth in particular became a close friend and the two of them would scour the cliffs together, sharing the excitement of each new find.

Mary took her friends and many others on tours of the cliffs or brought them out to hunt fossils with her. She was generous with her time and skill, despite the fact that her clients and friends were mostly wealthy, while she barely managed to scrape by. In fact, in 1821, a collector friend named James Birch stopped by to discover that the family was on the verge of selling their furniture to pay the rent. Birch was so horrified by their plight he sold his own collection to raise money for them:

The fact is I am going to sell my collection for the benefit of the poor woman Molly and her son Joseph and daughter Mary at Lyme who have in truth found almost all the fine things, which have been submitted to scientific investigation.^1

Over time, many of Mary’s male friends became leaders in the field. However, while they received recognition for their work, Mary remained mostly unacknowledged. As a poor woman she was invisible to the establishment, despite the number of specimens she had contributed to that establishment.

Women were not accepted into the scientific societies which benefited from her work and Mary was rarely given credit, even by her friends. However, after she died of breast cancer in 1847, at the age of 48, the president of the Geological Society of London, her friend Henry De la Beche, gave the following eulogy:

I cannot close this notice of our losses by death without advertising to that of one who though not placed among even the easier classes of society, but one who had to earn her daily bread by her labor, yet contributed by her talent and untiring researches in no small degree to our knowledge of the great Enalio-Saurians, [ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs] and other forms of organic life entombed in the vicinity of Lyne Regis…there are those among us in this room who know well how to appreciate the skill she employed (from her knowledge of the various works as they appeared on the subject) in developing the remains of the many fine skeletons of Ichthyosouri and Plesiosauri, which without her care would never have been presented to the comparative anatomist in the uninjured state so desirable for their examination…. ^

It was not until the 20th Century that scientific societies began to accept women as full members and even today women are often not recognized for the work they do. Once the contributions of all members of society come to be recognized people like Mary Anning will finally be acknowledged for the contributions they have made.

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1. 1 Hugh Torrens, “Mary Anning’s Life and Times: New Perspectives,” Mary Anning Symposium, 1999; Lyme Regis, June 2-4, 1999. As quoted in: The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, by Shelley Emling, Palgrave McMillan, 2009. p.71.
2. Ibid p. 199-200.

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Thanks for reading.
Stay well, be curious, learn things.

Kate
June 2020