Mary Anning

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Mary Anning

Born May 21, 1799(1799-05-21)
Lyme Regis, England
Died March 9, 1847 (aged 47)
Lyme Regis, England
Occupation Fossil collector and paleontologist
Parents Richard and Mary Anning

Mary Anning (May 21, 1799 – March 9, 1847) was an early British fossil collector and paleontologist.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Born in the coastal southern English town of Lyme Regis in Dorset,[1] Mary Anning was marked out for an unusual life at the age of 15 months when in 1800 a lightning strike in the village caught four people in the open. Three died but Mary survived.

Mary's father, Richard, was a cabinet maker who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff-side fossil beds near Lyme Regis, and selling his finds to tourists. Richard Anning moved to Lyme from Colyton in Devon. He married Mary Moore on 8 August 1793 in Blandford. Returning to Lyme, the couple lived in a house built on the town’s bridge, and attended the local Congregational Church, where their children were baptized. Soon after their marriage a daughter Mary was born. She was followed by a second daughter, Martha, who died almost at once, then by a son Joseph, in 1796. In 1798 a second son, Henry, died in infancy and the eldest child, Mary, was burned to death, either sitting too close to the fire, or falling into it. When another daughter was born the following May, she was given the name of her dead sister, Mary. At least four more children followed: Henry, 1801; Percival, 1803; Elizabeth, 1804; and Richard, 1809. All died within a couple of years of birth, leaving only two surviving children, Joseph and Mary, when their father Richard died in 1810 at age 44. When he died of tuberculosis the Anning family was left without support. Mary and her brother Joseph began collecting fossils full-time in an effort to earn some income.

Fossil collecting was in vogue in the late 18th century and early 19th century, at first as a pastime akin to stamp collecting but gradually transforming into a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology became understood. Anning catered to the commercial side of the field, selling her finds. She soon forged relationships within the scientific community, whose passion for fossils grew to be a major source of income for her.

Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni found by Anning
Cast of "Plesiosaurus" macrocephalus found by Mary Anning, Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris
Skeleton of the "Plesiosaurus" macrocephalus given above

One of Anning's first discoveries was made shortly after her father's death when she was just twelve. She found the first complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur ever discovered, though ichthyosaur fossil fragments had been found in Wales as early as 1699. Her brother had discovered the skull of what appeared to be a large crocodile a year earlier. The rest of the skeleton was not to be found at first, but Mary located it after a storm scoured away a portion of the cliff containing it. It was an important find, and was soon described in the Transactions of the Royal Society. She went on to find two other distinct species of ichthyosaur.

As her reputation grew, Mary came to the attention of Thomas Birch, a wealthy fossil collector. Disturbed by the poverty of the Anning family, Birch arranged for the sale of his own fossil collection, the proceeds of which (some £400) were given to the Annings. Put on a sure (if somewhat austere) financial footing for the first time in a decade, Mary carried on with her fossil collecting even after her brother gained employment as an upholsterer.

Her next major discovery was a skeleton of a plesiosaur in 1821, the first of its kind to be found. The fossil was subsequently described by William Conybeare as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus and is the type specimen (holotype) of the species, which itself is the type species of the genus. She found an 'unrivalled specimen' of Dapedium politum, a ray-finned fish, as described in 1828. She discovered an important fossil of a pterosaur, a Pterodactylus macronyx (later renamed by Richard Owen Dimorphodon macronyx), the first found outside Germany and thought to be the first complete skeleton.

Those were the three finds that left her mark in history, but she continued collecting for the remainder of her life, making numerous other contributions to early paleontology. In her late thirties she was granted an annuity by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in return for her efforts. Anning died at the age of 47, of breast cancer. A few months earlier she had been made an honorary member of the Geological Society of London despite, as a woman, being ineligible for regular membership.

[edit] Impact

Mary Anning's Window, St Michael's Church
Gravestone of Mary Anning and her brother, Joseph

Taken all together, Mary Anning's discoveries became key pieces of evidence for extinction. Until her time it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct; any oddities found were explained away as still living somewhere in an unexplored region of the earth. The bizarre nature of the fossils found by Anning struck a heavy blow against this argument, and set the stage for real understanding of life in earlier geologic ages.

For a time after her death, Mary dropped into obscurity but, in recent decades, she has been rediscovered. After her death, a eulogy was read at the Geological Society, 'some members' of which subsequently contributed to a stained-glass window to her memory, in the parish church of St Michael the Archangel. The 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." (It depicts the corporal works of mercy, i.e. feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting prisoners and visiting the sick.)

Mary Anning is believed to be the source of the old tongue-twister, "She sells sea shells by the sea shore." [2]

In 2005, a Mary Anning 'facsimile' was created at the Natural History Museum as one of a number of notable gallery characters to patrol its displays. She is thus among other luminaries including Carl Linnaeus, Dorothea Bate, and William Smith.[3]

Writer John Fowles in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (Ch. 8) notes: "One of the meanest disgraces of British palaeontology is that though many scientists of the day gratefully used her finds to establish their own reputation, not one native type bears the name anningii".

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Blue plaque marking Mary Anning's birthplace.
  2. ^ Mary Anning - "Their shop was such a feature of the area that Mary became the inspiration behind the well-known tongue-twister 'She sells seashells on the seashore'." - Natural History Museum
  3. ^ Review by Miles Russell of Discovering Dorothea by Karolyn Shindler at ucl.ac.uk (accessed 23 November 2007)

[edit] Bibliography

  • Torrens, Hugh. 1995. "Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme: 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew'," British Journal for the History of Science, 25:257-284.
  • Anon. 1828. "Another discovery by Mary Anning of Lyme. An unrivalled specimen of Dapedium politum an antediluvian fish." Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 108:5599 2.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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