In 1799, Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset County, England. Her father, Richard Anning, was a cabinet maker by trade, and supplemented his income by selling fossils that he had found in the area to tourists. In 1810, he died, leaving his family in debt, and without any income. Fortunately, his wife Mary, and their two children Mary and Joseph, also shared his skill in collecting fossils. The senior Mary became the head of the small family business in fossil collecting, but it soon became apparent that the younger Mary was the truly gifted one in the family.
The cliffs of Lyme Regis has become quite famous for its marine fossils of the Jurassic Period, the oldest of which date back to 195 million years ago. One of Mary's most famous fossil discoveries is that of the first Ichthyosaur ("fish lizard") in 1810. Actually, Mary's brother Joseph had found part of the Ichthyosaur a year earlier, but Mary found the majority of the specimen. Mary went on to find several other Ichthyosaur specimens, and eventually became quite famous among the scientific community for her ability to find fossils, and her extensive self-taught knowledge about extinct animals.
In 1828, Mary found the first Pleisiosaur ("near lizard"). Georges Cuvier, a famous French anatomist and early paleontologist, doubted the validity of the specimen when he first saw detailed drawings of it, but when he saw the bones Mary had collected, he became perhaps her greatest champion, even selling many of the fossils in his own collection to raise money for the Anning family. That same year, Mary went on to discover the bones of a Pterodactyl, the first pterosaur specimen to be found in England.
Mary Anning's working class background meant that she was not able to gain a formal education in class-concious Victorian England. The fact that she was female also hindered her in the world of science. Many of the scientists that she sold her fossils to refused to believe that a mere woman, especially from her crude background, could actually understand scientific priciples.
Although her fossils are found through out the museums and many private collections of Great Britain, she was never given credit as the discoverer, and her contributions to paleontology have been often overlooked. Once called "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew," the woman widely considered to be the first female paleontologist has become an obscure sidebar to history. But her memory lingers on whenever you twist your tongue with "She sells seashells by the sea shore," a nursery rhyme believed to be written about the young girl who supported her family by selling fossils.
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