Mary Anning An unusual life carved in stone At the beginning of the 19th century, when collecting fossils was nothing but a hobby and palaeontology did not yet exist as a science, a single, low-class woman with no education made findings that placed her firmly at the centre of debates within the scientific elite. During those years, the fundamentals of geology were being laid down within the recently created Geological Society of London (1807), a select club that never accepted as a member ‘ the mother of palaeontology ’, or any other woman, until 1919. Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, a coastal town in England that was located near the Equator and covered by the waters of a tropical sea 200 million years previously. The rocks from the cliffs where Mary lived are rich in Jurassic fossils, which Mary’s father collected to supplement the family income. His sudden death, when Mary was only 11 years old, meant that the family had to sell curiosities (such as ammonoids and belemnites) to survive. Of the 10 children from the marriage, only Mary and her brother Joseph survived their childhood. Fortune smiled on them when Joseph found the skull of what seemed to be a crocodile. After a year of constant searching, Mary managed to uncover the remains of a strange creature more than 5 metres long: the first Ichthyosaur. The marine reptile caught the attention of the scientific circles of London, and the Anning family’s reputation spread. However, their income was little and their occupation dangerous. It required them to walk under cliffs where rocks fell, and Joseph left the profession. In 1820, Mary found the skeleton of a new marine reptile, a Plesiosaurus. Its neck was extremely long and raised the suspicion of the anatomist Georges Cuvier, who suggested it was a falsification. Once the controversy was settled, and Cuvier corrected, Mary’s store started to receive visits from international geologists and collectors. She learned about fossils on her own: she copied scientific articles, drew illustrations, dissected fishes and cuttlefish…However, her contemporaries credited her findings to a divine favour, because at only one year old she had miraculously survived a lightning strike. Mary was aware that the ’ gentlemen of science ’ used her to gain prestige without crediting her and the situation remained thus until 1828, when she found the first Pterosaur skeleton outside Germany and the geologist William Buckland attributed the finding to her. Anning died from cancer at a young age, at only 47 years old. Her findings evidenced that the Earth was inhabited previously by vastly different species, questioning creationist theories and forming the foundation of the theory of evolution that Darwin would formulate 50 years later. Although she worked at a distance from formal institutions, her name was recorded by some of those institutions. A Lyme Regis church made a stained-glass window in her honour, ‘ commemorating her ability to promote the Science of Geology’ , and the Geological Society of London published a panegyric, the first dedicated to a woman and the only panegyric honouring a non-member of the Society. The humble Mary Anning managed to go down in history. The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone. 15
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