She had a nose for finding bones, known for pulling strange creatures out from the distant past, revealing the remnants of living things from millions of years before. Mary was the first woman fossil hunter, and she made some of the most profound discoveries in the field that would become paleontology.
Mary Anning was born poor. Her father was a cabinetmaker and his business was slim, which meant a life of poverty. The family lived on the southern coast of England in the town Lyme Regis, in a shack so close to the sea that waves would smack into the house in stormy weather. Mary was born in 1799, and out of ten Anning children, only two, Mary and her brother Joseph, survived into adulthood. Life was a precious commodity which tended to be shortened by poverty in a World that didn't included assistance for the impoverished. To make ends meet, Mary's father, Richard began hunting the cliffs along the Lyme Regis' beaches for the strange stone objects that we know today as prehistoric fossils and selling them in his shop. While the furniture making trade wasn't so good to Anning, selling his fossil finds to tourists and the like made ends meet.
Bringing young Mary and Joseph along on these adventures planted a seed of passion that would last throughout his and her lifetimes, inspiring a love of the World before time. In 1810, Richard died, leaving his wife, Mary Moore-Anning and the two children to face the fossil business alone. While not fully documented, Mary's mother was as active in looking for fossils as her children, however, she did not reach the lengths her daughter did. While she very well may be the first female "fossil hunter", she did not break into the bounds of paleontology as her daughter would.
The finds attributed to Mary were extraordinary for the time. Her brother discovered an Ichthyosaurus when she was 12. Mary didn't originally find this fossil, due to Joseph's involvement in an apprenticeship at the time, he was unable to excavate find, so Mary did in his stead. While this was not the first Ichthyosaurus ever found, it was the one that gained the most publicity and generated the most interest. On her own, Mary found the first Plesiosaur, as well as a Pterodactyl, which had previously only been excavated in Germany. This, along with finds of ammonites and other smaller fossils ensured that she and her family could survive and be somewhat comfortable in a lower middle class existence. As a child, Mary's first sale was an Ammonite she had just pulled from the cliffs, a well-off tourist paying her half a Crown on the spot.
Mary could find fossils, but she also took the next step, and documented her finds on paper, creating detailed sketches and notes of the fossilized creatures she discovered. It was Mary Anning who made the connection of coprolites being fossilized waste. She was able to identify this material as such because of its location in the remains of the fossilized creature, being found or located in what would have been the animal's digestive tract. Along with William Buckland brought this discovery to the attention of the scientific community. Because she made that connection, Mary and proceeding paleontologists were able to analyze what certain ancient animals ate, as well as using spores contained within the feces to identify plant life existed in the distant past and where it grew. Perhaps one of the most interesting tricks performed from one of her finds was the use of the ink from fossilized cuttlefish. Once found with the ink sack intact, this ancient ink was used by her good friend Elizabeth Philpot to sketch some of Mary's fossils.
In the late 1820s Mary opened a shop to sell her fossils finds. The Fossil Depot did quite a brisk business, and Mary, her Mother and brother Joseph did well. Some of her finds were garnering up to 200 pounds sterling, the equivalent of $100,000. While the Annings were not super wealthy, they were certainly not stuck back in the shack...by the sea.
Her finds inspired the burgeoning science of paleontology and engendered debate and discovery for the male aspect of the science and societies. Mary, being a woman, could not present anything to any scientific community of the time. She could not gain membership or audience to contemporary scientific societies, despite having read the latest treatises and being an individual who made some very important discoveries. She was literate, she could read and write. She was well aware of of the most cutting edge theories, including Georges Cuvier, for which she had taught herself to read and understand French. Despite being almost completely shut out, informally she was consulted with and for many of her male contemporaries, her opinions on Paleontology mattered and were respected. She even had a small portion of her research published within her lifetime, The Magazine of Natural History including part of a letter she had written about finding a fossilized shark jawbone. An extraordinary occurrence in the Victorian, male-dominated world of British Science.
Mary Anning never received the full recognition she richly deserved within her lifetime. Her, her brother, along with her Father and Mother were pioneers in the field of Paleontology, the study of fossilized fauna and flora. Mary's work partially influenced the way we saw creatures of the distant past with illustrations produced to highlight her findings. Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset was created by artist Henry de la Beche to directly highlight Mary's fossil find in and around Lyme Regis, with Ichthyosaurus, Ammonites, Pterosaurs, Prehistoric alligators and fish, and Mary's most important find...the Plesiosaur. The engraving was based off his original watercolor, which was painted using actual fossil evidence. Monies from the sale of the print was given to Mary to support her work. Another watercolor showing a stylized Pterosaur was painted in 1828 by the Reverend George Howman, and he used Mary's find correctly portray the creature. While not perfect (Mary's Pterosaur is missing the head, so that part had to be conjectural) the portrayal of the prehistoric creature was once again was based on actual physical evidence.
Her finds and research influenced artistic works portraying previously unknown prehistoric creatures based on the fossilized remains she found, She never found a dinosaur on the scale of a Brachiosaurus or Tyrannosaurs Rex, she did find fossils significant enough to cement her reputation as the first female paleontologist. Mary Anning never married, and unfortunately passed away in 1847 of breast cancer at the age of 48.
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Kowinski, J. (2022). Biography: Mary Anning The Pioneering Female Paleontologist. https://www.fossilguy.com/articles/mary-anning//index.htm
Scott, M. (2022). Mary Anning. https://www.strangescience.net/anning.htm
Torrens, H. (1995). Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew'. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/mary-anning-17991847-of-lyme-the-greatest-fossilist-the-world-ever-knew/58D173F8F79721068E7007FADE70F727