Mary Had a Little…Ichthyosaur?

This week’s post is about somebody you’ll think you’ve never heard of.  Actually, you’ve known about her your whole life, you just don’t know it.  You probably first heard about her around the time you started grade school, but possibly even earlier than that.

Let me tell you something I hope you’ll find interesting.  When I’m done I bet you’ll say, “Oh, that’s HER?”

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Mary Anning was born to Richard and Mary Anning in the closing years of the 18th century.  From here on out we’ll call Mom Mary by her nickname, Molly, to save confusion with daughter Mary, who this post is about.  The family lived in Lyme Regis (County of Dorset), on the shore of the English Channel in Southwest England.  The couple produced ten children, only two of whom, Joseph (1796) and Mary (May 21, 1799), survived to adulthood.

Richard was a carpenter with an interesting hobby; he collected fossils.  The Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs in the Lyme Regis area were (and still are) rich in fossils from the Jurassic period so he had plenty of opportunity to engage in his pastime.  Like good fathers throughout time Richard happily involved his wife and children in his leisure-time pursuit, starting with the easier searching along the shore at the base of the cliffs. 

In Mary’s 11th year (1810), Richard passed away, leaving his family in debt.  Needless to say, they struggled financially. 

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This was in the early years of Paleontology (although it wouldn’t be named that until 1822), the study of extinct life.  Richard Anning’s old hobby had grown in popularity, with many people building collections of their own.  We all know that when something attains fad status people are willing to spend money on it.  Not only were museums and scientists eagerly gathering fossils but European nobles were building substantial private collections as well. 

Another stroke of good luck for the Anning family was that the town of Lyme Regis, as well as the cliffs, sat on the Dorset Coast of the English Channel, which had become a popular vacation destination for Great Britain’s upper class.  With fossil collecting a popular and growing hobby, the wealthy visitors eagerly bought whatever fossilized sea-creatures the Annings could sell.

So the Anning family was able to scrape by, in part by selling fossils they found among the cliffs.  While brother Joseph made a consistent contribution to the family’s livelihood by working as an upholsterer, Mary and Molly worked collecting and selling fossils. 

Mary loved it.

Molly ran the business while Mary hunted for fossils.  Young Mary soon established herself as the keen eye and accomplished anatomist of the talented, knowledgeable family.  Although she had little formal education (She had learned to read and write at her church.) and no formal scientific education, she was gifted with a sharp mind and gained an in-depth knowledge of extinct life. Some say she had an amazing, intuitive expertise of scientific practice and theory.  Mary dissected modern animals so that she could better understand the ones she was digging up.  She even learned French so that she could read the writings of scientists and naturalists whose work interested her.

Mary gradually took over the business end of things as well.  The fossils the family collected and skillfully prepared were in especially high demand by collectors.  Mary’s talent and attention to detail was a big part of that.

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Not long after father Richard died, Joseph had discovered the fossil skull of an unknown creature.  Later, his 12-year-old sister found the majority of the skeleton.  It was eventually identified as an Ichthyosaurus, basically, “fish lizard.”  It was the first ichthyosaur scientifically described and was one of the first and most complete specimens of Ichthyosaurus ever discovered.

A scientist named Henry Henley bought the ichthyosaur from the Annings for £23.  That was quite a healthy sum in those days, and especially for a family of the Annings’ social standing.

Mary discovered many prehistoric creatures, including several fine specimens of ichthyosaur (from 5 to 20 feet in length).  From the scientific point of view, however, her discovery of another aquatic creature may be her most important.

On December 10, 1823, Mary found the complete skeleton of a creature so incredible that it was hard for scientists to believe.  The beast she described had a long, sleek neck and a slender head filled with sharp teeth.  It had a long thin tail yet also possessed four wide flippers.  Today, we recognize the creature as a plesiosaur but at that time it was so ground breaking that some thought she had made it up.  The famous French anatomist, Georges Cuvier, doubted the validity of the specimen when he first examined a detailed drawing of it. Once he realized that this was a real animal, he said, “It is the most amazing creature ever discovered.”

The Annings were recognized more and more as legitimate and respected fossilists to the scientific community.  In 1824, Lady Harriet Sivester, the widow of the former Recorder of the City of London, wrote in her diary after visiting Mary Anning:

“. . . the extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved. . . It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour – that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom.”

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Mary made many important discoveries, including pterosaurs (a type of flying reptiles) and Squaloraja (a kind of fish), and coprolites (fossilized poop).  She was one of the first people to realize what a coprolite actually was.  In 1823 she discovered the ink bag of a Belemnoidea (similar to modern squids).  She found that the ink had survived fossilization and she actually used it to write several letters.

How many people can say they have done …well, any of those?

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Sadly, at that time in English history, the lower class, and women especially, were considered inferior to men and the upper class.  She was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London as a woman and often did not receive full credit, if any at all, for her contributions to science, like the ichthyosaur.

Yes, Henry Henley, who paid £23 to buy the ichthyosaurus skeleton from the Annings, also claimed credit for its discovery.

Not everyone, however, was so backward thinking.  Some, like her friend, geologist Henry De la Beche, were downright progressive.  De la Beche, who painted Duria Antiquior – A more Ancient Dorset, among the first paintings to represent a scene from prehistoric life, derived from fossil reconstructions.  He based it largely on fossils Mary had found.  Mary became well known in geological circles in much of the English speaking world and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as fossil collecting.

As mentioned, the Anning family had struggled by in poverty since Richard’s death.  During the early 1820s professional fossil collector Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Birch got to know the family as he bought several specimens from them.  In the 1820s he worried about the family’s distress.  They hadn’t made any big discoveries in a year and were desperate enough that they were about to sell their furniture to pay the rent. 

Lt. Col. Birch dug into his collection and decided to auction off all the fossils he had purchased from the family.  He wrote to paleontologist Gideon Mantell, and told him the auction was “for the benefit of the poor woman and her son and daughter at Lyme, who have in truth found almost all the fine things which have been submitted to scientific investigation … I may never again possess what I am about to part with, yet in doing it I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that the money will be well applied.”

The sale raised £400 (the equivalent of £32,000 or $44,000 in 2021).  Besides their portion of the proceeds, the family benefited from the exposure in newspapers and magazines.

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Leading scientists from the Geological Society of London, such as William Buckland, Henry de la Beche, Charles Lyell, Gideon Mantell, William Conybeare, and Roderick Murchison and his wife, Charlotte, came to know and respect Mary through personal visits and correspondence.  Still she rarely received credit for her finds.  As a female member of the working class she could not pursue higher education.  She could not attend lectures, or be granted membership at the Society. Her discoveries were discussed at the meetings, however, and she did have her supporters among the educated upper class.

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In the late 1840s it was discovered that Mary had developed breast cancer.  Her friends mustered forces to help her and her family.

Henry De la Beche gave her the proceeds from sales of a watercolor he painted and William Buckland arranged for a pension from the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  The Geological Society raised money from its members to help with her expenses and the council of the newly created Dorset County Museum made her an honorary member.

Mary passed away on March 9, 1847, at age 47.  She was memorialized by numerous of the top scientists of her day, including Henry Stuard Fagan, who wrote, “The carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it.”

In 1995, Hugh Torrens, of the Department of Geology, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK, referred to Mary as, “the greatest fossilist the world ever knew.”

In 2010, the Royal Society finally included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.

Swiss-American naturalist, Louis Agassiz named two fossil fish species after Anning in the early 1840s, the only such honor she received in her lifetime.  A few other species were named after her in the years since, but the world would have to wait until 2012, when the plesiosaur genus Anningasaura was named after its discoverer and the species Ichthyosaurus anningae, the one that started it all, was named after her in 2015.

You can visit Mary Anning’s home town and take guided Mary Anning fossil walks at the Lyme Regis Museum in her home town.

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I think that about sums it up, except for one little detail – where have you heard of Mary Anning before?

Well, first of all, I don’t know if she ever owned a little lamb, despite what I may seem to have implied in my title.  Nope.  So that’s not it.

You have known Mary Anning since you were a child, not by name, but simply as, “She.”  In 1908, Terry Sullivan wrote a song that is widely considered to have been based on the Annings’ family shop, where knowledgeable browsers sought out Mary for her intelligence and wit. 

Try to say the song’s lyrics as fast as you can: 

“She sells seashells on the seashore. 

The shells she sells are seashells, I’m sure. 

So if she sells seashells on the seashore,

then I’m sure she sells seashore shells.”

The song was entitled, appropriately enough, “She Sells Seashells.”

Yep, that’s her.

Do you remember her now?

I told you that you would.

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