On 26th December, 1823, Mary Anning sent a letter with this hand-drawn sketch of a fossil skeleton she had pieced together, confirming the world’s first discovery of Plesiosaurus. It required an instinctive as well as an encyclopaedic knowledge of anatomy to identify, retrieve and arrange fossil remains in this way.
Part 1 of 2
IN 1811, twelve-year-old Mary Anning pieced together a fossilised skeleton from the limestone cliffs of Lyme Regis in Dorset. It was very different from the usual ammonite and belemnite shells that she and her brother sold to tourists, and it netted them £23, a welcome windfall following the death of their father Richard the previous year.
The specimen was subsequently called Ichthyosaurus, the first of its kind to be discovered. In 1823, Mary also unearthed the world’s first complete Plesiosaurus, and in 1828 she found Britain’s first Pterosaurus – or ‘flying dragon’, as the British Museum whimsically labelled it on display.
Academic institutions cold-shouldered Mary, though not the specimens she sold to them, bracketing her with the quarrymen who often supplied fossils to professional scientists. But the self-taught Mary’s finds came with anatomical drawings and ready-made classifications, really good ones; even eminent French anatomist George Cuvier had to eat his words after criticising her reconstruction of Plesiosaurus.
Part Two
Sir Henry de la Beche painted this imaginary scene ‘Duria Antiquior’ (‘a more ancient Dorset’) on the basis of the scientific work done by his friend Mary Anning. Mary did not simply find and excavate fossils: she actively assisted scholars to a better understanding of dinosaur anatomy, habitat and habits.
MARY’s shop in Lyme soon became a magnet for the most respected names in geology, from William Buckland (a pioneer of dinosaur research who gave Mary due credit for her finds) to Darwin’s tutor Adam Sedgewick. Louis Agassiz came all the way from Switzerland in 1834. Sir Henry de la Beche, first President of the Palaeontographical Society, was a frequent visitor and lifelong friend.
Nonetheless, Mary’s home economy relied on selling her seashells by the seashore,* and it was barely sufficient. In 1830, loyal customer James Birch auctioned his entire collection for Mary’s benefit. Matters worsened in 1835, and William Buckland secured her a government annuity of £25.*
Mary fell ill in 1846, and died on March 9th, 1847, aged forty-eight. Few of her better-known contemporaries could match her for knowledge of anatomy, or dexterity in excavation. ‘Her history shows’ Charles Dickens reflected ‘what humble people may do, if they have just purpose and courage enough, towards promoting the cause of science.’*
The famous tongue twister by Terry Sullivan (published 1908) is held to have been composed in honour of Mary.
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.
‘All the Year Round’, February 11th, 1865. The magazine was edited and mostly written by Dickens, though articles carried no by-line.
