1811

Reading the Fossil Record

Mary Anning (1799–1847)

Nicolas Steno’s work on the foundational principles of stratigraphy and geology in the seventeenth century and James Hutton’s eighteenth-century idea of “deep time” were slow to be embraced by the world’s scientific community. Significantly more evidence was needed to support the hypothesis that the Earth was truly ancient and that countless different climates and species had come and gone long before the arrival of humans. The primary source of that evidence would prove to be fossils, and fossil hunters with the skill and experience to find, extract, and identify important new specimens would be critical to our modern understanding of the history of our planet.

Among the most accomplished early fossil hunters was the nineteenth-century self-taught British fossil collector and paleontologist Mary Anning. Anning grew up in a popular English seaside resort town and worked with her father and brother to find and sell fossils (“curios”) that they extracted from the layered, sedimentary cliffs along the ocean. While the family fossil business helped put food on the table, it also fueled Mary’s intense scientific curiosity about the nature and origin of the strange and wonderful forms being dug out of the cliffs.

Landslides after winter storms would erode those cliffs and expose new fossils, which Mary would collect and catalog (often in dangerous circumstances, as the cliffs were quite unstable). She made her first critical find in 1811, when she was just 12 years old, discovering the skeleton of an ancient large marine reptile that would later be known as an ichthyosaur. Later, she discovered the first complete plesiosaurus specimen, another large extinct marine reptile, and then the first British example of the flying reptiles known as pterosaurs. Her reputation grew as she met and sold specimens to noted geologists and other fossil collectors of the day, and she familiarized herself with the scientific literature hypothesizing the origin and evolution of these fascinating ancient animals.

Despite being more knowledgeable and experienced than her scientifically trained male contemporaries, as a woman Anning was not accepted into the academic world, and often not given credit for her scientific contributions. Today, however, she is recognized as having made major contributions to the discovery of extinctions and the great age of our planet.

Main image: 1823 letter and sketch by Mary Anning announcing the discovery of Plesiosaurus fossils. Inset: Portrait of nineteenth-century geologist Mary Anning, with her rock hammer, her sample bag, and her dog Tray.