She Found The First Plesiosaur And Still Got No Credit

Mary Anning

Born in May 1799 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, she grew up in desperate poverty. As a toddler, she miraculously survived being struck by lightning beneath an elm tree, an event locals claimed sparked her keen curiosity and sharp intellect. Her father, a cabinet maker, supplemented his income by hunting "curiosities" along the treacherous Blue Lias cliffs. When he died of tuberculosis in 1810 leaving the family buried in debt, eleven-year-old Mary Anning and her brother Joseph turned to the eroding shoreline full-time, searching the rockslides to sell fossils to visiting tourists.

In 1811, her brother spotted an enormous skull embedded in the rock, and twelve-year-old Mary spent months meticulously chiseling out a seventeen-foot skeleton from the cliff face. It was the world's first complete ichthyosaur skeleton ever recognized by science. In December 1823, she struck the earth again, uncovering the first complete skeleton of a plesiosaur. The long-necked, paddle-finned reptile appeared so alien that the preeminent French anatomist Georges Cuvier initially dismissed it as an elaborate forgery. When Cuvier was forced to recant at a meeting of the Geological Society, Anning's reputation as a peerless extractor of stone was cemented.

Her discoveries continued to rewrite prehistory. In 1828, Mary unearthed the first pterosaur skeleton found outside Germany, later named Dimorphodon, alongside fossilized fish and prehistoric cuttlefish retaining usable dried ink. Realizing that mysterious stony masses found inside reptile abdomens were petrified feces, she pioneered the study of coprolites, unlocking prehistoric diets. Though entirely self-taught, she dissected modern fish and reptiles to master comparative anatomy, quietly advising the leading academic minds of her era.

Despite her immense contributions, the scientific establishment barred her from participation. As a working-class woman and religious dissenter, she was prohibited from joining or even visiting the Geological Society of London, watching gentlemen scientists publish papers on her finds without crediting her name. Constantly battling financial ruin and lethal winter landslides, she narrowly escaped death in 1833 when a rockfall crushed her loyal terrier Tray at her feet. Diagnosed with breast cancer, Mary died in March 1847 at forty-seven years of age, finally recognized today as the pioneer whose seaside hammer exposed the deep history of life on Earth.