Mary Anning
THE BIBLE DESCRIBES quite clearly that God created the Heavens and the Earth, and All Living Things in Seven days. But when exactly was that ? How long ago ? Scholars had long pondered this question which happily merged both Science and Religion in the quest for knowledge.
IN 1650 The Archbishop of Armagh concluded that God created the earth 4004 years before, adding up all the lifespans of the descendent of Adam and Eve ! Later, "that mankind has dwelt upon the earth about 6000 years and so confirms the evidence of Sacred Writ" was an supposition put forward in 1715 by the celebrated Astronomer Edmond Halley - he of the Comet which visited us recently.
God creates Adam on Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel
THAT THE EARTH and the sky, all animals and men, were created at One Time by the Almighty was becoming a problem ! For many years strange petrified bones and teeth of huge creatures, obviously animals and very clearly very long dead, bearing no resemblance to any other living, had been found in quarries and on the beaches, all over Europe. How could this be if all animals were created at the same time ? Petrified skeletons of plants had also been found deep in coal deposits all over Europe - some however recognisable as
equatorial specimens. How had this come to pass ? Had there been a weather change ? Did the Biblical Flood (Noah and The Ark) have anything to do with it ? Picture right; fossil fern in coal
FISH SKELETONS had been found inside rocks some distance below others which contained bones of land animals - how could this be explained ? These rocky bones and plants which were found embedded deep in stone came to be given a new name - Fossils ! A bitter struggle between Religion and Science was beginning in which Mary Anning played no small part.
FOSSILS HAD BECOME very collectable by professional scientists and amateur wealthy philanthropists. The briny coast of a small town in Dorset called Lyme Regis was known to be a particularly rich source, and the locals soon turned a hand to collecting pieces from the cliffs -
and then selling them to collectors and passing tourists. The most celebrated of all, with a gift for disentangling fossil skeletons from what seemed to be haphazard piles of rocks in the sandy beach, was Mary Anning, the daughter of a poor carpenter. Picture left: Cliffs at Lyme Regis
IT WAS HE who started the family business of Fossil Collecting and after his death in 1810, otherwise dependent on the Poor Relief, Mary took up collecting where her father had stopped. She and her younger brother Joseph gathered from the cliffs and beach at Lyme Regis and opened a small shop to sell their finds. There were ammonites, small bones, twisted shells and weird "crocodile skulls." For Joseph too had the family talent; in 1811 he had found a head resembling a strange reptile buried in the shale and sand of the beach.
A YEAR LATER Mary, going back to the same place, made her first great discovery. She found large rocky vertebrae, ribs, the complete skeleton. And it was seventeen feet long ! Unbelievable ! Was it a huge fish - no, with that tail it was more like a reptile. But that long skull and those teeth ! And than it had paddles not feet ? What - on earth - was it ? No-one had ever seen anything like it before and the scholars were baffled.
A Drawing of the Ichthyosaur Fossil
BUT CASH is cash and Mary sold her find to a local landowner for £23, a goodly sum for a poor family. The amazing skeleton was taken to London and displayed in Piccadilly. The animal was wonderfully named Ichthyosaurus, The Lizard of the Sea.
MARY'S DISCOVERY was taken from her - she was not named in the deluge of academic papers which came to be published about her find. As a poor and
uneducated woman there was no way she could enter the learned male world of science; yet she did not give up. Obtaining the latest publications about geology and astronomy she copied them into her notebooks to study - along with Byron's poetry ! She began to learn French and she made friends with local Ladies and Gentlemen, taking them down to the beach , showing them where the fossils were discovered and discussing the new scientific discoveries.
Picture left: an Ammonite fossil
DRESSED IN long skirts, shawl, clogs and bonnet, clutching her geological hammer and rotund wicker basket, she became a familiar figure on the beach and cliffs; out in all weathers she continued her searches - both for joy of the f
ind and to support her family. She was seen with her dog - who was left to guard the finds whilst Mary went for help if it was needed - and by 1820 she had uncovered several more ichthyosaurs. Yet the fossil business was not that profitable and a new find was needed; fame was still passing her by, but in 1823 it stopped again at her little shop. Picture Right; a Trilobite fossil
AT THE FOOT of the windswept cliff she uncovered a new skull, of a type unseen before. Small, not snouted and toothed like the Icthyosaurus, more like a turtle with a flat mouth and jaw. Then there were ribs, and a pelvis.... Mary had found another whole skeleton ! but again - what was it ? The creature was clearly seagoing since it too had paddles for feet but most amazing of all it had a curving swanlike neck as long as its body. How could it possibly swim ! Was it fish or reptile ? Clearly it was a very different animal from Ichthyosaur. The scientific world was again rocked with amazement.
NEWS OF THE UNIQUE new fossil travelled quickly to London and then on to Paris. Suddenly the world had heard of Mary Anning - she had done it again ! She had stunned the male world of Science which had christened her creature Plesiosaurus, the "near to lizard."Picture left: the Plesiosaur fossil.
BY NOW Mary had won the respect of contemporary scientists; her unique finds were instrumental in the formulating of the first tentative theories of Evolution. Her lonely application to studies of the science of the time had given her the ability to recognise the uniqueness of the petrified remains that she had found. Able now to talk on learned matters of geology and prehistory to England's prominent Professors and Doctors of Geology and Anatomy as well as to hobnob easily with nobility from all over Europe who came to visit her shop at Lyme Regis.
AND SHE RECEIVED her due from them. In 1838, she was awarded an Annuity from the British Association of the Advancement of Science and at the same time The Geological Society also awarded her a stipend. She was named the first honorary member of the newly founded Dorset County Museum ,which stands today on the site of the cottage where she was born. Picture right :Icthyosaurs swimming.
Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur
MARY DID not marry; when she died she was buried in the churchyard at the top of the cliffs where she had spent so much of her life. Funds were contributed for a stained glass window in her honour in the Lyme Parish Church. She lived to see the name Dinosaur enter the English Language in 1842 and the science of Palaeontology born.
SHE DIED of breast cancer in 1847.
THE PRESIDENT of the Geological Society, which would not admit women as members for another 100 years, wrote a eulogy :-....
"....one, who though not placed among even the easier classes of Society, but who had to earn her daily bread by her labour, yet contributed by her talents and her untiring researches, in no small degree to our knowledge of the great Enalio-Saurians and other forms of gigantic life entombed in the vicinity of Lyme Regis."
Plesiosaurs swimming
Thanks to:Lyme Regis Museum, University of Californian Museum of Paleontology.
"The Dinosaur Hunters" by Deborah Cadbury, pub. "4th estate Limited" 2000.
From Old Dyke 8, January 2001
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