 |
MARY ANNING
and the birth of geology
|
 |
| Mary Anning (1799-1847) was born on
the site of the Museum. The fossils she collected - including several creatures
unknown at the time - provided the basic material for the new science of
geology. |
|
The most famous female fossilist.
'She is a history and a mystery'.
Her mother. |
| |
'the Princess of palaeontology, Miss
Anning'
Ludwig Deichardt, German explorer, 1817. |
|
'a very clever, funny creature'.
George William Leatherstonaugh, American geologist, 1833.
|
|
| |
All the 'professors and
clever men' in geology 'acknoledge that she understands more of the science
than anyone else in the kingdom'
Lady Silvester, 1824. |
 |
'She glories in being afraid
of
no one and in saying
everything she pleases'.
Anna Maria Pinney in her Journal, 1831. |
|
'I do so enjoy an opposition
amongst the big wigs'.
Mary Anning in a letter, 1828. |
|
|
'I am well known throughout
the whole of Europe'.
Mary Anning to the King of Saxony's physician, 1844.
|
| |
'The world has used me so
unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of all mankind'.
Mary Anning in a letter to Miss Bell, 1824. |
'a prim, pedantic, vinegar looking, thin
female, shrewd and rather satirical in her conversation'.
Gideon Mantell, 1831. |
|
'A being of imagination - she has so many
ideas and such power of communicating them'.
Mrs Stocks of Lyme, an early employer of Mary Anning,
1831. |
|
 |
Fossils at Lyme
For thousands of years the Lyme cliffs crumbled and fell, revealing great
numbers of fossils which were washed away by the sea. People occasionally
picked up oddly shaped stones, seeing them as curiosities of nature, but until
the early 19th century there was no scientific interest or understanding. |
 |
The Princess of Palaeontology
Mary Anning was in exactly the right place to become a pioneer geologist and to
earn a living from geology. Lyme not only had the fossils; because it was a
holiday resort it also had the visitors who wanted to buy the smaller
specimens. Mary's major discoveries were sold to museums and collectors, but
the trade in cheaper fossils was largely to ordinary visitors. |
| |
The Lias at Lyme was being quarried from the sea ledges in the early 19th
century (mostly for cement which would set underwater) exposing the large areas
for fossil hunting. George Roberts wrote in his Dictionary of Geology
(1839) under the entry for Plesiosaurs: The great depository is Lyme Regis:
the reason is, that a greater extent of lias is there acted upon by the tide,
and men, who break up the ledges; and so enable Miss Anning to perambulate a
fruitful superficial extent of three miles long by one eighth of a mile
broad. |
|
|
|
