Page 148 - (DK) How to be a GENIUS?

Mary

Anning

Born in England in the last year of the 1700s,
Mary Anning was a self-taught pioneer of the new
science of geology. She had a genius for finding the
fossil remains of extinct animals and was considered
an expert by some of the most eminent scientists
in Europe. Yet she achieved all this at a time when
women were barred from academic life.
An extinct relative of the modern nautilus, this ammonite
is one of many fossils found on the Jurassic coast.

Jurassic coast
Mary lived in Lyme Regis on the
“Jurassic coast” of southern England—
so named because the cliffs contain Fossil hunter
fossils dating from the Jurassic period
of the age of dinosaurs. In the early Mary’s father was a
furniture maker and
1800s, such “curiosities” were not fossil collector who took his
understood, but they were eagerly children fossil hunting along
sought by visiting gentlemen the shore. He sold his finds to
naturalists. If they could not find wealthy visitors from a table in
any, they could buy them from front of his store. But he died
local collectors like Mary. when Mary was 11, leaving his
family with no income. His wife
kept up the fossil trade, while
Mary and her elder brother
This view shows Lyme Regis across the bay, and the beach in
went out to look for fossils. Mary
Charmouth where Mary found some of her best fossils.
became an expert at finding, and
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Mary
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I In 1800, at one year old, Mary survived being identifying, exciting fossils, and
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when she was 20, she started to
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s truck by l lightning. . Pe o p l e b el i e ved that thi i s run the fossil business herself.
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struck by lightning. People believed that this
t.
m a d e h er u n u s u a l l y b rig h t a n d o b s erv n t.
made her unusually bright and observant.
made her unusually bright and observant.
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Marine reptiles
Mary made her first major discovery in 1811, after
her brother found the fossilized skull of what he
thought was a crocodile. It took her a whole year
to uncover the complete skeleton of an ichthyosaur,
a prehistoric marine reptile that resembled
a dolphin. It was the first ever found. She sold
the fossil to a rich local man, who sold it on to a
museum in London. She was then only 12 years old.
Dorling
2011
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