A few weeks ago, I mentioned Grace O’Malley — pirate, politician, and woman with more guts than a cannon broadside. The response was immediate and loud: more forgotten women, please!
So here we go.
Let me introduce you to Mary Anning, a woman you’ve probably never heard of — unless you’re a geologist, a fossil nerd, or possibly British. Which is a shame, because Mary helped build the entire field of paleontology… and got nearly zero credit for it during her lifetime. Of course she didn’t. She was poor. She was a woman. And worst of all, she was right.
The Girl on the Cliffs
Mary was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, a damp little seaside town on England’s Jurassic Coast. You know the rhyme “She sells seashells by the seashore”? That’s probably about her, although no one can say for sure. What we do know is that Mary and her brother were combing those seashores for more than just shells — they were hunting fossils.
And not the “oh look, a trilobite” kind, either.
When she was just twelve, Mary dug out the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton — a marine reptile that looked like a cross between a dolphin and a sea monster. It was longer than a horse and a good deal toothier. The experts at the time thought it was a deformed crocodile. Mary, of course, knew better.
She kept digging. And finding. And digging some more.
The Dragon Lady of Dorset
By the time she was in her twenties, Mary had pulled plesiosaurs out of the cliffs (think Loch Ness Monster, but real), and even a pterosaur, the first one ever found outside Germany. That’s a flying reptile, by the way. Not a dinosaur, technically — I’ve learned to make that distinction or risk the wrath of dinosaur enthusiasts everywhere.
And here’s where the story starts to twist.
Despite her discoveries, Mary wasn’t allowed into scientific societies. She wasn’t given credit in journals. The fossils she unearthed? Named, classified, and written up by men — men who’d often bought them from her or, in some cases, just heard about them. She did the work. They got the glory.
Even worse? Many of them knew she was brilliant. They consulted her. Quoted her in letters. Sometimes even admitted she knew more about fossil anatomy than they did. But still, she was “just” a woman. A shopkeeper’s daughter. Someone who sold fossils to tourists when she needed bread money.
Sound familiar?
From Invisible to Immortal (Almost)
Mary died at 47, still poor, still mostly unrecognized. It wasn’t until years after her death that the scientific community started muttering “Oops…” and giving her the credit she deserved.
These days, her name’s on museum plaques, and her likeness is on statues — finally. There’s a movie about her (sort of — they took dramatic liberties, as movies do). She’s become a quiet icon for women in science, particularly the ones who don’t get invited to the keynote talks or the cover of Nature.
But here’s the part I keep coming back to: she didn’t do it for the fame. She couldn’t. Fame wasn’t an option. She did it because she loved it. Because the cliff called to her. Because she wanted to understand the bones in the rocks.
And isn’t that kind of fire the thing we admire most?
So Why Tell Her Story Now?
Because you asked for more posts like this. Because I’m elbow-deep in historical rabbit holes anyway. And because Mary Anning is exactly the kind of woman I love reading and writing about — smart, driven, passionate, and conveniently overlooked by the official record.
There’s something satisfying about digging up these stories. Almost like hunting fossils. Except instead of bones, it’s truth we’re pulling out of the rock.
Shall we keep going?
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Tracy Cooper-Posey
SRP Author
