Mary Anning

Mary Anning was an English fossil collector whose discoveries along the cliffs near Lyme Regis on England's southern coast made major contributions to the founding of paleontology as a scientific field. As a child, working with her brother, Anning found and excavated the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton around 1810 to 1811, a marine reptile previously unknown to science; in 1823 she discovered the first nearly complete skeleton of a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile with four large flippers so unlike any living animal that it was initially doubted by some scientists to be genuine; and in 1828 she found the first pterosaur skeleton discovered outside Germany. Anning taught herself anatomy, geology and scientific illustration in order to properly clean, prepare and interpret the fossils she found, corresponding with and supplying specimens to many of the leading geologists and naturalists of her time, whose published scientific descriptions of her discoveries helped reshape contemporary understanding of prehistoric life and Earth's deep history. Despite the scientific importance of her finds, Anning received little formal recognition or credit during her lifetime, since as a woman of modest means she was excluded from membership in the Geological Society of London and other scientific institutions of the era; her contributions to the birth of paleontology are now widely and prominently celebrated.