Mary Anning – the first female palaeontologist
Recommended for Middle Grades
Do you know what a palaeontologist is? It is someone who studies fossils as a way of getting information about the history of life on Earth.
Today, on National Science Day, let’s learn about Mary Anning – the first female palaeontologist.
Mary Anning’s life and achievements
Mary Anning was born in 1799 in the town of Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England. Many fossils have been discovered in this area.
Mary’s family was very poor. She was also not properly educated but she taught herself. From a young age, her father taught her to find and collect fossils. She continued doing this after her father passed away. She would sell these fossils to tourists who visited the town.
When she was around 12 years old, Mary and her brother found the skeleton of a strange creature that looked like a strange fish-like crocodile.
Now we know that it was an Ichthyosaurus, or ‘fish lizard’. It was a marine reptile that lived 201-194 million years ago. But at that time, it had still not been discovered. Mary’s discovery led to a lot of new studies.
After that, she found many more complete ichthyosaur skeletons as well as other fossils. But during her lifetime, Mary was not recognised for her work by other scientists, because she was a woman. She died at the age of 47, still poor and largely unrecognised.
But today, her achievements have been recognised and she is seen as the first female palaeontologist.
Watch a video about the ichthyosaurus:
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