Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon by Jeannine Atkins

When a third child, and second daughter, was born in 1799, Richard and Molly gave her the same name, Mary. Their second child was named Mary, after her mother she, poor soul, was the shortest-lived of the three Marys, born around 1794 and perishing in a house-fire at Lyme Regis in 1798.

The couple had perhaps as many as ten children, the eldest to survive being Joseph (1796-1849). (She was to be the longest-lived of the three Marys, born around 1764 and dying in 1842 for the sake of clarity, I shall follow Hugh's example and hereinafter style her ÔMolly'). The first was Richard's wife, formerly Mary Moore of Blandford, Dorset, whom he married on 8 August 1793.

Now we must recognize other members of the Anning family were active in the fossil business and that, disconcertingly, there was not just one Mary Anning, but three! Recent delvings into documentation, in particular by Hugh Torrens (1995), have forced a number of revisions to the classic picture. It is also recalled that she would set her dog to guard promising specimens while she fetched labourers to excavate them, that she never married, and that she died before reaching her 50th birthday.Īs with most popular conceptions of historic events and persons, this is not altogether wrong, yet not altogether right. The story of Mary Anning is well, if vaguely known that, upon the death of her father Richard Anning, a cabinet-maker and part-time fossil collector, little Mary shouldered the burden of supporting her widowed mother and siblings by taking up the task of collecting fossils, for sale to eminent London gentlemen that she made a name for herself by finding the first complete fossil Ichthyosaurus and that her subsequent discoveries - among them, a splendid Plesiosaurus and what was to be the type specimen of the earliest pterodactyl yet discovered (Dimorphodon) added further luster to her image, until she became the foremost citizen - and foremost sight for visitors! - of Lyme Regis. Her birth, in her home town of Lyme Regis, Dorset, on three June days in 1999,Īnd attracted a considerable local, national and international participation. Geological meeting dedicated to her memory it was held on the bicentenary of She was also the first to be honoured by having a full-scale Woman whose portrait hung on the walls of the Geological Society's rooms in The first woman to achieve true fame in geology and, until recently, the only One were to name the most famous English fossil collector of the early nineteenthĬentury, the only possible answer would be 'Mary Anning'. Sarjeant, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan The Three Mary Annings The Three Mary Annings

Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon by Jeannine Atkins