Mary Anning – Fossil Hunter

for most of us a trip to the beach means butt dip in the sea and an ice-cream but did you know that some beaches are also a prime place for looking for fossils one of the most celebrated fossil hunters who ever lived was Mary Anning how did her story begin in the early 1800s when Mary was just a baby the story goes that there was a great storm in her local town line Regis which borders across Dorset and Devon in England Mary was being looked after by three women who sought shelter from the storm suddenly a great bolt of lightning struck the group killing the women who were looking after Mary somehow Mary survived a lightning strike some people said that the Lightning changed Mary's personality that before the lightning strike she had been quiet and often unwell and after the lightning strike she suddenly seemed bubbly and brighter for a while as Mary grew up she and her father would walk along the coastline hunting for curiosities and her father taught her how to chisel away at the rock to expose the fossils without damaging them Mary developed fine skills as a fossil hunter and soon had a real passion for finding interesting specimens they didn't call them fossils in those times in fact they had all sorts of strange names for them like Mirta berries snake stones ladyfingers and The Devil's toenails Mary grew up in a poor family and she learned to read and write at her local Sunday School lessons she sold curios she found on the coast for a penny each as a table by the beach helping her family get by one day fossil hunting Mary's father slipped off a dangerous cliff top on the Lyme Regis coast he fell and he wasn't able to recover from the fall Mary was a religious woman and she was known to spend time thinking about God and reading the Bible especially when she had close encounters fossil hunting on the cliffs at Lyme just was a dangerous business and was what led to her father's death and there were many landslides on the coast where Mary went fossil hunting once she was even nearly hit by runaway cart none of this deterred her from her passion for fossils to make ends meet Mary continued to find fossils now with her trusty dog tray Mary continued also to read about fossils and to search for them in memory of her father a year later she came across something strange in one of the slate rocks it had an unusual shape and was very different to the other fossils she'd found she left trade by the rock and ran off to find some people who could help her to take it back to the house so that she could chisel the rock away and find out what the shape was after many days and weeks of delicately chiseling away at the rock eventually Mary uncovered a huge fossil this fossil turned out to be a plesiosaur in the years following Mary found other great discoveries she was able to sell the fossil she found for a good profit some even went but 100 to 200 pounds which is the equivalent of selling a fossil today for fifteen thousand pounds those finds were vital for her family's well-being and when she was there any good money she also donated some of her earnings to her local church some people at the time said that Mary only had the school she had looking for and understanding fossils because of the time she was struck by lightning nowadays we know that women can have just as big an impact on science as men perhaps unsurprisingly Mary got very frustrated in her later years because men of science would visit her for her ideas and her expertise and then say nothing about her contribution in the scientific papers they published there were people however who did recognize Mary's achievements and her amazing fossil finds and contributions to paleontology eventually when Mary Anning died a stained glass window was put up in her local church by her vicar and members of the Geological Society of London to recognize how much admiration both the Geological Society and the church had for her the fossils that Mary found have changed the way that people think about life on Earth now we know that all life here today evolved from things that existed thousands even millions of years ago and the fossils we find now are evidence of the living things that were here in the past

Channel: Science Box

Views: 149,091

Rating: 4.5220127 out of 5

Keywords: Mary Anning, Fossils

Id: Of5sK8p2rZY

Length: 5min 6sec (306 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2015