'She sells sea shells
by the sea shore.' Many have heard
this Old English rhyme, but few know the true story
of the woman who inspired it Her name was Mary Anning. And she did much more
than sell sea shells She discovered some of the very first dinosaur fossils and though she never received proper credit for it she laid the ground work for the entire field of Paleontology To say that Mary Anning's life had
a rough start would be an understatement She was named
after an older sister, who had burned
to death in fire Before Mary could walk, her nurse was struck
by a lightning bolt while holding her The nurse was killed but baby Mary survived She bounced back and grew into a lively child
who could always be found at her father's side Scouring the local beach to collect
the curious sea shells and so called crocodile teeth that tourists loved
to buy from them She was barely eight
when her father slipped and fell of off
one of the treacherous sea side cliffs And though he managed
to crawl home that day, the pain racked him
of the rest of short life He died three years later, leaving his wife
and two surviving children with debts to pay Mary did her best to bring home money
by running errands around town But she still loved to visit the beach the way her father used to, searching for curiosities She had just picked up
a large sea shell when a passing tourist, admiring
its beauty, offered to buy it
from Mary for what amounted to a full week's
worth of food for her and her family In a snap, Mary realised that she could bring back her father's curio selling business as long as she was willing to risk exploring the same rocky shores that had ultimately claimed his life She did not hesitate. She and her older brother returned
to their beach hunting ways and their mother became the manager
of the little shop they reopened in their living room. It was Mary's brother
who made the first big find; a skull, which he believed
to be from a crocodile. But he had no time
to investigate further. He had a real job now. He couldn't
just keep hunting for trinkets Twelve year old Mary made the call She would find the rest of these bones, even if she had to spend all of her meager earnings hiring a group of labourers to help dig them out Her instinct payed off Unwittingly, she managed to unearth the first complete fossil
of an Ichthyosaur An ancient marine reptile,
unlike anything anybody had ever seen A wealthy collector snatched it up for a price that more than paid off Mary's digging investment The fossil went on
to be displayed in a museum Where it became
an enormous public spectacle and attracted the attention
of the Geological Society of London The scientific community had just begun to explore
the idea that certain species might become extinct This was a radical thought
in a Christian society that could not conceive of creatures that had been part of God's perfect creation just dying out But here was Mary Anning's fossil Evidence of some creature
that no longer swam the seas And one that was older
than anybody could yet imagine The Geological Society jumped on it They debated the fossil at length Arguing about
whether it was a fish or maybe a lizard or some kind of aquatic bird? The one thing they never discussed
was the person who found it Their society
had no place for woman Especially not a poor uneducated woman
who seemed to have merely made a lucky find Nevertheless, outside
the formal halls of the society educated geologists began to migrate
to the source of this great find To Mary
in her tiny sea side town They found a young woman who had become an expert at finding fossils or shells and carefully excavating them As always she sold her
finds to support her family and the collectors or geologists who bought them quickly turned around to claim credit for the finds But while Mary would grow to resent these men who,
as she put it, sucked her brains She still befriended many of them
and profited from their knowledge She was determined to not just be some lucky bumpkin who found a fossil by pure chance She read and reread every book she could get from the hand full of wealthy people who supported her eager quest to learn She even collected
dead creatures from the beach and dissected them
on her kitchen table Learning everything
she could about their anatomy Though self-taught,
Mary became an expert who could, and did argue successfully
with the most brilliant scholars of the age And her fossil finds continued In 1823,
she excavated a Plesiosaurus By then, enough Plesiosaurus bones had been found elsewhere that others had already speculated about its existence But nobody had ever found a specimen as complete as Mary Anning's Confronted with the bizarre reality of this long necked, fat bodied, flippered sea monster the worlds leading vertebrate naturalist declared
that he believed it to be a fake The creation of some overactive imagination and too much plaster of Paris When closer examination proved
that the bones were in fact real Mary's good name
was vindicated But credit for the discovery
still went to somebody else As more and more ancient fossils
came to light a public craze began
to develop around them And a new branch
of science sprang up to study them Paleontology Mary, who despite her lack of official credit, had won herself a reputation
across all of Europe for her expertise was dubbed the Princess of Paleontology But while other Paleontologists
chased after bones, Mary had begun
the greatest hunt of all The hunt for poop She had noticed the strange and inscrutable stones that often appeared in the abdomens of the fossils she found and she theorised that their proud and noble poop had become fossilised glorious rock poop imprisoned within the cage of time She convinced one of her friends from the Geological Society to investigate these majestic poops with her Through forbidden and occult arts,
by which I mean chemistry They managed to restore
the grandeur of ancient stone poop With their powers of science,
they turned it into not stone poop And thus with poop in hand
they strode mightily through the world of science They had unlocked two crucial mysteries
about these ancient creatures What they ate,
and how they became fossils It would become a corner stone
of Paleontology research that continues to power
many new discoveries even today Mary's friend named
these fossil feces coprolites And rushed to publish
a paper about them Giving her, as you might
have already guessed, zero credit for the discovery Mary had no time to complain Even if she had received credit
for unraveling the mysteries of coprolite she couldn't exactly sell poop to her carefully curated network of wealthy collectors She had to market herself constantly Writing letters to past clients promising
new fossils worthy of a museum Promises that she knew would appeal
to their egos and open their bank accounts But she simply hadn't found
many good fossils lately But then at last, the fierce ocean storms that so often
threaten her life gave her a gift They wore down the cliffs enough for Mary
to dig out a fossil that even she did not recognise This was no sea creature It had wings She had discovered
the second Pterodactyl ever And the first specimen
complete enough to confirm that, yes, some of
these ancient reptiles could fly Again, this discovery lit a fire
in the imagination other paleontologists who began to see flying reptiles
everywhere they looked The next time Mary found a new fossil, experts rushed to argue that it was another flying reptile Or at least another sea reptile
like the Ichthyosaurus Mary, who remembered finding a similar skeleton
in the ray fish she dissected on her kitchen table Insisted that, no,
this was a fish Four years later,
the experts agreed Yeah, that was a fish Mary went on to discover yet
another species of Plesiosaur Bringing her to a total of
5 major discoveries before the age of 30 She also cataloged countless species of fish, ammonites
and other small sea creatures Unlike her male contemporaries who lived of off cushy stipends from universities and museums and even the church Mary had to sell
her discoveries to survive And in doing so she had
to give away the credit for her work Yet for two decades she ran a successful business
that supported her and her mother Until everything collapsed The fossil rich shores of her town, the only place she could ever access
as a poor woman who couldn't afford research trips Eventually ran dry She could find
no more major discoveries What fossils she did find
were repeats of exciting species and she struggled to sell them in a tough economy that had lost its enthusiasm for such novelties Then her bank collapsed, erasing her life savings Her mother passed away And finally, Mary was diagnosed
with breast cancer at the age of 46 She carried on
for two more years Still hunting for fossils,
but found nothing In the final years of her life, the men who so often claimed
her discoveries as their own and refused her admission to their exclusive
Geological Society of London came through for her
in some small ways They raised the funds
for a small pension that she could life on And after she died,
the Society honored her with a eulogy and a stained glass window
gifted to her church But it was too little too late Marry Anning would be remembered
not as a paleontologist whose work paved the way for a completely new understanding of the history of the earth But as a nameless woman
who simply sold sea shells by the seashore
Wow someone learning something from Extra History and actually providing the link to Extra History. I applaud you
And also the source material for the tongue twister "She sold sea shells by the sea shore".
I stumbled upon extra credit back in 2015. I had just been let go from my job and was getting into GML/Game Maker Studio. I found some of their game design video. I was planning on working on a video game while looking for work, but found a job 3 weeks later, and started 2 weeks after that, and have had a hard time finding time because of slack..
I have come to love their history videos. Jonh Snow, Catherine the Great, Admiral Yi, and so on... I get excited when they start a new series. If you like this channel, crash course history, and all the other crash courses will make you happy too.
There is a very good fictionalized account of her life called "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, who also wrote "Girl with a Pearl Earring".
How is there not a movie about her life?
She also wrote [one of the most enduring love songs.
Years ago in Smithsonian mag. there was a story of two rival amateur paleontologist, one was more scholarly in his approach than the other. The other had a bit of P.T.Barnum in his blood,taking bones from multiple dinosaurs and putting them together to make fantastical creatures which he would then take on tours around the world, much to the other mans dismay. They had a heated and long standing feud over which was correct.