Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter of Lyme Regis
By Leah George Demetriou
Lyme Regis Beach (Leah Demetriou).
Scouring beaches for natural curiosities is an old and familiar pastime. Shells, small fossils, and various other tokens of the sea are often collected by visitors as keepsakes. However, now and again, something is found that alters the course of the scientific world. The Jurassic Coast of England is rife with fossils, famous for its rich deposits of extinct marine life.
Lyme Regis (Tony Martin Long/Shutterstock.com).
Lyme Regis is one of its most celebrated sites, nestled on the Dorset Coast in southern England. The idyllic town has barely changed since the 1800s, when its most renowned inhabitant, the fossil-hunting paleontologist Mary Anning, would have roamed its shores in search of specimens.
[caption: Fossil finds (Leah Demetriou). Ammonite pavement (Leah Demetriou). Portrait of Mary Anning with her dog Tray and the Golden Cap outcrop in the background (Natural History Museum, London).]
Mary was born in 1799 to Richard Anning and Mary Moore. Richard was a carpenter, but he would collect and sell fossils on the side. Of their ten children, only Mary and her brother Joseph lived to be adults, and Mary only barely. While the Annings were attending a local horse show, Mary was left with her babysitter in a nearby field. The weather became tremulous, and the babysitter ran for cover beneath a tree. Unfortunately, the storm turned deadly, and the tree was struck by a bolt of lightning, leaving only the infant Mary alive. Her survival was a fortunate miracle for the future of paleontology, as when she was old enough, Anning began to accompany her father and brother on their fossil-hunting excursions on the cliffs. However, despite working tirelessly, the Annings always struggled for money.
Drawing of the skull of Temnodontosaurus (originally Ichthyosaurus) platyodon found by Joseph and Mary Anning, 1814 (Everard Home). Letter and drawing announcing the discovery of a fossil animal now known as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, 26 December 1823 (Mary Anning).
In 1811, Joseph Anning discovered a fossil that would forever transform the landscape of paleontology: a long, distinctive skull with rows of interlocking tapered teeth. With Mary’s help, the body was excavated from the rock. Word of the peculiar beast swiftly spread to the scientific hubs of England. Nothing of the sort had ever been found before, and scientists clamored to be the first to publish a paper on the new animal.
Mary and Joseph’s fossil was initially believed to be a species of modern crocodile. Ultimately, in 1821, after Anning had found several more remains of the same species, two geologists, Henry De La Beche and the Reverend William Conybeare, named the new species ichthyosaur, meaning “fish lizard.” Both men were friends of Anning’s, and De la Beche personally provided her monetary aid when funds were tight, selling parts of his fossil collection and donating the profits to Anning.
Cliffs above the beach in Lyme Regis (Leah Demetriou).
Joseph Anning ultimately lost interest in fossil hunting, but it was his sister Mary’s main source of income, and the ichthyosaur was far from her only major discovery. After her initial significant finds, others steadily trickled forth: the long-necked plesiosaurus, the flying reptile pterosaur, and even fossilized feces, known as coprolites, all had Mary’s name emblazoned on them. The frequent storms loosened the cliffs, as rockfalls and the pounding rain etched away at the rock face, setting more and more extinct monsters free from their prisons.
Mary dashed off letter after letter with accurate drawings to her eminent correspondents, showing off her latest finds and suggesting a price for their purchase. Mary was an astute businesswoman, and institutions, museums, and private collectors alike were desperate to have her unique specimens.
With such a stream of new geological finds, Anning became a vital contact to many geologists who wanted to be the first to see the spoils of her labor or to be tutored in traversing Lyme Regis’s treacherous cliffs in search of fossils. Some of the learned gentlemen were more suited to fieldwork than others, who spent most of their time behind desks looking at specimens that had already been extracted from the rock for them. They struggled where Mary excelled, stumbling over the rocks and getting caught by the tide. Notably, Sir Richard Owen, who coined the word “dinosaur,” was almost swept away by the waves on his first and only visit to Lyme Regis to meet Anning. Invariably, when the publications they wrote on Anning’s fossils appeared, she was never mentioned by name as their collector.
Mary Anning died in 1847 of breast cancer, largely unacknowledged in the scientific literature to which she contributed so much. Thankfully, nowadays, she has been lifted from obscurity and celebrated as the prolific self-taught fossilist that she was. And now, she inspires many to follow in her footsteps. I felt it was only right to pay homage to Mary and search the shores of Lyme Regis for my own finds, though I suspect that I resembled the bumbling city scientists trailing along in her wake far more than the nimble Mary.
Ammonite fossils (Leah Demetriou. Belemnite fossil as found on the beach (Kirsti Scott). Crinoid fossils (Leah Demetriou).
The most common fossils on Lyme’s beaches are ammonites, shells of extinct cephalopods, usually preserved in pyrite. In the early 19th century, ammonites were known as “snake stones,” as it was thought that Saint Hilda had prayed to have snakes petrified into stone. Some fossil sellers would carve snake heads into their ammonites and market them as “snake stones” to drum up sales by referencing this folk tale. It is unknown whether the Annings did this. With Mary’s penchant for accuracy, it seems unlikely she would have done so.
The second most common find is belemnites, the central shaft of prehistoric squid-like animals. Some examples of belemnites still have fossilized ink sacs attached; Anning ground these up to make writing ink for her correspondence, which had a browner hue than traditional writing ink.
Slightly more unusual are the geometric spine-like stems of crinoids, an animal that, like tube worms, attached itself to the sea floor and fed with feeler-like appendages. Some species of crinoids are still alive today. Loose fossils found on the beach are seldom the remains of beasts as large as ichthyosaurs. They are often embedded in capsules of stone with a hint of the bone peeking out. These require proper excavation.
The Statue of Mary Anning, a bronze sculpture of the paleontologist Mary Anning sculpted by Denise Dutton and erected in May 2022 in Lyme Regis.
While most of my own finds were standard fare, it felt impactful to tread the same ground as Mary Anning, considering the endless promise of giant marine beasts hiding within the grand cliff face, waiting for harsh weather to bring them to light. In 2022, Lyme Regis commemorated Mary’s legacy with a bronze statue, immortalizing her at the entrance to her favorite fossil hunting grounds forevermore.
This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 43 July/August 2024.
