"Mary Anning is probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology."
Stephen Jay Gould
I have long been a huge admirer of Mary Anning.
For those unfamiliar with this remarkable 19th century collector let me give you but a brief synopsis of her life and work.
Mary was a member of that miserably poor sector of the society of her day, born into wretched poverty, with little chance of escape from her lot in life. Class stratification was strict and inviolable, and Mary's parents, Richard and Molly, brought their several children (all of whom died in infancy except Mary and her brother Joseph) into a miserable world, rife with childhood diseases, and into squalid living conditions. Lacking even rudimentary sanitation, and a diet both inadequate and nutritionally deficient, life was for many, as Hobbes so famously stated in his Leviathan, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Settling in the Dorset coastal town of Lyme Regis, Richard, although trained as a carpenter, exhibited a passion for collecting fossils on the beaches surrounding the town, for sale to tourists who sought such souvenirs without needing to grub for them among rocks that were unstable and prone to slipping and cascading down.
It was a precarious way to make a living, especially with a family to support, always it seemed with more mouths to feed, but Richard took young Mary with him on these collecting forays. She quickly exhibited a keen eye in finding ammonites, belemnites and other treasures, and was adept at extracting them from their rocky tombs and carefully cleaning and polishing them for sale.
It was not long before her prodigious talent enabled her to find fossils of creatures never before seen - icthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, and she began to attract the attention of the scientific luminaries of the day, including Darwin, Lyell, Owens, De la Beche and even Cuvier in France, and others.
Her discoveries challenged the very foundations of a society where religious belief in divine creation, literally as told in Genesis, was widely held and unassailable. How could God have created creatures never before seen and clearly no longer extant? This was a challenge to established belief, preached from the pulpit, and it met with fierce, vitriolic and unrelenting opposition.
In an era when even a respected woman of aristocratic affiliation had difficulty being accepted as a serious scientist, Mary was able to eventually gain acceptance into the scientific world of her day. She was, in fact, the most skilled and prolific paleontologist of the time.
She became a familiar figure, skirts billowing, pick in hand, exploring the cliffs around Lyme Regis, and her renown spread far and wide. Her work gained her respect, albeit grudging at times, and she was consulted for her expertise. At one point she was able to make the proud boast, "I am well known throughout the whole of Europe."
Mary died of breast cancer in 1847, but has left a legacy that will live forever.
Recently, to commemorate the 225th anniversary of her birth, the Royal Mail issued a set of four commemorative stamps.
My dear friend, Hilary Melton-Butcher, very kindly obtained a set for me, and mailed them as soon as she received them from the post office.
Not only that, knowing my interest in prehistoric life in all its manifestations, she also sent me a set of stamps featuring The Age of the Dinosaurs.
A wonderful little diorama of the Seven Sisters is included and I am not ashamed to admit to a childlike delight in this treasure.
I am thrilled - and please spell that with a capital "T."
Thank you again, Hilary. Such kindness will not soon be forgotten, and life does indeed deliver wonderful moments from time to time.
I can sense that you are all waiting to take a look at Hilary - and here she is.
One might be forgiven by thinking that it is Mary Anning in modern dress. She has the same spirit of adventure, you may be sure of that.
Life does have its joys, doesn't it?
