Statue of Mary Anning
Newswise has a story about a new biography of Marry Anning. Mary Anning (1799-1947) live in Lyme Regis, England. She is famous for the fossil specimens she discovered in the eroding Jurassic cliffs in southern England. Some of those specimens were spectactular... including pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and countless ammonites. The biography was written during the last ten years of her life. It had been known for a long time, but this is the first time it has been made publicly available. The biography is available in the Lyell Collection of the Geological Society.
A short biography of pioneering scientist Mary Anning, written in the final ten years of her life, has been made public for the very first time.
Penned by George Roberts (1804–1860), who ran a private school opposite Anning’s fossil shop in Lyme Regis, and preserved in the Special Collections of the University of Bristol Library, the work has been published by Dr Michael Taylor of National Museums Scotland and University of Leicester and Professor Michael Benton of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences.
Mary Anning (1799–1847) of Lyme Regis has been the subject of recent books and films, such as Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures, and Ammonite, in which she was portrayed by Kate Winslet, because of her importance in the early days of palaeontology. She collected some of the first marine reptiles – ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs – from the Jurassic period of the Dorset coast. Noted professors relied on her work to provide insights into the life of the past.
