![]() ![]() After a cliff fall in 1807 prevents her father from ever fossil hunting again, the family’s debts begin to accumulate. Mary loved going hunting for ammos (ammonites), thunderbolts (belemnites), “devil’s toenails” (Gryphaea) and all shells but she always hoped to find the giant crocodile (a misnomer) of local lore. They would scour the Black Ven cliffs of limestone, shale and clay for treasures called curiosities that they could clean and sell, supplementing her father’s carpentry income. ![]() ![]() This extraordinary woman who began life as a miracle girl, surviving a bolt of lightning that killed three women including the woman who held her, has waited long enough, being the woman whom American scientist and writer Stephen Jay Gould declared to be “ probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.” (1)įrom a very young age, Mary Anning had traipsed the beaches and cliffs of her home in Lyme Regis with her father Richard and older brother Joe. I could wait until May 21st, the 218th anniversary of Mary Anning’s birth, but that’s on the weekend and I don’t want to wait. ![]()
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