Mary Anning and the Lyme Regis Ichthyosaur Discovery of 1811

The Mary Anning ichthyosaur discovery of 1811–1812 was the uncovering of a fossil marine reptile in the cliffs near Lyme Regis, on the Dorset coast of southern England, by Joseph Anning and his younger sister Mary. Their find was one of the first ichthyosaur skeletons studied by scientists, and it launched the career of the woman later called one of the greatest fossil collectors who ever lived. Mary Anning’s discoveries over the next three decades shaped the young science of palaeontology at a time when women were shut out of it.

Background: a coast full of fossils

The cliffs around Lyme Regis are made of the Blue Lias and related layers of shale and limestone, laid down in a shallow sea about 200 to 190 million years ago, in the Early Jurassic. Winter storms and landslips constantly expose fossils of ammonites, belemnites, fish and marine reptiles. Today the area is part of the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.

In the early 19th century, Lyme was a seaside resort, and selling “curiosities” to visitors was a modest local trade. Mary Anning was born there on 21 May 1799 to Richard Anning, a cabinetmaker, and his wife Molly. Only Mary and her older brother Joseph survived childhood out of a large family. Richard taught his children to collect fossils on the shore, but he died in 1810, leaving the family in debt.

Mary already had a local reputation. As a baby in 1800 she had survived a lightning strike that killed three women standing nearby, a story her neighbours liked to connect with her later liveliness and intelligence.

The discovery of 1811–1812

In 1811 Joseph found a large skull, about 1.2 metres long, in the cliffs between Lyme Regis and Charmouth. Many people who saw it thought it was a crocodile. The following year, Mary, then about 12 years old, located much of the rest of the skeleton, and the family hired workmen to dig it out.

The specimen was sold to Henry Hoste Henley, the local lord of the manor, for about £23, a substantial sum for a poor family. It later passed to William Bullock’s museum of curiosities in London and was bought by the British Museum in 1819.

Ichthyosaur bones had been found before, but they had not been understood. The surgeon Everard Home described the Annings’ specimen in a series of papers from 1814, struggling to decide whether it was a fish, a reptile or something in between. Around 1817–1819 Charles Konig of the British Museum gave the animal the name Ichthyosaurus, “fish lizard”. The specimen is now classified as Temnodontosaurus platyodon and remains in the Natural History Museum.

Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles with streamlined, dolphin-like bodies, large eyes and long, toothed snouts. They gave birth to live young at sea and had no close living relatives, which made them deeply puzzling to scholars of the time.

A career of discoveries

Mary Anning spent the rest of her life searching the dangerous, crumbling cliffs, often in winter after storms had exposed new material. She found further ichthyosaurs, and in December 1823 she discovered the first nearly complete skeleton of a plesiosaur, a marine reptile with a small head, a very long neck and four flippers.

The geologist William Conybeare presented the plesiosaur to the Geological Society of London in February 1824. The neck was so long that the great French anatomist Georges Cuvier at first suspected a fake, but he soon accepted the specimen as genuine. Anning herself was not invited to the meeting, and Conybeare’s paper did not name her.

In 1828 she found the first pterosaur skeleton discovered outside Germany, later named Dimorphodon. She also found an important fossil fish, Squaloraja, and helped show that the curious stones known as “bezoar stones” were fossilised dung, or coprolites, often containing fish bones and scales. William Buckland published the coprolite work, and other gentlemen geologists, including Henry De la Beche and William Conybeare, relied heavily on her finds and observations.

In 1826 she opened a shop in Lyme, Anning’s Fossil Depot, which drew visitors from across Britain and Europe. In 1833 a landslide narrowly missed her on the shore and killed her dog, Tray, who often accompanied her on her searches.

Science before evolution

The Annings’ discoveries arrived at a turning point. Around 1800 many educated Europeans still assumed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old and that no species created by God could ever disappear. In the 1790s and 1800s, however, Georges Cuvier in Paris argued from fossils such as mammoths and the Megatherium that whole kinds of animals had become extinct.

Lyme’s marine reptiles strengthened that case. Nothing like an ichthyosaur or a plesiosaur lived in any known sea, and their bones lay in rocks far below younger layers. Geologists began to picture a sequence of past worlds, each with its own animals, long before Charles Darwin offered an explanation for how species change.

Anning’s skill lay in finding, extracting and preparing these fragile skeletons, and in understanding them. Visitors recorded that she could discuss anatomy with professors and that she copied out scientific papers by hand, adding her own detailed drawings.

Key people

• Mary Anning (1799–1847): fossil collector and self-taught expert in anatomy, who read scientific papers and dissected modern animals to understand her finds.
• Joseph Anning (1796–1849): her brother, who found the 1811 skull and later became an upholsterer.
• William Buckland: Oxford geologist who described Megalosaurus and relied on Anning’s fieldwork.
• Henry De la Beche: geologist who grew up partly in Lyme and later led the Geological Survey; he wrote her eulogy.
• William Conybeare: clergyman and geologist who described the plesiosaur.
• Elizabeth Philpot: fellow collector in Lyme and a close friend.

Recognition and hardship

Anning’s position was difficult. She was a working-class woman and a Congregationalist Dissenter, outside the Church of England. The Geological Society of London did not admit women as fellows until 1919, and scientists who bought her fossils often presented them without crediting her.

Her income was irregular, and in the mid-1830s she lost much of her savings in a bad investment. Buckland and other geologists persuaded the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the government to provide her with a small annuity in 1838. The Geological Society later raised money for her during her final illness, and in 1846 she was made an honorary member of the new Dorset County Museum.

She died of breast cancer in Lyme Regis on 9 March 1847, aged 47. De la Beche, then president of the Geological Society, read a eulogy for her, which was published in the society’s journal in 1848, an honour not usually given to non-members.

Myths and facts

• “She sells seashells”: the tongue-twister is often said to be about Mary Anning, but there is no evidence of a link. The familiar version comes from a 1908 song by Terry Sullivan.
• “She discovered the first ichthyosaur”: ichthyosaur bones had been collected before, and Joseph found the 1811 skull. The Annings’ specimen was, however, the first to be properly studied, and Mary found most of the skeleton.
• “She worked alone”: Anning worked with her family, hired labourers to excavate large specimens and exchanged knowledge with other collectors, but she was widely recognised by visiting experts as exceptionally skilled.

Legacy

After her death a stained-glass window was installed in her memory at St Michael’s Church in Lyme Regis, where she is buried. In 1865 Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round published an article on her life. Lyme Regis Museum now stands on the site of her family’s home and shop.

Interest in Anning grew strongly from the late 20th century. In 2010 the Royal Society included her in a list of the ten British women who had most influenced the history of science. The Royal Mint issued 50p coins featuring her discoveries in 2021, and a bronze statue of her was unveiled in Lyme Regis on 21 May 2022, her birthday, after a campaign begun by a local schoolgirl. The 2020 film Ammonite presented a largely fictional version of her life.

Her discoveries came at a key moment. Together with Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, her marine reptiles showed that the Earth had once been inhabited by strange, now-vanished animals. That idea of a long history of extinction and change later formed part of the background to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Timeline

• 1799, 21 May: Mary Anning is born in Lyme Regis.
• 1810: Her father, Richard Anning, dies, leaving the family in debt.
• 1811: Joseph Anning finds a large ichthyosaur skull.
• 1812: Mary finds much of the rest of the skeleton.
• 1819: The British Museum acquires the specimen; Charles Konig gives the animal the name Ichthyosaurus at around this time.
• 1823, December: Anning finds the first nearly complete plesiosaur skeleton.
• 1824, February: William Conybeare presents the plesiosaur to the Geological Society.
• 1826: She opens Anning’s Fossil Depot in Lyme Regis.
• 1828: She finds Britain’s first pterosaur skeleton.
• 1847, 9 March: Mary Anning dies in Lyme Regis, aged 47.

Why it matters

The ichthyosaur of 1811–1812 and the finds that followed gave scientists their first clear view of the marine reptiles of the Jurassic seas. They helped turn fossil collecting into a science and made extinction an accepted part of Earth’s history. Mary Anning’s story also shows how much early science depended on skilled people who were denied credit because of their sex and social class.