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Mary Anning
(21 May 1799 - 9 Mar 1847)
English fossil collector famous for finding the complete 30-ft fossil skeleton of an Ichthyosaurus before she was a teenager. Throughout her life, she hunted significant fossils to sell to noted paleontologists of her time.
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Science Quotes by Mary Anning (1 quote)
She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore,
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I’m sure she sells sea-shore shells.
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I’m sure she sells sea-shore shells.
— Mary Anning
Tongue-twister by Terry Sullivan (1908), suggested as inspired by Mary Aiming. As quoted in Deborah Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (2000), 3.
Quotes by others about Mary Anning (2)
Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.
In Stephen Jay Gould and Rosamond Wolffe Purcell, Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors (1992), 100.
She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore,
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I’m sure she sells sea-shore shells.
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I’m sure she sells sea-shore shells.
Tongue-twister by Terry Sullivan (1908), suggested as inspired by Mary Aiming. As quoted in Deborah Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World (2000), 3.
See also:
- 21 May - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Anning's birth.
- Mary Anning, The Fossil Finder - article from All the Year Round (1865).
- Mary Anning - The Fossil-Finder of Lyme-Regis
- The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, by Shelley Emling. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
