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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.