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> Dinosaur Time Machine > Past Profiles
| DINOSAUR TIME MACHINE |
Peek
into the past!
Peer
at the peculiar people whose perspicacity penned Paleontology!
Presented persuasively
by Jane Davidson, PhD.
 
|
 Time
Trip Number One
"The Princess of Paleontology"
It’s a funny thing about Mary Anning. People gave her interesting nicknames. In 1832, Gideon Mantell (1790-1852) who generally gets credit for discovering one of the earliest recognized dinosaurs, Iguanodon, dubbed her “the geological Lioness,” Mary Anning. She was called “the greatest fossilist the world ever knew.” A German explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt, called her the “Princess of Paleontology.”
Mary Anning was born May 21, 1799 at Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. Mary’s father, a cabinetmaker, was what we call today a “fossil collector.” In the 19th century, many people hunted for fossils which they later sold to anyone who would pay for them. The “anyone” included scientists who often relied on amateurs to get them specimens. Some of the most famous discoveries in paleontology, in Europe and in the United States, were made by “collectors” like Mary.
When Mary’s father died in 1810, her family was destitute. To make money,
the family continued to collect and sell fossils. This became Mary’s
lifelong business. Her discoveries made her famous in her own time.
Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12(!) she established herself in the
history of paleontology by finding one of the first important specimens
of an Ichthyosaur.
For the rest of her life she made major discoveries. She found a
Plesiosaur, which later became the type fossil, Plesiosaurus
dolichodeirus. This is considered the genoholotype.
(A “type,” students, has nothing to do with a keyboard or a typewriter!
A “type” specimen is a fossil that is unique. Types have characteristics
used to define a scientific name for a particular organism. A holotype
usually is the one individual fossil which defines a species. If a new
organism does not have the characteristics of the holotype, it is some
other critter. Just remember that there is no such thing as a “halfatype.”
Professor Storrs believes that Mary’s Plesiosaur is the one animal whose
physical characteristics describe a whole genus! It is accordingly
a “genoholotype.”- I, Vera, am a Queenaholotype or perhaps even
an Empressholotype. There are none like me! -Vera ) Mary was among the first people to realize that coprolites were fossilized feces (“Some very crude people call that dino doo doo! Not me, however.- Vera) and she made the first British discovery of a fossil flying reptile: a Pterodactyl. This became known as Pteradactylus macronyx in 1824. Mary died in 1847 of breast cancer at the age of 47.
From the earliest part of the 19th century onwards, women, especially British women, were involved in collecting, selling, describing, and illustrating fossils and in producing scientific studies of fossils. The three Philpot sisters, who were Mary’s friends, amassed a great collection of fossil fish. There is a museum named for them in Lyme Regis. In the spring of 1999, a special symposium was held there to mark Mary’s bicentennial.
Eventually, the late 19th and early 20th Century, some women took
university degrees in geology. The contributions of these women “collectors”
(and later trained scientists) are very important when you remember that
many universities of the time would not accept women students.
It was so bad, that some women geology students even had to sit in anterooms
(“An
anteroom is outside the main room. Sort of like a closet. And, wouldn’t
you know, there are no Unclerooms! – Vera) and listen
to lectures they could not attend in person! Next
Month!
Time Trip Number Two:
A Lost World in The Grand Canyon? |
| Clocks courtesy
of:
The Old and New Clock Shop and About Time Clock Shop Posters Available  >
Dinosaurs Group I (Hand Colored Period Painting) This poster (which is available for online purchase) shows the entire image from which the Icthyosaur painting is enlarged. |
RESOURCES
Books - Articles - Links
Dragon
in the Rocks : A Story Based on the Childhood of the Early Paleontologist,
The
Fossil Girl : Mary Anning's Dinosaur Discovery
Ichthyosaurus
and Little Mary Anning (Dinosaurs and Their Discoverers)
Mary's Monster by Ruth Van Ness Blair - Out of Print Rare
Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries
Other Articles M.R.S. Creese and T. M. Creese, “British women who contributed to research in the geological sciences in the nineteenth century,” British Journal for the History of Science, 1994. H. Torrens, “Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; the greatest fossilist the world ever knew,” British Journal for the History of Science, 1995. This is an excellent biography of Mary Anning. G.W. Storrs, “Clarification of the genus, Plesiosaurus, in J.M. Calloway and E. L Nicholls, Ancient Marine Reptiles, 1997.
|
Time Travel Wouldn't it be great to travel through time? This is George, the Time Traveller from George Pal's movie of H.G. Wells' classic The Time Machine
 Links
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Dinosaur
Time Machine
is written by Jane P. Davidson, PhD Read her BoneZone Bio Now Author of The Bone Sharp- The Life of Edward D. Cope - Paleontologist ![[IMAGE]](https://web.archive.org/web/20100324153432im_/http://members.aol.com/Jdhexen/cope.jpg)
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created 6/19/99
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Mary Anning (1799-1847)
So, what did Mary Anning do which made her so famous? Plenty.
She found extremely important “new” specimens. Mary had little formal
education, but she made major contributions to paleontology.
She even had one official paleontology publication!
While Mary Anning is very famous, she was by no means the only English
woman who advanced 19th-century paleontology. Remember Gideon Mantell?
It is very likely that it was actually his wife, also named Mary,
who found the first fossils of Iguanodon.
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can watch the Movie
