TELEVISION MAN

historieofbeafts:

Since it’s Mary Anning’s birthday, it seems like a good time to talk about some of the reasons she’s awesome:

• Survived a lightning strike that killed 3 other people when she was a baby. This is a superhero origin story.  (Every account I’ve ever read talks about how dull she was before, and how bright she seemed after.)
  
• Started helping her father hunt fossils when she was 5 or 6. Some sources say he even made special child-sized tools for her.
• Helped find the first ichthyosaur skeleton recognized by European scientists at 12.  Found the first plesiosaur skeleton ever recorded when she was 24 and the first complete English pterosaur when she was 29.  Also discovered dozens of other ichthyosaurs, a variety of fossil fish that inspired Louis Agassiz, and worked with William Buckland to identify coprolites.
• Self taught. Dissected squid and cuttlefish on her kitchen table when books weren’t enough. It’s impossible to stress how impressive this is in a time where women were not supposed to go to school, and definitely couldn’t join any scientific organizations.
• Was extremely poor. Her family was on parish welfare and could not always afford food. They lived close enough to the water that their home flooded during storms, and they were deep in debt when she made her first ichthyosaur find. But by the time Mary was 27 she’d saved up enough to move to one of the better parts of town and open a fossil shop.
  
• Once sold an ichthyosaur to the King of Saxony and straight up told his servant she was “known throughout the whole of Europe.”  Mic drop from MC Anning.
  
• Had a dog named Tray that went everywhere with her. Can’t say for sure that she was referencing this line from King Lear: “The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart“, but it’s still A+ pet naming.
• “[Mary] glories in being afraid of no one, and in saying everything she pleases […] she would offend all the world were she not considered a privileged person.” (From the diary of her friend Anna Marie Pinney. I may swoon.)
  

[It’s hard to find sources on Mary Anning that aren’t a) terrible or b) for kids (and also terrible), but  I’m drawing from these biographies: 1 2 3 ]