38. Mary Anning: The Dinosaur Hunter!

Mary Anning Facts and Fossils

This episode of 'She Changed History' delves into the remarkable life of Mary Anning, a pioneering palaeontologist from the early 19th century. Now often in kids’ books and on the BBC, Mary made groundbreaking fossil discoveries on the Jurassic Coastline in Dorset England, including the first complete ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons, and the first pterosaur skeleton found outside of Germany. The episode highlights the numerous challenges Mary faced, from being excluded from scientific communities to having her work misattributed to male scientists. Despite these injustices, Mary's work fuelled public interest in palaeontology and left an indelible mark on the field. The episode also captures emotional moments, such as Mary's close bond with her dog Tray and her relentless dedication to her work, even under dangerous conditions. Mary Anning's legacy endures today, honoured by the Natural History Museum and a statue on the Jurassic Coast, celebrating her as a key figure in the history of palaeontology.

Other episodes mentioned: 36. Betsy Cadwaladr

00:00 Introduction and Technical Setup

00:53 Exciting News: A New Baby!

02:34 Introducing Mary Anning

03:37 Mary's Early Life and Challenges

11:58 Mary's First Major Discovery

15:21 The Ichthyosaurus: A Groundbreaking Find

18:21 Mary's Continued Success

20:36 Mary Anning's Remarkable Discovery

21:38 Sexism in Palaeontology

22:41 Recognition and Rejection

24:14 The Geological Society's Exclusion

27:41 Mary's Resilience and Companion

29:53 The Third Discovery: Pterodactyl

36:05 Mary's Contributions and Legacy

41:05 The Tragic End and Lasting Impact

Transcript

0:08

This is what, this is what's been keeping me going, so, so I just gotta get through to eight. Just gotta get through to eight. Aw, that's nice. That's so lovely. Uh, should we try again and see how we go? Yeah, yeah. Hi Kara. Hi Vicki. How's it going? I'm good. How are you? Yes, very well, thank you. We seem to have worked out any little glitchy gremlins in the. In the connection here so far? Yeah, I think we're doing good. Yeah, let's see how we go. Um, I was just saying to you how much, um, I've been looking forward to this recording, um, because it's um, such a, like, such a cool, like all our ages are cool, but I dunno, I just feel so invigorated about this story, so I'm really excited. Love it. To share that with you. And the other exciting bit of news that we've got is we've got some proper, proper, she change history news, haven't we? We have, um, so wonderful Simon. Another, she Chase history host. He, and his lovely wife, cat have welcomed their new baby into the world, which is wonderful. Um, everyone's doing well. Mum, baby dad we think is doing well, and, her name is Adeline. And, um, yes, we, it is just, just a really happy, there's lots of photo spam isn't there of like, baby Oh yeah. Spam. And it's just full of love and it's just the most adorable thing. It's such a nice, lovely thing to have a gorgeous bit of news like that to share. We're all so happy. Yes. It's just happy, happy news. The quiet chat is blowing up. It's just all these, little old ladies swooning over Adeline, It's the cutest thread. So when she finally gets, introduced properly to the choir in person, it's going to have to be like, they're they'll have to be a security perimeter. Yeah.'cause it will be a full on stampede. It's gonna be an event. Like they're gonna need to plan that. Yeah. A hundred percent. Maybe they should be on stage so that people can't, you know, get too close because it's, it's gonna be intense. That feels a bit jesusy. That feels like you would with Jesus Lion. Don't you think we Lion King want to Ego Booster Lion. Oh my God, she's a baby. She won't remember. It'll be fine. Lion King. That baby up show every day. I like that. And then we can all sing Correlate to her. That'll be cool. Yeah. Um, but between now and then, would you like to hear a story? Does that sound good? Yes, please. Wonderful. Um, so. Imagine a glint in the stone, a shape emerging. Unlike anything the world has ever seen, the thrill of unearth in a creature from a forgotten age. A true pioneer, Mary Ning brought, never seen before, dinosaurs to light, yet picture the sting, the injustice. When your monumental discoveries born of your own grit and genius, accredited to others, simply because you are a working class woman in a man's world. This is her story. So sources today are, um, lots of national history Museum articles.'cause of course, um, A BBC article. The Times did a really good, um, kind of, not so much about Mary, but about beach, British beaches in general. Strange science. Berkeley, university have an article and a really good blog. I just wanted to check this one out called Fossil Bias Blog, which is all about sexism in paleontology, which is just such a cool blog. Wow. I know. So let me introduce you to Mary. So Mary was born in the southwest, um, English county of Dset, which I'm going to this weekend. So it's all meant to be now. It's just all coming together. I didn't know that. And this is in 1799. So this is, a period where George II was on the throne. Napoleon, was being Napoleon lots there. And also it was around the time that Jane Austen, was writing, her work so Sense sensibility. So the town that Mary was born in was called Lime s um, and it's a small coastal town. Endorse it and what we call the Jurassic Coastline. And the reason we call it Jurassic will become very, very clear shortly. I've got a little quote about Mary in her upbringing, if you'd like to read it for me. Yeah, you bet. Mary Ning was three things. You did not want to be in 19th century Britain. She was female working class and poor, says campaigner, Anya Pearson. Um, so Anya Pearson will come up later, but yes, she was those three things. So she was female, working class and poor. I think that just shows the hardship. She was up against whatever Mary wanted to do. On top of that, her family were very religious, but they were Protestant, who. Separated from the Church of England. So there was a lot of prejudice around that community in general at that time. Yeah. Every direction. Gosh. Like shes getting, oh my gosh, just give the girl a break. Mary's father, Richard, um, was a cabinet maker, but he was also an, an mature fossil collector, very telling. And by the time, um, Mary was, primary school age, like five or six, she was out helping him. Like, because what else are you gonna do with his child when you've got to go and do things? Her dad took her on these little adventures, which was very unusual at the time for these Georgian girls growing up in this quite oppressive society. So it was her dad who taught Mary how to look for how to clean fossils, how to, display them in the right way and all this kind of stuff. And he actually sold some in his shop. So that was a very important income for the family because these fossils were very, um, very new at the time. Right. And, um, this kind of time in Britain is. It's very interesting for science in general in the educated spheres. But it's also a really important time for gothic literature is coming up and all these kind of interests in different, spaces. So, um, it was kind of a bit of a novelty feature, but if you are on the coastal town in Britain and there will be people to, to sell that to. The, um, the resourcefulness of it that they are living in a seaside town. They've got these fossils, so they make the most of what they've got and perhaps if they'd been living someplace else, it would've been someplace else, something else. But yeah, just as much as teaching her how to find and look after fossils, he's teaching her how to survive and make the most of what the world gives you. Oh my gosh, absolutely. It's harvesting off the land, isn't it? It's the same as if you were a farmer. It same if you had a bunch of apple trees in your garden, of course you're gonna, and it was a lifeline for this family in terms of financial income. Absolutely hit the nail on the head. So Mary had little, little education, which wasn't unusual for working class girls at the time. She was able to read, which was like tick one up. Brilliant. But on top of that, she taught herself geology and anatomy. So she studied in her own time of her own back. No one was asking her to do this. She was just fascinated and wanted to learn, which I'm there for it absolutely. Her dad, suddenly died in 1810 from tb and Joseph, her brother, took up a poster as an apprentice in, upholstering, which kind of leans into that cabinet, building that her father did. And it was Molly, actually her mother, who really encouraged Mary to keep finding these fossils because they needed the money and they needed to pay off some debt. So it was Molly who was like, you know, it's on you now. Like off you go, go hunting kind of thing. As I alluded to earlier, you'd think, well, who are, who's buying these fossils? You know, who's interested in them? And it's a really interesting time in, British history is that it's the first time the British seaside holiday really came to light. So British cytologies are quite a cultural kind of phenomenon now, aren't they? Absolute. You know, you think duck chairs on the beach, you think,, handkerchiefs on the head, you think, um, what else do you think? Hooker duck, candy, Flos donut, all that kind of stuff. It's a lifeline, like you say, for those small coastal towns up and down the country is such a, such a British staple of culture for me. Absolutely. And the. That was the type of thing that companies would organize. The, um, the company Bino where they would hire a little, a little bus and um, kind of get everybody loaded in with their family and off they'd all go to the seaside. I wonder if that's about the period where that sort of thing is starting to, to take off. Yeah. And there's reasons for that. So one of the reasons is, because Napoleon was out, you know, raging on, um, civilians were instead encouraged of going abroad, like taking a ship somewhere or doing something. It was encouraged for them to stay home so they would flock to towns like Lime, Regis. Um, lime res was very superior as well in terms of that. It had a bathing machine, which, um, is like, so you could public bath. So it is just like a. A public bath. I think that's kind of how I read it. And there was one in Brighton, great Yarmouth Margate as well. And what really kind of put the cherry on the cake of the great British holiday was King George iii, in 1789, chose, he could have gone anywhere in the world. He's the king of the England, the British Empire. He, he chose to go to Waymouth for his summer holiday. Wow. And he wanted to be on British soil. And that because of that, everyone wanted to do it too. I mean, it's, he's an influencer. He's getting out there setting the trends. Damn right. Damn right. He might've, might've been mad, but, you know, he was also mad for it on the, on the part of the party train. And what you gonna do when you're on the beach can, I don't think candy floss has prevented yet, so you're gonna go fossil hunting. Basically, it became like a bit of a pastime. Um, it was very fashionable for Jordan, so you can imagine in the attire going out and, inspecting and things like that. So it turns out Mary was bang on trend whether she wanted to be or not. Like I said, Mary started when she was five or six. So over time she got more refined at finding these fossils, because I'm not being funny. Fossils aren't lying about, we are not collecting seashells right now. We are digging, we are hunting. We are diving into layers of rock. Okay. We're not just, you know, going about with our little, little bucket. Um, and actually the work of fossil hunting is really hard work. Like it's effort. It's, you have to carry heavy tools with you, you have to almost hike as well. Like the Jurassic coastline is not flat, like it is hilly. It's dangerous. The erosion of cliffs and stuff. It's even now there are signs everywhere. Just saying how dangerous it is to be near. Don't die. Those surfaces don't die. Yeah. Like, and um, also you've got the English channel thriving at you, you have to be skilled at this. You can't just bob along. Like it's all right, the tourist like doing it for a day. And I'm not really funny, maybe finding the odd rock, but like actually to do proper fossil hunting is really quite, a huge undertaking. And for that to be your livelihood, you are relying on your skill of finding and hunting. Like you dunno what's coming. It's not, constant flow is it of, income that's gonna come your way. Um, but. Her hard work did pay off. So I'm gonna talk you through a few of her fines, three in detail, and they'll kind of take us through her life. Does that sound good? Yeah. so around 1811, Mary was 12 and it was actually Joseph who actually did the fine. So he found this strange looking creepy skull and he didn't know what the skull was of, right? So it was quite narrow, quite long. And he was like, Mary, look at this. And she was like, well, what is it? And it was Mary then who searched and. Painstakingly dug the outline of this skeleton, right. And this skeleton just kept going and going and going. And by the time she was done this skeleton that she had uncovered it deep in rock, right? Dirty, and on her own, in her little bonnet, she managed to find a 5.2 meter long skeleton. Oh my God. That's like, I can't imagine 15 feet long. So a car, a modern car, two cars, car, oh, maybe. Yeah, I think two cars, probably two compact cars. That's crazy. And that act of taking it out of the rock without damaging it and the anxiety it took months. Oh yeah. Somebody could come and find it and steal it away. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. Actually. High drama. And this took months as well. So by, by the time she discovered it, everyone in town kind of knew what she was doing. How you actually. Fossil hunt is that you have big tools and you have little tools. So you have,, hammers and chisels that remove the top layer of the rock and the soil. And that layer is called the overburden. So that's quite big hacking kind of ability. And then, after you've got that top player off, you go further in and you go with like more delicate tools. You go dental picks, you go knives, brushes, that kind of thing, um, to remove the surrounding material. But what you do is follow the, um, natural plane of the rock and the bone. So you find weaknesses in the rock. So that's how you kind of chip around the bone is like just chipping out the weakest part. So that's how you preserve the bone. So that is a skill, right? You can't just be bashing in there right where you are. With your chisel. And also, like you said, today, these are so fragile. These are not wanting to break them and not wanting, they've been preserved for millions of years. And here's you with this hammer coming in as well. Like if, if you were handed a rock and you were told there is a, you know, a bird's skull inside this rock, you've got a mental image of what that skull might look like because you have textbooks and you went to science class and you have the internet. But this is a 12-year-old kid in Georgian times who maybe might have seen a picture in a book if she was very, very lucky. So working on her intuition and looking really, really carefully, if she's not to damage this thing, that's an incredible thing to need to do without any mental image of what you're actually going to try to get out of that rock. Yeah. And on top of all that, she's 12. 12. Just the idea of a little 12-year-old kid wailing away with a pick, trying to break up a rock. That's craziness. Absolutely. So she very carefully and very accurately with that skill we just spoke about, uncovered this massive skeleton. And obviously scientists got wind of this right in, in London and they initially thought it must have been some kind of crocodile and they also assumed at that time because it was completely unrecognizable, it must be migrated of some, far off land. Like they saw it as like, um, foreign in a mysterious way, the term far off land makes me think of like Arabian knights and kind of things like that. Just completely un unrecognizable territory. Napoleon Spy Crocodiles. That's the but no, that you picked up on three words. I've said I'm, that's, that's the headline for me. There we go. But no, that I understand. They kind of looked at it and went, well, dunno what that is. Must have come here from far away. It's something exotic like, yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's it. You've got the vibe. And this was debated about what the skeleton was for years, right? It was this kind of perplexing creature that they'd uncovered and in the end they actually named it themselves. They were like, well, it must be new. It must be something we haven't had before. So they named it the, um, I, I'll probably butcher this, but we'll give it a Go Iru, which means fish lizard. Literally what it means. Um, because they couldn't make their mind up if it was a fish short lizard. So they were like, why not? We'll call it, just call it both Fish lizard, you know. Covers all your bases. And they eventually determined that it lived 201 to 194 million years ago. And Mary just took that up. Pretty cool. Fun fact, these fish lizards are still being discovered two today. as recently as 2021, um, one was uncovered in Rutland Water Nature Reserve, after a Lagoon Island was drained out for landscaping and that it took two months to excavate that one as well. And that is with modern technology doing that. So that's, that just shows you presumably not, not 12 year olds either. Like that's, that's so impressive. I know. I've got little quote there from, a paleontologist who worked on that Rutland discovery she wants. Dr. Dean Lomax, a paleontologist who specializes in ik. Theos says Britain is the birthplace of Ik. Theos, their fossils have been unearthed here for over 200 years with the first scientific findings dating back to Mary Ning and her discoveries along the Jurassic Coast. And it all, it's all because of Mary. It is incredible. I have a fondness for Ithe OSAs because when I was really small, I had a book that mom bought that had dinosaurs and that was the, like the facing inside the book. I think the first picture inside the cover was this Ithe skeleton. And now I know that that was like a shout out to our girl. That's, that's incredible. Woohoo. Love it. So Mary keeps on ticking, you know, this is her livelihood, remember? So she's letting the scientists hash it out and she carries on. And in 1823, Mary was again the first person. This is twice now. She's the first person to discover a complete skeleton of a au, um, which translates? It's less exciting. It just means near to a reptile. Something near reptile, right. Ish. Um. Yeah. This is another,, quote just about this one for me, if that's okay. It is distinguishable by its small head, long and slender neck, broad turtle, like body, a short tail, and two pairs of large elongated paddles. It lends its name to the order ple, Soria of which is, it is an early but fairly typical member. This is probably my favorite one out of the three because it just looks like a diplo, so it's like underwater. So I've, if you scroll down a little bit. Oh, um, that's the, that guy, that's what they think it's gonna like. Yeah, but doesn't he look just fab? Just what I, what? He's having a great time. He's just, yeah. With his paddle, like with his fins, it is pretty amazing. Just supremely adapted to his environment, isn't he? And like the size of that, even in that image just there, you're like, that is a beast. That is. So those things he's chasing in that photo. Photo. Yes. That photo that, let's try that again. The things he's chasing in that what is clearly an illustration, are they supposed to be full-sized squid because he is a unit? If that's true. I think so. I agree. I think that's true. Holy cow. Okay. Yeah, that's a big old skeleton for now. What? 13, 14-year-old girl. Yeah. Excavated. So it's about three meters long, so that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Um, so. I just think it's so cool. So Mary, to make up this skeleton again, digging and chiseling and all weathers. This is an all year round job. In her big skirt. She's not even in like mounting gear or anything. She's like this big floppy skirt and bonnet. So she uncovered 600 pieces of bone that made up the skeleton. That it's 600 pieces of bone, so it is not like the pleso is made up of 600 bones. It's just that both break, right? Yeah. Right. Okay. I'm with you. But she uncovered them all and she worked out, um, it was all together. She understood that it was, one beast., Again, this is not a small job. This is humongous what she uncovering and that she's doing it piece by piece by hand. I would not have the patience. I don't have the attention span. It must have been physically quite strong as well, because the just. Getting like individual bits of a nine meter long, like presumably the skull, the, the vertebrae, they're all gonna be super, super heavy. So yeah, 100%. Yeah., So it was a strange specimens one cover, and again, news spreads'cause it's like, what on earth is this? It's the excitement, it's the craziness of it. And to be honest, in the beginning they thought it was a girl just making it up for attention, for media, for money, and this just shows the sexism in all, in all of this. It just shows again, how Mary is not being properly welcomed into the world of paleontology because simply because she's, a female. That's it. Because she's doing the work. She's taught herself. She's uncovered the work. She's sharing the work, which is so important in science, isn't it? There's no point in covering something if you just keep it to yourself. And again, she's just not allowed in at all. It's that, um, same thing with, Betsy Cadwalader that, um, you know, she had these tales of her adventures. And rather than people going, oh, that's so interesting. It was like, yeah, no, that didn't happen. And I, at least Mary Ning was able to go, here it is. Like, here's, here's the, the skeleton. I didn't make it a complete skeleton. Not even like, I've made a bit up. This is the whole freaking animal I've given you. I've given you, oh, Jesus Christ. Yes, you're right. It was completely disputed. And it was even disputed by George Kvi, who is a very important man in paleontology history. He's like considered the grandfather of paleontology. He's the guy who made the field, started the field, um, and under and how it relates to modern day. He was a French, um, ologist, but also a stateman, so a statesman. So he's also very high in terms of ranking. Um, he's described as one of the finest minds in history it's also important, um, just to reference that, Kir is also remembered as a racist, an egomaniac and had a reputation that intimidated others. So just a bit of a dick. He just Okay. Just one of those kind of guys that might account for him despite having this obvious interest and passion in his field, being willing to wholesale discount a discovery for no good reason other than he wasn't that keen on who happened to a gal. Found it. Yeah. Yeah. And having been on social media far too much this week, reading, some of the comments under the S'S wins. It's the same. It's exactly the same. Yeah. You know. No, thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. The. Plessi sous caused finding, caused so much uproar and media frenzy, if you like, um, that a special meeting was held because no one could, believe Mary or could work out it, if Mary was telling the truth or not. So a special meeting was scheduled at the Geological Society of London. Because it was a big thing happening in the industry in quite a,, infantile industry,, and this is like a potentially a life changing discovery. What's happened? And to be honest, these meetings are quite common in medicine. You know, people need to get together and they need to talk about it. But guess what? Mary was not invited to this meeting. Heaven's a burp, even though she's the only fricking person who found it and was near it and was actually looking at it in like that much detail. The, geological Society of London refused to admit her for this meeting, but also didn't admit any women into the society until 1904. It's such a, it's such a missed opportunity. It's such a. A shame because yeah, just think how much more could have been achieved if we had all, yeah, all the people had been welcome to the table. And also Mary found this and it, a woman found this and it also took them 80 years to then be like, maybe we should invite them in. Then there was an 80 year gap between Mary and 1904. Anyway, so at this meeting after lengthy debate, er admitted to his mistake and declared that the skeleton was a genuine skeleton. Um, please note he did not apologize to Mary well, we know he is a bit of a turd, so that isn't entirely surprising. Still annoying, but still disappointing. Just be polite. Be polite. Yeah. Yet, despite Mary's growing reputation for finding and identifying fossils, the scientific community was hesitant to recognize her work. What did they do? Instead of recognizing her work, Cara not gonna like it. They claim credit for her work instead. That is outrageous. It's just theft. Yes, absolutely. It's just, and it's like we saw in the paintings, like we saw of Judith. They miss and they, what you would say today is misattributed, which is not true either. It's stolen, stolen, stolen. Um, so male s scientists who frequently bought the fossils from Mary. You know, it would pop to her shop and buy some, Mary was the one who uncovered these fossils, cleaned them, prepared them, identified them. I'm not being funny. She even did like detailed illustrations of them to like map them because recording it is such an important part of paleontology. It's not just the finding, the identifying the digging. It is then recording this for future generations. So she was a very talented, illustrator on top of everything else. They buy all this of Mary and then would not credit her in scientific papers. Even when, um. Talking about the, um, I saw that we spoke about earlier. So even that one where, you know, it was even then, that's quite a cool story, isn't it, at these two 12 and a 10-year-old, like finding this, like they didn't even spin it that way, you know? I mean they just took credit, took credit. I guess they were thinking like, who's gonna know? Well, jokes on you chump because we know, we know now and, um, she changed history 2025. No. Yes. Right? That's, who knows, does they not think about this? We're very disappointed in you. Um, but that didn't stop Mary. Of course it didn't because like all our women in all our podcasts, she carried on. She was resilient, she needed food on the table and nothing was gonna stop her. So she carried on searching across the dangerous, Jurassic Coastline. But she was, um, just a little side note, she always had the company of her trusted and loyal companion. Trey, the dog. So, um, Trey we think is kind of like a spaniel type dog. He's depicted in the only illustration we have of Mary. He's like curled up, next to her in. In the painting of Mary, the Portrait of Mary. And we don't know much about Trey, but you just know, can you see them just bobbing along this coastline together? Oh, he's having a great time and going on ous. Oh my God. And she's having a great time, you know, just fabulous. We don't have to imagine how sudden she was by his death in 1833 when a landslide, that nearly killed Mary as well. Caught Trey. And again, just showing how dangerous this work that she's doing is'cause it is a dangerous coastline. We know a bit about Trey because she then wrote a heartfelt letter to her friend, Charlotte Merchant, telling her about Trey and how it made her feel. Oh, that's so sad. Oh, it's so sad. But, so it's such an important part of who Mary is and also I imagine he was so good at navigating for her, like spaniels are and you know, protecting and you can just imagine it can't you So sweet. Um, today there is a book out there, about Mary's life told from Trey's, the dog's perspective. Oh, how cute is that? Oh my God. I know. Because dogs are the best and such lonely work and just have a little buddy with you and, you know, helping you along rollicking about Yeah. Keeping the vibe up. Love it. Companion. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so yeah, it's very, um. Five went on a picnic or something, isn't it? You can totally kind of get that vibe around it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So now we move on to the third discovery I want to talk about today. So in 1828, Mary Again and covered a strange jumble of bones, it says in this article, which is a great line, because it also just, it also shows that she's just finding these odd things and then piecing them together, like it's really, really quite fascinating. But this time, um, she uncovered some bones, but in a formation that she hadn't seen before. And she worked out, they were actually wings. Oh. So we are moving away from lizards and things into winged beings. Once again, news traveled fast. So scientists from London to Paris, found out about her, winged discovery. And then they began to theorize. And what this was, I would say this about Mary, she knows how to create a buzz. Like people, she's like, here we go. Ro always found another thing off we go. And I, not even, it does sound genuinely exciting. Awe inspiring, I think to be the first person to lay eyes on something in millions of years. Absolutely. So casually, she found the first ever pterodactyl just as she did, just casually. At the time it wasn't called pterodactyl, so they called it a Dior, Fordom, which was the first type of, ter saw, to be discovered outside of Germany. And then the idea of the, they recoined it Axo, which is what we know, later. Um, I dunno, why, don't ask me why. I dunno. Um, the, again, she wasn't allowed to publish this finding at all. Instead William Bookland, who was Oxford's first geology professor, presented this fossil to the Society of paleontology and then casually took credit for it, feeling like there's some classism, uh, coming up here. Like in your intro you said. About the things that she was being, being working class as part of this, because it's like, oh, you know, you are just an ignorant laborer who's dug some rocks up. Yeah, we'll take it from here. And her, it's, you know, almost using that lack of status to sort of like, write her out of the picture and just ignore her contribution. He wasn't out there working and looking and, you know, using his skills. Has it? Can you imagine? No, no, sorry. Oh, it's very Downton Abbey, isn't it? So upstairs, downstairs, it's pretty gross. Mary also discovered like a, a, a ray like fish Squalor. Raya. Again, she, found it, produced a really high quality sketch of the fossil. So that illustration piece coming in again. Oh. But she was still not allowed to be part of the academic community around this. And again, people are debating what this, squid very like fossil thing was without her in the room. It's insane. I think includes an illustration just to show you what she was producing, like the quality that is incredibly detailed, really beautiful. I illustrative work. Yeah, that's, I really took that from it as well. Like, these are beautiful. Like imagine that and we wall It's pretty exciting, isn't it? It's pretty cool. Even, even the penmanship is quite exciting, to be honest. Oh yeah. The whole thing. Jesus. For them to see that quality of, you know, self-taught work and not think this is somebody whose opinion we really need to get in, just goes to show how fragile and petty these men were. Mm-hmm. That, that's tragic. What a loss. What's a loss? And I think also her passion for it wasn't just the big, exciting stuff she was interested in, like her passion for this as a field really comes through because she was even and finding these like cone shaped rocks on the beach and she found them every so often. They were getting washed up when she was out there with tray. And um, they were clearly not pebbles. They were clearly not the kind of limestone pebbles that you get on the, on the coastline. Um, and she kept finding them and she kept cracking them open with her hammer. Because she's interested, right? Mm. She's actually wanting to contribute to this society that is cutting her out. And um, what she found when she opened them with a hammer is that they tended to be full of fishbones. Right? And she also noticed that they would congregate in the middle sections of her findings, of her skeletons. And what she put together was the fact that, um, it's basically dinosaur poop. That's what she was putting together, right? So what she's known then is actually what they're eating. Um, that's something we didn't know because we've only just found these fossils. So she even worked that out as well. And, um, it was her who suggested that to William Bookland'cause she contacted him'cause she knows him, that she found these stones and that she actually thinks they're feces. And, and now that is a whole section of paleontology. Like there's a whole dedicated arm of paleontology, to, they call it coprolite now. Um, but she fat basically found that arm of paleontology. She was the one who made that connection. Like, come on. She's making waves in all these different realms. Even if it is dinosaur pooh. Well it's, it's what happens when a suitably curious mind comes to the fore that somebody says. What else? What else is going on? What can I find out? Yes. What's go, what's that thing? That passion and drive? Yes. And curiosity. And I think it can be the case that, that leads a person to formal education or when those opportunities aren't there. It can be the case that she's out there with a hammer discovering po. And despite this discovery, Butland still receives more credit a day than she ever does in this, coprolite kind of arm of paleontology. And that is due to the bias, which, the blog I mentioned earlier really focuses on, Mary continues on a seriously fossil, after fossil, after fossil, because she's selling these, but also she's discovering them. The other contribution, um, outstanding contribution that she has made to this field is fueling public interest in geology, in paleontology. People were interested because of what she was finding and that it was exciting and you had this tourist piece that I spoke about earlier, and then suddenly, fossil museums started to become a thing and, there was a point where she was struggling to keep up with the band of the museums because so many people were interested in it. And there's. A little quote there, which kind of touches a little bit on this, um, this tussle we've got between her wanting to survive and eat, and this is her livelihood, but also against the, I want to be part of this realm that I'm not allowed in and I'm banging on the door. So if you could read that for us, that'd be cool. But she was a commercial fossil hunter. She had to sell what she found. Therefore, the fossils tended to be credited to museums in the name of the rich man that paid for them rather than the poor woman who found them. This isn't just about gender. The history of science is littered with the neglected contributions of working class scientists, which just shows how on the money you were with your insights earlier that you were spot on. This is just such a tussle of, um, science. So it's really important to note, which I found in one of the articles that everything we know about Mary is basically based on really poorly cited and poorly referenced material written decades after her death, because, very importantly,'cause she wasn't allowed in. So no one was making notes, no one was documenting her contributions. No one was diarizing it. Mary never got to publish her own material, but she did write many letters and journals, which we kind of referenced earlier with Trey. But these letters and journals were often mishandled and lost by museums because they weren't deemed important enough. For example, a personal letter, of Mary's was marked by the British Museum as quote unquote lacking importance. I know. And you just know that they weren't doing this with the men's discoveries and the men's personal letters and everything like that, that you just know they're not, so frustrating. And what else have we lost? Because of people being sexist, like with post heaven sake. And some of the. The fossils that she's found has also been lost because they were founded by a woman and they were just not deemed as important. So they just got either tossed out or archived, never found. There's a really, strong quote here that just shows what I'm trying to get at. In the world of, museums, we often assume that any portrayal of a woman scientist is representation. Is it really representation if we rely on Heavily mythologized versions of women that are not based in fact. Yeah. So what this is kind of getting at, is this idea of, um. They saw Mary as playing, playing with sandcastles almost, and just like a little girl toting along the beach and oh, oh, she's just stumbled across. And she just got lucky and it kind of makes her sound really childish and because of what we know of her, that's how sometimes she comes across. They're presented as a fairytale in a way. Um, but I'm not being funny. That's how I found Mary originally, was that there was a book in a charity shop, and I was looking through it, it was what it was called, but it was very much one of those books where each page had it, uh, each page had a woman on it. And, um, it was beautiful illustrations and it was like, and it's presented in childlike language because it is a children's book. But that's how I found Mary. And it's like, oh, come on. You know what I mean? Like, I should have found Mary in a different way and I should have found, or there should have been like a next level where when you were a teen and you were in school, you were told more about. In more detail that sort of like circular curriculum where you get age appropriate supplementary. Yes. So this is my dream. My dream is to mess up the history curriculum and like, this is what I want this to be. I don't wanna spend six weeks on World War I. Yes, it's important, but there's so much other, more history out there. And it's taken me until like, what? I'm 30, whatever now to really dig into this part of me that loves these stories. Right. Because I wasn't allowed to at school. So you're totally right. There should have been a next level of a hundred percent. Um, anyway, I've totally gone off a tangent because I'm angry. I'm just an angry. I love your rage. No, it's driving so much anger. Keep being angry. It's good. Good. Um. So Mary, died in 1847. She was only 47 years old. She tragically died of breast cancer. Imagine what more she could have done. She didn't. And she did unfortunately suffer financial strain throughout her lifetime, the Natural History Museum actually does showcase now several of Mary's fines including, um, the skeletons that we spoke about today, and her legacy does live on, throughout the Jurassic Coast, which I'm going to this weekend. So I cannot wait to find out about that. It's gonna be amazing. The Jurassic Coast is now, a UNESCO site of World Heritage and it's where scientists, amateurs and, adventurous children alike gather around all year round to hunt for the next big find. We've ended with the Statue of Mary that is there. Maybe I can go see it this weekend. That would be cool. Oh, that'd be amazing. And you can see, can you see Trey in the statue? I he made it to the statue. So this is the statue that that lady you quoted at the beginning, Anya Pearson, campaigned for, so she managed to get this bronze statue. I'm so glad she, it's pretty's wonderful and I love the little detail of the fossils on her hemline. Can you see that? That's pretty special. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Um, and we've just got a little quote to end, she was not a simple minded country woman selling seashells by the seashore. Yay. And that is the story of Maryanne. Thank you so much. That really adds depth to how she found what she found it, you know, that thing. It's so easy to think she's just fluked into these things. But she had to understand in order to keep going and, and, and sweat and bleed and, fall and tumble. And, and I bet her knees were sore as. Can you imagine? I struggle with a bit of gardening mate. She, like, her knees would've been rock hard. Oh, you know when you're at the beach and your like, feet get wet and the sand stick to them. It's so icky. And the idea of being out there in long trailing skirts, day after day, damp and sandy, ugh. But she, she cared. She wanted to do the work. Here we are talking about her hundreds of years later. Yay. So I love it. Thank you very much for bringing that

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