Mary’s Discovery
When Mary was 12, her brother found a 4-foot fossil skull. Over the next few months, Mary carefully dug out the rest of the skeleton. It turned out to be an ichthyosaur. Sold for £23 to a lord, it was in turn sold to a collector in London to be displayed. There, it generated a lot of interest, as most people had never seen anything like it before. It became known as the “Crocodile in a Fossil State”, and raised questions about the history of the earth. Until then, most people believed in the biblical account of creation. Believing that the Earth was only a few thousand years old. Mary spent her life on the coast and become an expert fossil collector. The Jurassic fossil beds provided plenty of specimens to be collected, studied and sold. Her discoveries included plesiosaurs, a pterosaur, coprolites, belemnites and ammonites. But, she had no formal education. And because she was a woman she was not accepted to join the Geological Society of London at the time. Often she did not receive full credit for her scientific discoveries.
