The Fossil Woman Book

 

Recently, I acquired a new book entitled The Fossil Woman A Life of Mary Anning by Tom Sharpe (published by The Dovecote Press, 2020). The subject of this book is perhaps one of the best known fossil hunters known for finding Jurassic age marine fossils in the 19th century. It is somewhat rare that I buy a modern book about fossils but I was intrigued enough to purchase this book from Blackwells of Oxford, England and have it shipped to the USA. An added incentive was the author is donating part of the proceeds to a campaign in Lyme Regis to create and display a statue of Mary Anning.

Lyme Regis Museum building as it looked in August 2016. Site of where house where Mary Anning was born, lived and had her fossil shop till 1826. Original house demolished in 1889 so museum could be built.

Lyme Regis England Coastline at high tide August 2016

 

The Cobb at Lyme Regis England in August 2016

The book is a creation of a lot of thorough research and contains modern images and events pertaining to Miss Anning. It clears up some of the myths and misinformation about this most famous paleontologist. As the author notes in his introduction, there is much information not known about Mary Anning due to a lot of her correspondence and journals are lost to time. Mr. Sharpe does a fine job with the material he does have to weave a story about her life. I would highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning more about Mary Anning, British paleontology in the 1800s, and the Jurassic coast of southern England.

Public domain image of William Buckland that is misidentified as Mary Anning on Wikipedia at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Anning.jpg

One piece of misinformation I learned was an sketch of person walking along a landscape in a top hat and holding a rock hammer. It misidentified as being Mary and drawn by De la Beche. Mr. Sharpe marked as image 40 in his book as being a Thomas Sopwith sketch of William Buckland in Snowdonia (Wales) in 1841. The image is on Wikipedia's entry for Mary Anning (as of this writing) and it references the image on page 78 of a document entitled "Nomination of the Dorset and East Devon Coast for inclusion in the World Heritage List" by the Dorset County Council in the year 2000 [LINK]. I also wondered about this image how it was so different from the others of Mary. I assumed since she lived in poverty she would be very thin and the person in the image look almost overweight (so I assumed it was a lot of padding for the cold, windy environment of Dorset).

More things I learned that Mary Anning was a shrewd fossil dealer and an accomplished fossil preparer. Also that she was well known in the field with a number of newspaper and journal articles mentioning her while she was alive.

Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus fossil found in 1824 at Lyme Regis, Dorset, England by Mary Anning. It was the first articulated plesiosaur skeleton ever found and lived during the Lower Jurassic Period (203-194 million years ago). Named by W. D. Conybeare and bought by the Natural History Museum of London in 1848 from the estate of the Duke of Buckingham. It was on display at the museum in August 2016.

Termnodontosaurus platyodon (Conybeare, 1822) ichthyosaur fossil found by Mary Anning on display at Natural History Museum of London August 2016. Skylight reflection in display glass in image, apologies for image.

Dapedium politum fish fossil probably collected by Mary Anning displayed at the Lyme Regis Museum in Dorset England on August 2016.

Ichthyosaurus communis fossil found by Mary Anning in 1820 and sold to Georges Cuvier. Displayed at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris France August 2016.

 

One sad item the books documents is so many of the Mary Anning fossils found were destroyed in World War II bombing of England and museum fires. The book lists the Bristol City Museum fossil collection destroyed in air raids on November 24-25, 1940 (in 1987 they a partial ichthyosaur skull fossil from Anning 1814 that survived the bombing) and on May 10, 1941 a night bombing of Royal College of Surgeons in London fossil reptile collection was mostly destroyed (396 of 400).  In the United States, the New York Lyceum of Natural History had Anning specimens purchased in 1827 by G.W. Featherstonhaugh. This collection was destroyed in a fire on May 21, 1866. The author documents a number of other museums that have or had specimens but lost the labels so it difficult to know if Anning fossils still exist at those institutions.

When I was at the Natural History Museum of London in August 2016 and waiting in line for it open, I took some pictures of the Victoria and Albert Museum across the street which shows shrapnel damage made during World War II bombings of London.

Which just re-enforces the need for museums to digitize their collections. These vast store houses are not immune to loss. Which re-enforces that natural history collections need to be digitized and the data distributed across geographical distance servers so some record will exist if the original specimen is lost.

 Image (Tab. 42) of watercolor of Squaoraja fish fossil found by Mary Anning December 1829. Louis Agassiz had image created for his book Poissons Fossiles, Atlas Tome III 1833-1845. He called it Spinacorhynus polyspondylus and image painted by J Charles Weber.The original fossil was destroyed in World War II at the Bristol City Museum however the tail section still exists in the Philpot collection at Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Again, I would encourage you to read this book if you are interested in the history of paleontology or if you plan on visiting Lyme Regis or the Natural Museum of History in London.

Termnodontosaurus platyodon Fossil

 

Termnodontosaurus platyodon (Conybeare, 1822) ichthyosaur fossil was found in 1811 by Joseph Anning (older brother to Mary Anning). She would find the rest of this creature in November 1812 (length 17 feet). The skull fossil was illustrated by Professor Everard Home of the Royal College of Surgeons in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1814 (he called it Proteosaurus).  At first it was thought to be a fossil crocodile. The Annings sold it to Henry Hoste Henley for £23. The genus was named by Richard Lydekker and the  species by William Daniel Conybeare. 

The fossil was found on a beach between Charmouth and Church Cliffs Lyme Regis, Dorset, England and dates to the Lower Jurassic Period (203-194 million years ago).

It was on display at the Natural History Museum of London England in August 2016. They acquired it from Bullock's Museum in Piccadilly in 1819 by Charles Konig for £47. I got to see this fossil in person in August 2016.

Learn more at this informative blog called Incertae Sedis:

https://incertaesedisblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/goodbye-temnodontosaurus-hello-proteosaurus/

Reference:

Home, E. (1814). Some account of the fossil remains of an animal more nearly allied to fishes than any of the other classes of animals. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 104(2), 571-577.

Conybeare, W.D. (1822). Additional notices on the fossil genera Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus. Transactions of the Geological Society of London, Series 2, 1, 103-123.

Nicholson, H.A., & Lydekker, R. (1889). A Manual of Palaeontology for the Use of Students with a General Introduction on the Principles of Palaeontology (3rd ed.). Volume II. William Blackwood and Sons.

Fossils in the Media

 

Recently, while watching YouTube I saw two videos that were fossil related.

The first is a movie trailer for the film Ammonite starring Kate Winslet as Mary Anning, Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison, Fiona Shaw as Elizabeth Philpot and James McArdle as Roderick Murchison. I am not sure what to make of this movie. While excited a movie is being made of the famous fossil hunter Mary Anning I wonder if they focused too much on speculation about her private life and not on her contributions to the field of fossils. If you want to sell tickets, the film's writer, director, and producers probably took the path to achieve this. I will watch none the less just out of curiosity.

UPDATE (January 2021): I was able to watch the movie using Amazon.com and found the movie to be good but not historically accurate. It is probably not everyone's cup of tea but if you like stories from this time period or location it might be for you. The story centers on Mary Annings relationship with  Charlotte Murchinson. Referring to a book entitled Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters by Patricia Pierce (2015) [obtained at London's Natural History Museum's gift shop]. What I liked about the movie was Mary looking for fossils and prepping them. It also shows the bluntness of living in the early 1800s in England. They filmed on location in the winter of 2019 at Lyme Regis. One can see the challenging conditions in which to collect fossils in. The color tone of the movie is dark and dreary.

The main problem with the story is the real timeline is all a mess. It shows an older Mary (maybe in her 40s) interacting with a 20 something year old Charlotte. In reality, Charlotte (1788-1869) was 11 years older than Mary (1799-1847). Also Mary's interaction with Elizabeth Philpot in the movie puzzling as she appears estranged but in book it tells how they collected fossils together. It also documents that the Philpot sisters were known for a healing salve they made for the local community.

The movie credits lists geology consultants as David Tucker and Paddy Howe, geologist as Phil Stephenson. It thanks David Tucker of Lyme Regis Museum, David Roche Geoconsulting, and the Residents and Businesses of Lyme Regis, Dorset. It shows as filmed on location in Dorset, Kent, Surrey and London, United Kingdom.

According to the Jurassic Mary book, Charlotte visited Lyme Regis in 1825 with her husband and then stayed for 2 weeks to hunt fossils. The couple later invited Mary to stay with them in London in 1829. Mary visited London in 1829 (not sure the year is definitive) but it appears she did not stay with them. So when Mary met Charlotte she would have been 26 years old and Charlotte 37 years old. It would appear there would not be any romantic connection between the two of them. 

On a side note, Roderick Murchison (1792-1871) was Charlotte's husband and known for first describing the Silurian geologic time period. He also named the Permian Period after Perm, Russia in 1841. Also a new book about Ms. Anning has been published. The Dovecote Press has released THE FOSSIL WOMAN A Life of Mary Anning by Tom Sharpe October 2020.

Earlier this week I was watching clips from the December 5, 2020 Saturday Night Live (SNL). They usually open with political satire. Near the end of the skit they brought on cast members Pete Davidson and Kyle Mooney. When the character played by Pete Davidson was asked what was his current job was, he responded "I am curious about fossils." I am not sure what to make of this as a joke.

YouTube Links if movie viewer does not work in your browser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnDhlrs3XVM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34-JCkVuKJ8

Mary Anning's Grave

On a sunny and windy August day in 2016, I visited a coastal town called Lyme Regis in the county Dorset, England. This area is part of what is known as the Jurassic Coast which stretches approximately 150 km from Exmouth to Studland Bay.

An area well known for its Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Period fossils. From 1799 till her death in 1847 Lyme Regis was home to fossil hunter/palaeontologist Mary Anning. Her remains now buried in the graveyard of St. Michael the Archangel church along with that of her brother Joseph and three Anning children who died in infancy. She is known for finding Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs along with flying reptiles, fish, ammonites, and other marine fossils.

I include closeup pictures from the base of the tombstone where visitors have left ammonite and belemnite fossils.

A short walk from the grave one can look out over coast line and see the cliffs that still bear fossils like the ones she used to venture out to collect.

Portrait of Mary Anning at British Museum

Source is Wikipedia Commons

It is possible later in 2020, a drama entitled Ammonite starring Kate Winslet as Mary Anning will be released. See IMDB page link below:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7983894/

If you visit the Find A Grave web site page for Mary Anning photo section you can see an April 2019 image. The stone has cleaned and the engraved text enhanced. The contrast is amazing.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/34949489/mary-anning/photo

The Anning Ichthyosaur Skull Fossil

The Natural History Museum in London England has a special hall for the marine reptiles found along the country's south western coast. One the country's most famous paleontologists is credited with finding a number of these intact skeletons, Mary Anning. Her story starts off with her brother Joseph finding a relatively intact head of an ichthyosaur (Temnodontosaurus platyodon) in 1810 or 1811. The above picture is of this skull. The rest of the body was found by Mary a few months later in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. The creature existed in the Lower Jurassic Period. It is specimen R1158 purchased from Bullock's Museum Piccadilly in 1819.

The fossil was documented in 1814 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society entitled "Some Account of the Fossil Remains of an Animal More Nearly Allied to Fishes Than Any of the Other Classes of Animals" by Everard Home. Read June 23, 1814. The fossil was illustrated in publication as well. See image below.

Learn more at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning

http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/104/571.full.pdf+html

Sea Rex Movie Review... Sort Of

Sea Rex 3D: Journey to a Prehistoric World opened at the Louisville Science Center IMAX theater on June 12, 2010.  The movie was not quite what I expected in that being more of a learning experience and less of an action movie.  My only comparison would be a the Sea Monsters IMAX movie which was action oriented and told from the point of view of a sea creature.  Going into Sea Rex, my big question was, "What actually is Sea Rex?"  By the end of movie, I knew the answer.

The movie takes an interesting tact by using a modern aquarium or museum setting with a visitor named Julie who takes a trip through time with a famous paleontologist Georges Cuvier.  Interspersed in the scenes of marine reptiles swimming in ancient seas, paleontologists give explanations of paleontological concepts.  Scientists need to do more presentations like this to help the general public try to understand the scientific research.  One should watch the credits as the scientists might be portrayed by actors [see this review at the smithsonian.com site].

Georges Cuvier

Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

The scientists highlighted the film are Dr. Nathalie Bardet who shows a Mary Anning discovery at the British Museum that becomes animated. Dr. Olivier Rieppel of the Rowe Family Curator at Chicago's Field Museum, Dr. Ryosuke Motani of the University of California Davis, Dr. Zulma Gasparini from La Plata Museum in Argentina, and Dr. Benjamin Kear of Australia's La Trobe University.  Dr. Kear's presentation in the film is definitely unique (he needs to eat more to put some meat on those bones).

Prognathodon solvayi

Marine Reptile - Late Cretaceous Period

Drawn by Dmitry Bogdanov

Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

The film really utilizes computer graphics to help the viewer realize geologic time, continent formation, and marine reptile structure/anatomy.  I did have to guess at some of the time periods in the graphics and I assume the major extinction events they refer to are Permian and the K-T.  You also get to see a lot of creatures rendered like the Shonisaurus, Pterodactyl, Prognathodon, Mixosaurus, Liopleurodon, Ichthyosaur, Parasaurolophus, Mosasaur, Rhomaleosaurus, Kronosaurus, and Tanystropheus.

Ichthyosaur Marine Reptile Fossil

Jurassic Period

Muséum National D'Historie Naturelle

Paris, France

Being a volunteer at the Louisville Science Center, one will get questions about the movies being shown.  Weekend visitors tend to be families with young children and one concern is will the movie scare young children.  As for this movie, I would say not.  It is rated for 4 year old children and up.  Predator-prey relationships are explored in the movie but not in gory detail.  Violent conflicts mostly take place off screen, leaving a good deal to the imagination.  So it is a good film to show children, the marine reptiles are not too scary in my opinion. 

If you like dinosaurs (and marine reptiles) or paleontology, the film is good to see. I enjoyed watching it and the educational topics and events they presented.  I definitely plan on seeing it again!

It would be nice if they would put the names on the screen of the marine reptiles they were showing because it was hard to remember their names or keep track of them.  The DVD with captions turned on should remedy this issue though.  Another issue is they never tell the exact names of the sharks that appear, they are just referred to as sharks.

SLIGHT SPOILER: One last piece of advice for the movie character Julie, don't leave the museum with that item still in your purse.  Security is not going to believe how you obtained it. :)

Ammonite of Lyme Regis

Thanks to reader Shamalama of Pennsylvania, I have obtained my very own Lyme Regis ammonite so now I am happy as clam at high tide (or would that be an ammonite in mosasaur free waters).

This fossil ammonite is a Promicroceras planicosta found in the Black Ven Marl Member.  This small creature existed in the Sinemurian age or stage (about 191 million years ago) in the Lower Jurassic Period.  This age was named in 1842 by Alcide d'Orbigny and named after the Semur-en-Brionnais, France [source Wikipedia].  Lyme Regis is found in Dorset, England and is home of the famous paleontologist Mary Anning.  Lyme Regis is famous for their fossils particularly ammonites.

According to Wikipedia the Promicroceras (Spath, 1925) is classified as:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda
Subclass: Ammonoidea
Order: Ammonitida
Superfamily: Eoderocerataceae
Family: Eoderoceratidae
Genus: Promicroceras
Species: planicosta

Lyme Regis Ammonites

After researching Mary Anning the other day, I got to thinking if any of her fossils might be on display at the Muséum National D'Historie Naturelle Jardin Des Plantes Paléontologie et Anatomie Comparée in Paris, France.  So I reviewed some of the fossil pictures from my last visit and voila... ammonite pictures from Lyme Regis, England.

I do not know if any of these ammonites pictured were found by Mary Anning.  They were in the display cases of the museum and their collections appear to be quite old.  So it would be really special if any of these fossils were actually found by her.

This first ammonite fossil is called Androgynoceras sp. and is from Jurassic Period (Lower Lias).  The fossil was found in Lyme Regis, England.

Next ammonite fossil is Amaltheus margaritatus Montfort from the Jurassic Period (Middle Lias).  Fossil was found in Lyme Regis, England.

 

This ammonite fossil is the Liparoceras bechei Sowerby of the Jurassic Period (Lower Lias).  Also found in Lyme Regis, England.

 

This coiled ammonite fossil is called Lytoceras fimbriatum Sowerby found at Lyme Regis, England.  The creature existed in the Jurassic Period (Middle Lias).

 

Okay, the picture is not great but the ammonite fossil is called Oxynoticeras lymensis Wright of the Jurassic Period (Lower Lias).  Fossil discovered in Lyme Regis, England.

 

Pleuroceras spinatum Bruguiere ammonite fossils of the Jurassic Period found in Lyme Regis, England.

 

Wikipedia has a picture of a casting at the museum of a Plesiosaurus macrocephalus she found.

Remarkable Creatures - Mary Anning

This evening while driving home from grocery shopping I heard an interesting story on National Public Radio's All Things Considered show.  It was an interview with writer Tracy Chevalier about her new book entitled Remarkable Creatures.  The fictional novel is about the real life English fossil hunter/dealer Mary Anning (1799-1847) from Lyme Regis, England.  While her name was not familiar, I remember coming across reference to an English woman who found dinosaur like creatures in England in the 19th century.  Apparently, what was unique in that she was a poor, uneducated woman in a field of upper-class scholars in the early 1800s.  She had to sell fossils to tourists and museums to support her family after her father died in 1810.

Portrait of Mary Anning at British Museum

Source is Wikipedia Commons

Looks like she pointing to a coiled ammonite

and it nice to see the rock hammer and 

collecting basket included in the painting 

She and her family are credited with finding the first specimen of Ichthyosaurus in 1821.  Ms Anning also found the first mostly intact Plesiosaurus in 1823.  The fossils in the Lyme Regis appear to be creatures of the Jurassic Period which she found eroding out of the cliffs by the ocean.

Drawing of Plesiosaurus macrocephalus found by Ms. Anning

Found on Wikipedia Commons from 1918 book 

The novel also involves the Mary's friend Elizabeth Philpot, who is 20 years older and moved to Lyme Regis in 1805 with her sisters.  As the author decribes in the NPR interview, "It's about fossils but it's also about friendship.  And in a way this book tries to answer that question, 'What do women do who don't find the Mr. Darcy of the Jane Austen novels?'"  A museum exists in Lyme Regis named after the Philpot sisters and documents Mary Anning's contributions to the field of paleontology.

The subject definitely caught my attention to keep me listening to the over 7 minute story on the radio.  I am not much for historical fiction though but might read it out of curiosity.  Researching these older fossil collectors has lead me to believe that maybe the "golden age" of fossil collecting was in the 1800s.  Researching Ms. Anning's story directed me into finding another recently published book, a biography entitled The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World by Shelley Emling.

Below is an ammonite (ancient squid like creature in a spiral shell) from Lyme Regis, England that is on display at the natural history museum in Paris, France.  These ammonite fossils were the bread and butter to a fossil dealers like Mary Anning.

Find out more:

Wikipedia entry on Mary Anning

Visit the website entry at the Lyme Regis Philpot Museum where Ms. Anning lived and sold her fossils.

San Diego Supercomputer Center - Women of Science entry on Mary Anning

University of California Berkeley entry on Mary Anning.  Apparently, they are trying to track down the fossils she prepared for museums or private collections.  See the web page for more information.

BBC page on Famous People web link

Women in the Golden Age of Geology in Britain web link