Mary Anning

Mary Anning is one of Lyme Regis' most famous residents. She was born in 1799 and died in 1847. She had a humble background and little education, but became very famous throughout Europe as a fossil expert. She never had proper acknowledgement from the scientific community, although some middle-class and even aristocratic individuals championed her work and achievements, and occasionally rescued her from destitution, for she never made much money from her spectacular fossil finds. She died of breast cancer, then completely untreatable.

Wikipedia has a long article on her life and work. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning. 

It's easy to romanticise her life. She survived a lightning-strike as a baby, and when scarcely into her teens was already a well-known local figure, looking for fossils revealed by storms and landslips on the unstable cliff coastline at Lyme Regis. Four years ago I came across this children's book in a local shop window, whose cover shows a plucky young girl with a geological hammer and knapsack for her finds, in this instance some ammonite fossils:

And here are what ammonites might have looked like when alive. They looked a bit like the modern nautilus.

That was a shot I took in 2015 inside the former Jurassic Coast Gallery at the Dorset Museum  - the county museum - in Dorchester, before its recent rebuilding to bring it up to 21st Century standards. (It now reminds me of the rather stunning Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, or the equally impressive The Box in Plymouth, both of these being rebuilds) Back in 2015, the museum had acquired the fossilised jaws of a pliosaur, and had made it the centrepiece of the Jurassic gallery, then housed in a reasonably large but still inadequate room. They had very big teeth, 142 million years ago!

Spot the brief coverage of Mary Anning on the wall. This room just wasn't big enough to display the exhibits to best advantage. It had odd corners that were difficult to fill; thus a bay window was filled with this megalosaurus from 166 million years ago, made out of Lego - professionally done. It certainly brought the beast to life. Given that it would be an ever-hungry and relentless predator, it would be utterly frightening to actually meet one in the flesh, even if armed with a machine gun.

Moving forward to 2022, and with the museum rebuilt (though retaining its Victorian shell, and the central hall, now reserved for lectures), the Jurassic section had become spacious, with controlled lighting, allowing much better presentation of the exhibits. They had a floor-level pliosaur head for children to to look at and touch:

'Be a pliosaur's lunch'. No thanks!

Fearsome dentition! So I showed the beast my own fearsome dentition.

That ancient fossil pliosaur jaw was still on display, along with several other large dinosaur fossils. 

As you can see, there was was much more on Mary Anning, whose major fossil finds had been of this calibre. 

I wouldn't describe myself as a militant feminist, but if I'd lived back then her shabby treatment by the pompous men who denied her membership of - or the opportunity to speak before - the contemporary Geological Society of London would turn me into one. She had expert knowledge, and they pooh-poohed it. After all, they chortled, she was only a woman. And one from the uneducated lower classes at that, merely digging up fossils and selling them for a living - little more than a grubby market trader. Good grief!

It makes your blood boil, such attitudes. Women are still condescended to, still have to do more than men to get recognition and their proper reward. Frankly, it's not fair nor just. In my view an awful lot of men need their balls kicked. I wish I had super-powers: I'd sort the worst offenders out.  

Let's wrap this up. 

In a way I met Mary Anning. I was limping around Lyme Regis recently, in the evening, and ventured beyond the Marine Theatre on the eastern seafront. This was the view in September 2017:

Now in July 2022:

I noticed the change straightaway. I have a eye for certain kinds of detail. There was something extra in the distance. Bearing in mind that I'd already limped through Langmoor Gardens, then the length of The Cobb and back, and then along the Town Beach promenade, and had an aching leg, I nevertheless decided to investigate what that dark addition in the distance was. 

It was a statue of Mary Anning as a youngish woman, with her dog (no doubt the one who got buried in a landslip that nearly did for her), striding forwards. 

She's holding an ammonite fossil, which has become the special motif used all over Lyme Regis. 

I thought this was an excellent statue, and was glad I'd made the extra effort to see it. The sculptor had caught her vigour and commitment to fossil-finding, and yet hadn't beautified her: there are signs of strain on that face, as well there might be, for she was never financially secure. 

Other people passing paid the statue scant attention, instead looking incredulously at me as I circled it, LXV in hand, apparently shooting in semi-darkness. Maybe it did look odd. I didn't care. But I was still aware of one young couple, coming down the slope behind me. They seemed to be smirking, as if they thought me bonkers. Clearly statues and available-light photography were not on their radar. I wondered what was. Anything at all? Or were they floating in a cultureless world of easy options, their narrow minds beguiled by TV, video games and social media? (I have my prejudices)

And yet I knew what I was doing. LXV gave me predictable results. I knew what my camera would capture, and I wasn't wasting my time.