The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World

by Shelley Emling

Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton--of an ichthyosaur--while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. The child of a poor family, Mary became a fossil hunter, inspiring the tongue-twister, "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore." She attracted the attention of fossil collectors and eventually the scientific world. Once news of the fossils reached the halls of academia, it became impossible to ignore the truth. Mary's peculiar finds helped lay the groundwork for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, laid out in his On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary's fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present.

A story worthy of Dickens, The Fossil Hunter chronicles the life of this young girl, with dirt under her fingernails and not a shilling to buy dinner, who became a world-renowned paleontologist. Dickens himself said of Mary: "The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and deserved to win it."

Here at last, Shelley Emling returns Mary Anning, of whom Stephen J. Gould remarked, is "probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology," to her deserved place in history.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Biography, Dinosaurs, Palaeontology, Nature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2009

About the author

Shelley Emling has been a journalist for 20 years. She was born in Missouri. Later she grew up in Dallas, Texas. She went to the University of Texas and started her journalism career at UPI.

Shelley is the author of two books: Your Guide to Retiring in Mexico, and most recently, The Fossil Hunter, published by Macmillan in 2009 about paleontologist Mary Anning, whom Shelley had learned of while on a holiday in England.[1] The Fossil Hunter was criticised by the New York Times for having moved away from the central narrative too often, but the reviewer nevertheless noted the ample footnotes, which put the subject's work "into the scientific and sociological context".[2] Nature, however, felt that Emling's "diligent" work was "more thorough and complete" than Tracy Chevalier's fictional account of Anning's life, Remarkable Creatures, which was released the same year – although the reviewer notes that the freedom of the fictionalised account proved to be more engaging.[3]

Reviews

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun Fact #1: human hair used to be one of the things from they made made tennis balls.

As a kid I was never obsessed with dinosaurs. However, as an adult I am obsessed with Kate Winslet, and this has led me to dinosaurs and this book, probably as underrated as Mary Anning herself. Having yet to see 'Ammonite,' based on the life of Mary Anning, I heard her talking about Mary Anning in an interview and immediately found myself intrigued.

Fun Fact #2: The film's portrayal of Mary's sexuality is complete speculation, and I had been on the verge of shaming this book for failing to mention it, until I did my research. So don't pick up this book looking for 'the life and love of a Lyme Regis lesbian.'

Never wealthy or lauded with praise, Mary Anning spent her life on the stormy beaches of Lyme Regis uncovering never before identified fossils including that of the Icthyosaur and the Plesiosaur. As a Dissenter and a woman, she was practically shut out of the male dominated, largely Anglican scientific community. So thanks Kate Winslet, I read The Reader once because I loved the adaptation, and became fell even more in love with Iris Murdoch because of you; perhaps someday I'll get to reading Revolutionary Road.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Give this about a 3.5 star rating for my general reading experience. I knew the basic outlines of Mary Anning’s story—a woman with a talent for finding marine reptile fossils, held back by her social status, her lack of access to education, and her gender. In a world which favoured wealthy men with leisure time, she was at a tremendous disadvantage and achieved a great deal despite that.

This book filled in the gaps in my knowledge of the woman and made me admire her fortitude all the more. The author is a journalist, so it is written in a rather journalistic style—not surprising. There is some speculation, trying to guess what may have been going on in Ms. Anning’s mind, but nothing that is too unreasonable. Since the author seems to have done her research on the time period, she makes safe assumptions.

I found it interesting that on pages 209-210, more current research was referenced:

”And new species of plesiosaurs—a most diverse group of aquatic carnivores—are being discovered to this day. One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of a prehistoric aquatic reptile has been uncovered in North America, representing an entirely new group of plesiosaurs. This 8.5 foot specimen, known as Nichollsia borealis, is one of the most complete and best-preserved North American plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous Period.”

It is too bad that the author didn’t mention that this creature is named after Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls, who was a paleontologist specializing in Triassic marine reptiles at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. Betsy worked on a back-breaking dig in northern British Columbia, excavating Shonisaurus sikanniensis, a Triassic marine reptile and she probably would have identified with Mary Anning’s perilous labours. Nicholls at least got the recognition for her work, receiving awards and having marine reptiles named in her honour. Sadly, both Anning and Nicholls died young of breast cancer, another thing they have in common.

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of Mary Anning is definitely one that needs to be known as she was an integral part of our understanding of the earth's history but while this book helps to bring her story forward, it's not the best written story. I find it distracting to read "she most likely" or "she probably". I know we can't possibly know for certain what someone did and said but I prefer my non-fiction to read more like a story and not possibilities. Despite this, the story of Mary Anning is very interesting and I feel like I learned a great deal from this book. I read Remarkable Creatures several years ago and highly recommend that one as a side kick to this book. I am also going to be reading Mary Anning's Curiosity with my daughter. I feel like this woman's story really needs to be more well-known!

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure if I've read a book about Mary Aning before but I highly enjoyed it and would definitely want to read and learn more about her after this. I might rush to it but I would pick it up if I found another one

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni - dug up by Mary Anning. The Natural History Museum, London.

This is an extremely readable biography of a little known fossil-collector called Mary Anning. She lived in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the seaside town of Lyme Regis, on the south coast of England.

She was an extraordinary woman. She came from a humble background with just minimal schooling, yet she ended up being one of our leading experts in fossil hunting and palaeontology. In the beginning and for much of her life, things were harsh. Eight out of her nine siblings died, and then her father died too, when he was just 44 years old, leaving her, her mother and brother, to fend for themselves. For many years they struggled to survive, existing with help from a local charity.

Fortunately Mary had a passion that could help supplement the family income – an ardour for collecting fossils, and she did so with enormous dedication. At first she just sold her fossils to the local tourists, but then her reputation grew, and soon she was selling fossils to the specialists and academics interested in palaeontology. As time went on she made some major discoveries; this chalky part of the coastline contained some rich pickings. Over the years these included the species Ichtyosaurus (several types), peroachylus and ‘Dimorphodon’.

But for many years she failed to receive any sort of public acknowledgement for her discoveries. All acclamation was given to the men who bought and named the skeletons she had found. The impressive geological and natural history societes that were emerging at this time were completely male orientated. Not only were women forbidden to become fellows, but they weren’t even allowed to attend lectures. Mary had some very good friends amongst these men though, many of whom had great admiration for the work she was doing.

The book not only tells us about Mary, but it gives us a flavour of Victorian England too. Fascinatingly, it also discusses the theoretical precursors to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Many of the people wondering about these things were geologists and palaeontologists. Time and time again newly discovered fossils would raise questions about the Biblical version of creation. At the time the world was commonly understood to have begun on October 23, in 4004 B.C. Well, the ancient bones that were being discovered begged to differ. Many of the specialists working with fossils were also deeply religious, and much time was spent trying to defend and interpret the Biblical description of creation in the light of new fossil discoveries. One really gets a feel for the issues of the time, and the quandaries that people were experiencing.

My one complaint about the book was that there was too much speculation.

Breathing in the sharp salty air, she spend the next few hours scouring the crumbling black marl, a finely textured clay containing limestone nodules that sullied he skirt and hands beyond recognition. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was wonderful to be back on the beach. But, so soon after her father’s death, her good time might have been marred by questions. Had all those walks on the shore with her father been too much for him? Why had she always pestered him to stay out in the cold so long? She might have recalled the way her father used to affectionately refer to her as “Mary girl” while they stalked the unusual stones together, side by side, and her eyes would have begun to swim.

No, no, no! Way too much speculation….I don't think the author knows these things, she is just writing 'as if'.

In another respect the book was unusually excellent. The years when events took place were frequently stated, and the ages of the main characters were also frequently given. I found this very grounding. One got a marvellous sense of time and history. I find so many non-fiction books are bad about clearly giving dates. This was a refreshing change.

All in all I thought this was an excellent read. Not only did I learn a lot about Mary Anning, but I learnt a lot about the times she lived in. Highly recommended.

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Photograph by Chris Wilkins at flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35277876...

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 2 out of 5]

A not particularly well-written biography of an interesting but little-known historical figure. Mary Anning was a working-class woman living on England’s southern coast in the early 19th century, who made a name for herself as an expert at locating and extracting fossils from the cliffs. Several of these were the first known examples of previously undiscovered dinosaurs, at a time when paleontology was just getting its start. Though Anning had little formal education, she was keenly interested in developments in the field, got to know many renowned geologists and guided them on fossil hunting expeditions.

Anning wasn’t someone I’d previously seen mentioned among historical women in science, and so I was interested to read her story. And not knowing much about the early days of paleontology, I did find this worth a read. However, it is chock-full of speculation and imaginary dramatizations of scenes; its treatment of history is simplistic; and so is its analysis of Anning’s role and the reasons for her obscurity.

Here’s an example of the type of speculation common throughout the book:

One evening, perhaps as she was braiding rushes for a new rug, a storm blew in, with strong winds and lashing rain that battered the windows of the timber cottage like birdshot. Later that night the storm grew worse, with waves along the shore topping 20 feet, spitting logs and all manner of debris up onto the beach. As she lay in bed, Mary would have tried hard to go to sleep, but the claps of thunder would have kept calling her back.

The next morning, curled up under heavy blankets, in a home still black and completely quiet, probably all she could think about was the seashore and how much she missed it. The prospect of spending yet another day with her maudlin mother would have been unbearable, infusing Mary with fresh determination. The long, lonely hours spent alongside her mother had only made her miss her father more. And so she arrived at the most important decision of her life in her bed that cold morning, the significance of which would become more and more apparent as time went on: She decided to return to the beach. . . .

The bracing early-morning air would have invigorated Mary’s senses. She quickly did a check around the densely packed Cockmoile Square, most likely relieved to see no signs of life. Next door was the Bennetts’ daughter, Ann, the same age as Mary, although the two had never been close. She might have wondered if Ann was still sleeping. From the square, she would have headed east and then made a sharp turn left before passing Church Street. From the bend in the road she ambled into Long Entry, which led to the seafront. Eventually Long Entry spilled into a path that ran across Black Ven and then on to Charmouth. When Mary made that turn into Long Entry, her pace might have quickened. At this point, she would have known that she was crossing through an invisible barrier, leaving behind months of grieving fueled by Molly’s relentless fatalism.

Ugh. This is supposed to be nonfiction. Some educated guessing is fine, but just inventing details and emotions and sticking “might have” and similar qualifiers in front of them makes it seem like the author wished she were writing a novel instead.

As tends to happen when nonfiction authors invent many of their facts, at times you can see that the author is projecting her own thoughts and feelings onto her subject. For instance, late in the book she states that: “Undoubtedly the typically direct, serious, and hardworking Mary, by then in her early 30s, felt a bit silly divulging her innermost feelings to a sentimental teenager.” Clearly the author finds it embarrassing, but there’s no evidence Anning did: she chose to share, and having read her story, it’s pretty clear that age was of little import to Anning in her friendships. She had much older female friends and male associates when she was a teenager, and she befriended and partnered with teenagers, as well as maintaining her older friends, as she approached middle age. Whether because inter-generational socializing was more common at the time than now, because she didn’t connect with people her own age, or because her interests (and, with other women, her single status) set her apart and limited the pool of potential friends, we don’t know, but I doubt she shared her biographer’s hangups.

Meanwhile, the book is simplistic overall in its treatment of history and of the conflict between scientific discoveries and religious dogma. Take this generalization for instance: “In this era, girls of all classes were supposed to be at their mothers’ sides, raised to be well-mannered adult women who heaved their bosoms at any able-bodied man in britches.” What does this even mean? That women in Regency England were expected to be promiscuous, or unselective in their choice of mates? Anyone who’s ever read Jane Austen knows that nothing could be further from the truth.

Finally, the book misses the opportunity to delve into the reasons beyond sexism that Anning is so little-known. Certainly if she’d been a man, gender wouldn’t have been a barrier to education, travel, or attending scientific meetings. But although the book notes many times that as a working-class woman, Anning had to focus on making a living where her scientific friends did not (and so perhaps she still wouldn’t have had any of those opportunities), it fails to recognize that the hands-on work she did doesn’t tend to win historical immortality. Scientists are generally remembered for new theories and groundbreaking experiments; Anning’s expertise was in finding, extracting and recognizing fossils, but she didn’t produce any original scholarship. As a historical figure she’s probably more notable for being female than a man doing the same physical labor would have been.

At any rate, since the information was new I don’t regret reading this book, and it is short and except for the clearly-identified speculation, seems to be based on real research. But I hope no one else uses it as a model for how to write a historical biography.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first biography of Mary Anning written for adults. The author did not disappoint; guiding the reader through not just Ms. Anning’s life, but also through the scientific and cultural atmosphere of Britain in the first-half of the 19th century. Living in a world where extinction, evolution, and prehistoric life were fantasy (or worse, heresy), Mary Anning was the epitome of perseverance, diligence, and dedication. Only has recent history been kind to her and her vital contributions to paleontology, nevertheless she never despaired or wallowed in self-pity. An inspiring life to be sure, this exciting biography was an excellent introduction to the birth of paleontology and its “mother” Mary Anning.

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a pretty strict biography of Mary Anning (from when her parents after their 1793 marriage decided to settle in Lyme Regis to Mary's death from breast cancer in 1847 at the relatively young age of only 47) Shelley Emling's The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World is both highly entertaining and richly enlightening, with a presented textual flow that makes reading both fast and generally very much enjoyable (and appreciatively so, Shelley Emling's writing style is also never either dragging or too difficult, never makes gratuitous use of either problematic scientific jargon or overly complex syntactic and grammatical structures).

And indeed, as very much a history buff, I also do greatly appreciate that in The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, we as readers do also, aside from reading about Mary Anning's life and achievements (and especially of course about her fossil discoveries and her contributions to the emerging science and field of palaeontology), receive both interesting and also very much necessary and important information on the history of England (and specifically from the late 18th to the middle of the 19th century, from late Georgian times to the age of Queen Victoria), the history of science (particularly the conflicts regarding fossil discoveries, the changing attitudes towards the geologic age of the earth, the theory of evolution) and also details on women's rights and on how much of a pioneer and how extraordinary a fossil hunter and self-taught scientist Mary Anning really and truly was (and with all of this delightfully enlightening information parallel to the specific and minute details concerning Mary Anning's life, giving us in The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World a thorough and wonderfully complete portrait not just of Mary Anning the person but also of early 19th century England and of the emergence and the increasing acceptance of palaeontology, that fossils were the remains of prehistoric creatures and that the earth was equally and in reality much older than 600 years of age).

However and my in many ways massive and complete appreciation and enjoyment of The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World and of Shelley Emling's printed words quite notwithstanding, I do have to admit that the rather constant and continuous author speculations do rather majorly frustrate and annoy me (and have certainly also rather thus somewhat majorly lessened my reading pleasure). For it has indeed been at best a bit frustrating to on the one hand read all this solidly factual and well-researched biographic and historic material and then have it in my opinion rather massively weakened by the author constantly wondering what Mary Anning (and other featured individuals) might have thought, could have done, should have considered. And yes, the only reason that I am still quite willing to grant three and not two stars to The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World is that I really and truly have indeed very much enjoyed my reading time and that I can (I guess) also to a certain point even mostly ignore Shelley Emling's speculations and still thus enjoy this in all other ways outstanding biography for what it is, for a straight and fact-based offering, for an account which both celebrates and glorifies Mary Anning's life and many achievements.

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1999, the two hundredth birthday of Mary Anning, "the first woman geologist", was marked with a modest celebratory event in the small Philpot Museum in her home town, Lyme Regis, on England's southern shore. It led, eventually, to renewed interest in the life and time of this unique young woman, who despite being of the poorest background and without formal education, contributed in the most extraordinary way to the advancement of science and understanding of life on earth. Shelley Emling, researching Mary Anning's life, and basing herself on available contemporary sources, such as correspondence, notebooks and news items, as well as on a range of science research materials on the early days of geology and paleontology, has added an engaging and accessible biography to the mix of materials on Mary Anning and her work. Set against the emerging and often acrimonious scientific debates on the evolution of live, the literal veracity of the Bible - several decades prior to Charles Darwin's The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition - the author also delves into the society's political life and social conditions and introduces other important public figures and scientists that were influenced by Mary Anning's finds and/or played an important role in her life.

Born in 1799, Mary had discovered (with her brother) and excavated the first complete ichthyosaur at the age of 12. Taught since early childhood by her enthusiastic amateur fossil hunting father, a cabinet maker, she developed an extraordinary skill not only in identifying the locations in the cliffs' rocks or mud formations where prehistoric fossils could be found, she taught herself the scientific bases she needed to identify and classify her finds. She cleaned, preserved and presented her finds with meticulous precision, produced high quality drawings, and over her lifetime, became an essential resource for "gentlemen geologists", and other collectors of fossils. The rich diversity of creatures that had lived in the region around Lyme Regis, in either land or water or both, millions of years ago raised many questions and challenged the religious beliefs of the time.

The first decades of the nineteenth century were also a time when women's contribution to science was unheard of and usually discounted. Women were not even viewed as having the kind of brain that could process and, even less, produce scientific thought and analysis. All evidence suggests, however, that Mary was an adventurous young girl and grew into a young woman who, eager to educate herself, was not afraid to speak her mind, even though this was not at all the norm for somebody from the lower classes. As her scientific knowledge increased, so did the depth of her conversations with the male scientists and, with it, grew her frustration with the treatment she received from the science community: there was no public recognition for her eminent contributions to the scientific discoveries and debates; fossils were identified by the buyer than the finder. Even those closest to her, like William Buckland and Henry de la Beche, whom she regarded as her friends and who had been buying and relying on her fossils, or assisted her in selling them to museums around the country and beyond, and, at times, otherwise supported her financially, did only fully recognize their indebtedness to her work publicly until after her death in 1847.

Given the scarcity of original sources that shed light on many aspects of Mary Anning's life, Emling's biography has to rely on creative imagination and conjecture, especially where she imagines Mary's thinking and views of her life and the role she played in the society of "gentlemen geologists" and other scientists. While the author is careful to distinguish between fact and speculation on her part, the extensive use of the conditional tense, often combined with "probable", "likely", etc. can become somewhat tedious to the reader. Nonetheless, the story is written in a flowing and easy-going storytelling style, bringing this biography closer to the two novels, written around the same time in 2009/10: Tracy Chevaliers' Remarkable Creatures and Joan Thomas's Curiosity.

Having read both novels about Mary Anning first, I was curious to compare the fictionalization of her character with the biography of Emling. Without wanting to reveal parallels and differences, I must say, that Emling's biography is a good additional source for anybody interested in Mary Anning's role in paleontology, the society in which she lived and the important debates that swirled around science and religion at the time. It also lays to rest any curiosity the reader might have about any romance that Mary may have experienced...

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent biography for people like myself, who have spent too long with literature and ideas and not armed themselves with enough scientific knowledge to actively engage in debates on natural history and evolution.

For many, Shelley Emling’s ‘The Fossil Hunter,’ will lack weight and there were times when I found her slightly breezy, journalistic style slightly jarring. Overall, however, this is a real appetite-whetter for both the evocative world of Mary Anning’s work and the nineteenth-century moral attitudes towards religious ideology and increasing scientific knowledge.

[Ladyslott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read Tracy Chevalier’s newest book Remarkable Creatures, the story of Mary Anning, a woman I had never heard of but is getting the attention she so richly deserved. I enjoyed Remarkable Creatures so much I was very happy to learn of this biography of her life. For anyone who doesn’t normally like nonfiction I would recommend this book, it is written in a very accessible style and the story is so astonishing it reads like fiction. Emling has written a book that I found easy to read and hard to put down.

Mary Anning was born in 1799 and lived in the Lyme Regis area of England her entire life; she learned to fossil hunt as a small child, at that time a fossil was anything dug out of the ground, most of Mary’s fossils finds were ammonites. Living on the very edge of poverty and barely literate she became one of the most renowned paleontologists of her time. At the age of 11 she found the first entire fossil skeleton of an ichthyosaur; a fossil that is still on display in the Natural History Museum in London. This find was the first step in the eventual theory of evolution by Darwin, who used Mary’s finds and works extensively in his Origin of the Species.

The fact that Mary found this one specimen would be pretty astonishing, but she also discovered the first complete plesiosaurus, the first pterosaur (pterodactyl), a new fossil fish (Squaloraja), along with many other smaller finds. With all this she is barely known today and was often overlooked or not credited during her lifetime – most likely because she was a woman and the scientific community at that time was male dominated. Although she had many well known friends in the geological world during her lifetime she was never accorded the accolades, respect or monetary earnings these men achieved. She died at the age of 48, from breast cancer, and is largely unknown today. Although most of us have recited the ‘She sells sea shells on the seashore’ tongue twister how many of us knew it was written about this amazing woman? A very good read and one I would recommend to anyone wishing to learn about the first baby steps of understanding evolution.

[Priskah · Rating 5 out of 5]

5,0 ✨✨✨

(Audiobook)

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography of Mary Anning (1799 – 1847) documents the life of a working-class woman who became one of the most significant paleontologists of the 19th century. As a child, Mary Anning accompanied her father during his forays along the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England, to collect “curiosities” to sell to tourists. He died when Mary was eleven years old, and she continued to hunt for fossils. What began as economic necessity evolved into a passionate scientific pursuit that would span her entire life. This book establishes Mary Anning’s place in the history of scientific progress.

As a woman, Anning was barred from joining scientific societies or publishing her findings. Many male scientists who built their reputations on her discoveries failed to credit her work. Despite these challenges, Anning maintained detailed notebooks, taught herself anatomy and geology, and earned the respect of leading scientists who sought her expertise. Emling vividly depicts how Anning's discoveries, including the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton, a plesiosaur, and numerous pterosaurs, took place during a period of intense debate about the age of the Earth and the nature of extinction. The depictions of the Dorset coast where Anning worked, including dangerous cliffs, treacherous tides, and harsh weather conditions, provide an idea of the physical risks she took in pursuit of her passion.

I had heard about Mary Anning and have read other books that reference her work; however, I had not previously read a detailed biography of her life. This book portrays Anning's remarkable achievements in paleontology and archeology, which is even more impressive given her lack of formal education and the restrictions on women of the time. The biography raises questions about gender, class, and recognition in science, which remain relevant today. It is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in paleontology, scientific history, or women’s issues.

[Broken Lifeboat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those 'could have been a long article' reads.

Titled as a biography of Mary Anning, the self-taught paleontologist and discoverer of several species of prehistoric creatures, the book often focuses on the men around Mary. In fact, this should be titled The Fossil Hunters: the evolution of paleontology in one small part of England in the 1800s.

There's a clear lack of source material due to Mary's gender and social status and Emling endlessly and needlessly speculates on Mary's inner life. I got so tired of the 'Mary must have felt', 'Mary probably thought', 'Mary surely must have been sad when her mother died' - ya' think, Shelley?

Some interesting history but misnamed and overly long with too much background color and not enough focus on Mary Anning.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about Mary Anning. What?!? You’ve never heard of her? But she discovered the first ichthyosaur; the first plesiosaur, too. She was well-known throughout Europe in the early 1800’s. In fact, Charles Dickens himself wrote an article about her. The tongue-twister, “She sells sea-shells by the sea-shore” was inspired by her.

Still doesn’t ring a bell? Well, no surprise there. I’d never heard of her, and I’m into this sort of stuff. It’s a pity that the woman who made so many great discoveries should be so forgotten. I was thrilled to stumble upon a book that might help rescue Mary Anning from obscurity.

Unfortunately, the circumstances that allowed Mary to sink into oblivion are the very reasons that this book is largely unsuccessful. Mary Anning was poor, had little formal education and adhered to a Dissenter faith. Worst of all, she was a woman, she was plain, and she was an old maid.

It’s a miracle that she overcame all of this to become a relatively well-known paleontologist in her day. She had to work harder than anyone else to do so, though, and that didn’t leave her any time to write journals or autobiographies. Few others felt motivated to write about her either (Dickens being one of the notable exceptions, but of course, he of all people would appreciate a Dickensian story of beating the odds).

Perhaps most detrimental of all, because she wasn’t even allowed to be a member of the Geological Society of London (women weren’t admitted until 1904), her discoveries had to be presented to that body by men, men that would, more often than not, be given credit for her discoveries. Occasionally, one of these famous (male) geologists would kindly mention Mary Anning in his writings, but it always had a subtle hint of condescension.

All of this leaves very little in the way of records about Mary, which, over time, has allowed her to fade into anonymity. Sadly, this has also left little for author Shelley Emling to draw upon, forcing her to resort all too often to supposition. Mary likely did this, and probably felt that. She might have done this, but she might have done that. All Emling can give us is a shadowy reflection of who Mary Anning might have been. After reading the book, all 213 pages of it, I felt like I hardly knew Mary Anning at all. And that is a real shame. Mary Anning deserves better.

[Brooke, · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mary Anning is is a woman who deserves to be known more widely than she is. Unfortunately, I do not think this is the book to bring her attention and recognition. Emling has an enjoyable and easy to read style of writing but the problem for me was the speculative nature of the text. As a non-fiction biography/history, I found it problematic to read, sometimes times on a single page, "she would of", "she surely", "she might have", "she possibly". The passive nature of these phrases is troubling. Given the acknowledgement that little is accurately known of Anning's life, and the timid nature of the overall outcome, this book would have worked better as a fictional narrative based in historical truth.

This review is not to say the book is bad, or poorly written, or lacking in research because none of these statements would be true for me to say. It is clearly evident that Emling has done a huge amount of work and it is amazingly interesting to read the outcome.

Whether or not you want to read this book will depend on how you like your non-fiction. For me, I like directness and I like biographies to be about the person specifically, with the other players in their lives as the bylines and contextual additions.

[Tessa]

I am so so interested in Mary Anning but I can't go on with this book. The author has a severe bias against religion in general and Christianity specifically. The writing drove me crazy--she hardly tells us what Mary did, instead she states what Mary "likely did" or "would have felt." Those two phrases are used on almost every stinking page.

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but heavily biased towards Darwin

I liked learning about Mary Anning, whom I had not heard of. I disliked that there was so much speculation and unsubstantiated claims such as extinct animal life, like dinosaurs disproved the biblical account of creation. The author never explains why extinct animals disprove the Bible's account of creation. Animals ceasing to exist has no relationship to how they began to exist.

Also the author fails to prove how a worldwide flood and an ice age are incompatible. Why wouldn't a worldwide flood create an ice age, assuming there was an ice age.

[Natalie (CuriousReader)]

This slim biography of the important historical figure who made countless fossil discoveries that sparked discussion and research into extinction, evolution and dinosaurs - is one of few attempts to give Mary Anning her deserved voice and place in history. Though the documentation we have of Anning's life, her upbringing and discoveries, her friendships and her self-studies, is frustratingly thin - Emling does her best at building a narrative around the scant materials she has to work with. We begin with a young girl who is introduced to fossil hunting through her father, an activity they shared until his too-early death when she was only about thirteen years old. She had already developed a skill for finding and taking care of fossils, it didn't take much time after losing her father until she made her first major discovery of an ichthyosaur. Lyme Regis has turned out to be one of a kind in its richness for fossils, especially during Mary's lifetime. She continued to put her life and health at risk in attempting to find new fossils on ever-shifting ground, an activity connected to her father's death (which was brought about through a bad fall while they were out fossil hunting). In her life-time, she had ongoing friendships and partnerships with many esteemed scientists and academics of the time - palaeontologists, geologists, men who did fossil hunting of their own or else created the ground-breaking theories of extinction and evolution based on findings like those of Mary. Of course most of her work was not credited, as a woman she was underestimated and undervalued, as a woman of lower-class she wasn't taken seriously either by the townsfolk or much of the scientific field. While many of her friendships with the men working in the field was amicable, and they often did try to earn her the credit she deserved - her life was for the most part that of struggles to earn enough money from her fossil sales to be able to live, to get credit for her tireless work, and for getting access to knowledge of the field.

Shelley Emling makes the point early in her book that there's scant documentation of Mary Anning's life, probably all the more so with her young life before she had become someone worth taking note of. As such, much of the book is written with this aspect in mind - Emling makes it clear wherever she is taking liberty in speculating likely scenarios, thoughts or feelings of her heroine. "She would have", or "she likely" are examples of frequent use in the book to mark out where the author is making her own educated guesses based on what is known and the surrounding social and historical context. While the use of such words does harm the flow of the book slightly, the reason for them makes up for it - it highlights both how little is known of this remarkable woman and why she has likely gone unmentioned in so much of history so that many people today have never heard of Mary Anning. The parts of Anning's life that are more established, and in the book stated as facts, are often based on primary sources - another strength to this book and its trustworthiness. My favourite aspect of it though was the way Emling blends in all of the contextual information to paint not only a picture of Mary's life but also her backdrop; much of it fascinating. A comment on her selling her hair leads on to a comment about tennis balls using human hair as stuffing, a side-note on her use of laudunum at the end of her life connects with general lines of opium use of the Victorian time (laudunum being a mix of alcohol and opium) and it being widely used even among famous people like Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott.

Ultimately, I loved learning more about Mary Anning's life story and equally about the growth of the scientific field she (indirectly) participated in - the changing ideas of science, the attempt of many at the time to marry new scientific findings with Christian beliefs, the changing status of women in science over Anning's lifetime and further into the 20th century, some of the discoveries that we today take for granted as established facts being as recent as 150-200 years, and all of the surrounding social and cultural history. While I do think the biography is frustratingly brief, and unable to truly get into Mary Anning's head, I admire the authors attempt (as one of the only ones to do it) and I can only hope that more will be learnt of her in the future to inspire further books on this fascinating subject.

[Artemis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Anning is one of my idols. This biography was excellently detailed, as well as providing really good information about the evolving (hah) state of science, geology, paleontology, and biology that characterized the 1800s, and how it created scientific upheaval, and how Anning's discoveries played a huge part in that.

However, I fully agree with all the other reviews that said that the author's constant speculation on how Anning "might have," must have," "probably," or "surely" felt was distracting and sometimes frustrating. This is a biography - so much of that was either unnecessary, or could have been rewritten to keep the speculation to a minimum.

Honestly, it got to be kind of downright insulting when the author was pushing a romantic agenda. The author seemed to really want Anning to be romantically involved with Henry de la Beche, and at points just made up emotions that Anning "might have" felt about him.

She makes a lot of assumptions about what women must want, in a way that elides the most interesting part of the fact that Mary Anning never married. A lot of the book emphasizes, over and over again, that even though Anning’s brilliant scientific discoveries were changing the course of European science, it was men who took credit for them. Anning was a woman, was poor, and never was formally educated. She sold her fossil discoveries to rich men to support herself and her family to stave off poverty, and then rich, learnèd men presented them to the Royal Geological Society and took all the credit.

So… even regardless even considering a non-straight sexual orientation, her independence may have had value to her! She may have resisted the idea of tying herself to a man who would take even more of her credit! She may have deliberately resisted marriage even though that was an obvious financial route out of poverty, because she valued her fossil hunting, her science, her independence, her time, and what little recognition she DID get even more! If she had married, it would be almost certain her husband would take credit for everything and she’d have far less time to go fossil hunting. And this particular angle is never addressed, the idea that Anning chose not to marry is never even considered, which feels like a massive oversight for such a book.

The information was very informative and interesting, because MAry Anning was a fascinating person living at a fascinating time. But I wish the book had stuck to just the information.

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars actually.

She sells seashells on the seashore
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure
So if she sells seashells on the seashore
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.
--Terry Sullivan

I learned the first line of this tongue-twister as a child and, until I read The Fossil Hunter, I didn't know it was about Mary Anning or that there was more to the tongue-twister.

During the first half of the 19th century, Mary Anning was known in certain circles for her discoveries of ammonites, fossils of prehistoric fish and other sea creatures, and fossils and skeletons of animals that came to be called dinosaurs. I say in certain circles because although she did world class work in geology and paleontology, she usually did not get credit for her work because she was a woman, she was not formally educated, and she was poor. She was known among many men in the new field of geology. She helped many of them and shared her discoveries with them, and it was these men, with whom she had cordial relationships, who presented her findings and analyses in lectures and papers, usually not mentioning her name and sometimes receiving credit for what Anning herself had so painstakingly chipped out of the clay or assembled from scattered bones.

Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, a town on the coast of Dorset in England, where the cliffs continually fell away as they were battered by the sea, revealing layers of geological deposits. She began exploring the coastline with her father and brother and learned through trial and error how to find and extract the fossils and bones that were to provide vital clues to the story of how the earth was formed and changed, and what happened to the creatures that lived through these changes.

Mary's father, a carpenter by trade and a fossil finder on weekends, died when Mary was still young, but she carried on his interest and his work with these curiosities and was soon helping to support her mother by selling things she found to tourists and other fossil collectors. She made careful and detailed drawings of her finds and was able to sell larger things to collectors by sending drawings to them to catch their interest. She was constantly trying to learn more about the fossils she found. Occasionally she got hold of articles from journals and copied them into her notebooks. She puzzled out the anatomy of sea creatures by dissecting dead squids, cuttlefish, and other soft bodied cephalopods, which helped her to identify and classify what she found.

Mary's brother Joseph discovered the skull of the world's first fossil ichthyosaur in 1810. Mary collected the whole skeleton the next year. In 1823 Mary found the first complete Plesiosaurus giganteus. She discovered the first British pterosaur, the first pterodactyl of the Dimorphodon genus in 1828. In 1829 Mary discovered a new type of fossil fish, a Squaloraja. In 1830 she discovered a Plesiosaurus macrocephalus. All these discoveries should have made her famous and perhaps well off (she was able to sell some of them to museums and private collectors though not for as much as she expected). But she did not get the recognition she deserved and she still needed to go out every day and search for fossils to sell in order to make enough money to feed her family. At one point when she was really struggling, money was collected to give her a pension just so that she would not starve but she would always struggle to make ends meet and was never really comfortable.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I had expectations, perhaps unfairly, that were not met. I commend the writer for filling in the background of the struggle between Biblical creationists and those who thought otherwise (though this part gets rather tedious) and for pointing out how Mary's discoveries were influential in Darwin's thinking when he wrote On the Origin of Species. There is a timeline, some discussion of sources, and an index, all of which are useful. The author, Shelley Emling, has obviously done her research. The writing style is journalistic, since the author is a journalist, and I found some of her wording careless. There were several grammatical errors, which could have been caught by an editor. The eight pages of black and white illustrations In the middle of the book were of poor quality and hard to make out. Both the front and back cover of this large format paperback rolled, which was a constant annoyance. And, mostly, I felt that the book was much more about the men who were prominent in the early days of geology than about Mary Anning. Perhaps this was unavoidable, but I wanted more Mary.

I think someone is making a movie of this book. This may be a case where I like the film better. Actually I just looked that up. The movie being made is of the novel Remarkable Creatures, about Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. Maybe I'll read that and see if it's more satisfying.

[S.B. (Beauty in Ruins) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite a few narrative flaws, this is an absolutely fascinating story of a young woman doesn’t get the social or scientific recognition she deserves. Coming in, I knew just enough about Mary Anning to want to know more. I knew she was the subject of Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures(which is next on my reading list), but I wanted to start with something more straightforwardly biographical, before moving into the novelised version of her life.

Since I don’t want them to be the focus of my review, let me quickly do away with those narrative flaws I mentioned. Emling’s biography is unflinching and unapologetic in its honestly . . . it’s a story full of words like maybe, perhaps, probably, and likely. As readers, I think we come into a biography understanding that the author cannot possibly know every detail of every moment of the subject’s life with. There’s an unspoken agreement between reader and author to that effect, a silent understanding that there will necessarily be liberties in detail and dialogue. Calling attention to those grey areas at every turn was just distracting.

The other flaw is that the book tends to ramble sometimes, diverting into tangents that, as interesting as they are on their own, interrupt the flow of Mary’s story. Granted, some of these diversions are lengthy, but most of them could have been better served as footnotes or supplementary material at the end. Some readers might not mind the diversions, but it was Mary I came to read about, and it was Mary upon whom I wanted to remain focused.

As soon as you begin to understand a little about Mary Anning, you’ll also understand why those diversions are so distracting. Mary is an icon, a heroine, and a legend. As a self-taught, independent, young woman she made discoveries that put her highly-educated, well-supported, male peers to shame. She had an instinctive understanding of the fossils and bones she was finding, and could immediately envision the prehistoric monstrosities those tiny pieces should form. On more than one occasion, stuffy old scientists and palaeontologists adamantly declared that she was wrong, accusing her of fraud, only to be proven wrong on every occasion.

The fact that Mary got into fossil hunting merely to support her family, following in the footsteps of her beloved (and equally amateur father) just adds to the legend. As a woman, she never received proper credit for any of her discoveries, and could not attend any of the meetings where they were celebrated and discussed. Despite that, the greatest scientific minds of her time understood what a treasure they had in Mary, and many of them sought her out to walk the shore, to experience her gift, and to discuss her finds.

Neither able not permitted to pursue higher education, Mary educated herself, reading whatever she could her hands on, and exploring the practical applications of that knowledge. Far more worried about paying rent on their small cottage, and with feeding her mother and her siblings, she sacrificed the fame and fortune that she could have easily earned as a man, not to mention the love she must have craved as a human being, simply to provide.

It’s amazing to think that, even as Charles Darwin was embarking upon The Beagle, yet to even conceive, much less write, The Origin of Species, this young woman was discovering dinosaurs that even the most educated minds couldn’t fathom. Had I the gift of time travel, I would love nothing more than to spend a day upon the beach, scavenging for fossils with Mary as my guide. Never afraid to get dirty, and more respectful than afraid of the tides that (more than once) brought ruin to Lyme Regis, she must have been an awe-inspiring figure.

Mary’s story is, in a word, amazing. It’s not just the story of a self-taught palaeontologist, a pioneer in her field, but the story of a self-made woman, a revolutionary in her gender. She is a woman who deserves to be recognized on both fronts, and her story here pays equal attention to both aspects of her extraordinary character. Of course, this is also a story full of fascinating details about dinosaurs, fossils, and the scientific process of the 19th century, which just makes it that much more compelling.


https://sallybend.wordpress.com/2011/...

[marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells the fascinating story of Mary Anning, a woman who made several important early fossil finds of dinosaurs and other creatures on the southern coast of England in the early to mid 1800s. Mary had just a few years' formal education and was largely a self-made paleontologist - however, because of her status as a woman (and as a very poor woman, even), she both never received the recognition she deserved nor her due place alongside her male contemporaries in the science world. As a woman in science, I was naturally completely captured by this piece of history that I had never been exposed to. I feel so attached, intrigued and interested in Mary Anning that my list of "must see" places now includes Lyme Regis, Mary's hometown and the site of the fossil discoveries (also now a UNESCO World Heritage site).

The book had several strong points, namely the placing of Mary in context of the times, her male counterparts and the scientific thoughts of the era, and the prose was very fluid. Like other readers, I know that little information about Mary exists, leaving the author to guess at what Mary "might have thought" or "likely did" or "probably understood". That choice of style didn't always work for me. That said, that's my only gripe - otherwise a great book and one I will be recommending to others.

[Mitch Karunaratne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this - and parts were really well put together. The familiar story of the prevailing discord between science and church as people begin to question the creation of earth was well told. But this was a book about Mary Anning - and so much of her story Emling fictionalised and tried to fill in the gaps where her research failed to find traces. Coupled with a reliance on assumption and stereotype around class and race took the shine off this book and yet again put men front on centre in Mary's own story.

[Chloe Knight · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book but the meandering of the storytelling was frustrating. There was also a lot of repetition - so much so I thought I had rewound sections only to find I hadn’t.

I understand there isn’t a wealth of information on Mary Anning, but that shouldn’t be a reason to pad out the book with side stories that only just relate to her.

Overall, yes it was an informative book but not one I’d recommend others to bother with.

[C. McKenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the story of Mary Anning from Lyme Regis, England in the early and mid 1800s. This woman who was born into poverty and who was uneducated, laid the foundation for scientific investigation into the evolution of our world.

It was her discoveries of prehistoric fossils that set the scientific world on the path to understanding how earth, its plants, and animals developed over eons. With her discoveries, the creationist account of our origin was called into question. The frustrating part of her story lies in the lack of recognition she received during her life except by a select few geologists who valued her knowledge and expertise.

A quick, easy read about a very interesting woman and her times.

[ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an important book to read about a woman who kickstarted the field of English palaeontology. Remember: Mary was an unmarried, not conventionally-attractive, working class woman. Yet her story lives on. This book is compelling to read, and i wish we had more information to go on than these snippets.

[Ömer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kadınların asla söz hakkının olmadığı bir dönemde bir sürü fosili bizzat kazıp çıkararak paleontoloji ve jeolojiye büyük katkılar sunmuş, ilk kadın jeolog olarak anılan Mary Anning’in yaşam hikayesini anlatıyor kitap. Mary yoksulluk içinde yaşamış, bulguları için çoğu zaman kendisinin adı anılmamış ve erkekler üstlenmiş, yine de kanserken bile çalışmaya ve üretmeye devam etmiş. İlham verici bir hikaye gerçekten.

Ama kitabın bir son okumadan geçmesi gerekir bence, gözüme takılan epey yazım ve imla hatası oldu.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this as part of my “fall curriculum” and man it was fascinating! I was enraged, I cried, I laughed. I was honestly kind of bored at times and I think if you don’t have a love for or background in science, it would be hard to get into but this woman did so much for geology and the theory of evolution and wasn’t given credit while the men around her took the spotlight. Imagine finding something world altering and not even being invited to the table to talk about it because you’re a woman. I’m frustrated I took so many science classes and never heard the name Mary Anning!

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I’ve been reading too many historical fiction books lately, but there were a couple of things the author did that bugged me. I guess she was trying to ensure non-fiction accuracy, but I found the following words/expressions to be overused:
“probably”
“would have…” - 6 times in one paragraph
“might have…”
“most likely…”
And, don’t just drop in the rumor that William Smith’s wife was a nymphomaniac without adding some details (page45).
And, I take exception to the author’s position that Molly was worried about her daughter. I’m guessing that, in that era, children were much more adventurous and risk taking, without hovering helicopter parents worrying about them.
On the positive side, I was fascinated to learn about coprolites. And, once again, a woman didn’t get the credit she deserved.