Page 16 - The Restless Earth Fossils

Fossils 15

sea Monsters, Fossil hunters, and
the Mystery oF extinction
When 10-year-old Mary Anning’s (1799–1847) father died in
1810 while hunting for fossils on the slippery cliffs of Lyme Regis
on the east coast of Great Britain, she not only had to deal with
the tragedy, but also find a way to help her poor family survive.
Deborah Cadbury, in her book Terrible Lizard, says that the fam-
ily had depended on her father’s work as a carpenter to provide
money, although they did make a few shillings selling “natu-
ral curiosities,” like fossils, to tourists. One day, Mary found a
beautiful snakestone—a fossil that today would be called an
ammonite. (Its spiral shell reminded people of a coiled snake.)
Mary ran through town showing off her discovery. A rich woman
tourist offered her a crown for the find—a coin that could buy a
week’s worth of food. Mary realized that hunting for fossils along
the rocky coastline could be both fun and profitable.
The next year, her brother Joseph found a huge, four-foot long
skull eroding out of the cliff. The skull sported wicked-looking
teeth like a crocodile, but had a pointed snout and large, round
eye sockets almost like those of a bird. After a fierce storm the
following year, Mary found the rest of the creature’s body. All the
bones were attached, although some were crushed. When towns-
people helped her remove the slab of rock on which the fossil
rested, they found that the creature measured 17 feet (5 meters)
long. She sold that fossil (later named Ichthyosaurus, or “fish
lizard”) for enough money to feed her family for six months.
Perhaps more importantly, she also attracted the attention of
Reverend William Buckland (1784–1856), a student of the new
science called geology.
Buckland was a rich gentleman, but he did not mind wading
in the ocean or climbing cliffs with Mary. He said once that rocks
“stared me in the face, they wooed me and caressed me, saying at
every turn, Pray, Pray, be a geologist.” In fact, he thought that geol-
ogy was a “master science . . . through which [he] could under-
stand the signature of God.” His position at Oxford University
helped make Mary’s discovery, and those of other English fossil

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