Mary Anning: the princess of Palaeontology
Mary Anning was a pioneering 19th-century paleontologist whose significant fossil discoveries in Lyme Regis were often overlooked due to gender bias. Despite her lack of formal recognition during her lifetime, she is now celebrated for her foundational contributions to the field.
Why it matters
Her story serves as a historical case study on how systemic gender discrimination can erase scientific contributions and the importance of historical revisionism.
Mary Anning was born in a little town in South West England in the 18th Century. Her father Richard Anning was a carpenter. When Mary was about a year old, she survived a major lightning strike that killed the woman who was carrying her. This ‘miraculous escape’ soon made her famous in her little town.
This was an era when common people, mostly children, were dying of diseases such as smallpox and measles. So Mary and her brother Joseph growing into their teenage years was yet another miracle for many in the town. Though it was a rare thing back then, Mary attended the Congregationalist Sunday school, where she learned to read and write.
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