Mary Anning

Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.
Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods.
As a Dissenter and a woman, Anning was not able to fully participate in the scientific community of 19th-century Britain, who were mostly Anglican gentlemen, and she struggled financially for much of her life. As a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions. However her friend, geologist Henry De la Beche, painted "Duria Antiquior", the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit. Anning became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as about collecting fossils, but the only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime appeared in the "Magazine of Natural History" in 1839, an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine's editor questioning one of its claims.
After her death in 1847, Anning's unusual life story attracted increasing interest. Henry Stuart Fagan wrote an article about Anning's life, which was published in February 1865 in Charles Dickens' literary magazine "All the Year Round". The profile, "“Mary Anning, The Fossil Finder," was long attributed to Dickens himself but, in 2014, historians of paleontology Michael A. Taylor and Hugh S. Torrens debunked that myth and identified Fagan as the author, noting that Fagan’s work was “neither original nor reliable” and “introduced errors into the Anning literature which are still problematic.” Specifically, they noted that Fagan had largely and inaccurately plagiarized his article from an earlier account of Anning’s life and work by Dorset native, Henry Rowland Brown, from the second edition of Brown's 1859 guidebook, "The Beauties of Lyme Regis."
In 2010, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science. It has been claimed that Anning's story was the inspiration for the tongue-twister "She sells seashells by the seashore," but there is no evidence for this.
Life and career.
Early childhood.
Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis in Dorset, England, on 21 May 1799. Her father, Richard Anning ("c".1766–1810), was a cabinetmaker and carpenter who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff-side fossil beds near the town, and selling his finds to tourists; her mother was Mary Moore ("c".1764–1842) known as Molly. Anning's parents married on 8 August 1793 in Blandford Forum and moved to Lyme, living in a house built on the town's bridge. They attended the Dissenter chapel on Coombe Street, whose worshippers initially called themselves independents and later became known as Congregationalists. Shelley Emling writes that the family lived so near to the sea that the same storms that swept along the cliffs to reveal the fossils sometimes flooded the Annings' home, on one occasion forcing them to crawl out of an upstairs bedroom window to avoid drowning.
Molly and Richard had ten children. The first child, also Mary, was born in 1794. She was followed by another daughter, who died almost at once; Joseph in 1796; and another son in 1798, who died in infancy. In December that year, the oldest child, (the first Mary) then four years old, died after her clothes caught fire, possibly while adding wood shavings to the fire. The incident was reported in the "Bath Chronicle" on 27 December 1798: "A child, four years of age of Mr. R. Anning, a cabinetmaker of Lyme, was left by the mother for about five minutes ... in a room where there were some shavings ... The girl's clothes caught fire and she was so dreadfully burnt as to cause her death."
When Anning was born five months later, she was thus named Mary after her dead sister. More children were born after her, but none of them survived more than a year or two. Only the second Mary Anning and her brother Joseph, three years older than her, survived to adulthood. The high childhood mortality rate for the Anning family was not unusual. Almost half the children born in the UK in the 19th century died before the age of five, and in the crowded living conditions of early 19th-century Lyme Regis, infant deaths from diseases like smallpox and measles were common.
On 19 August 1800, when Anning was 15 months old, an event occurred that became part of local lore. She was being held by a neighbour, Elizabeth Haskings, who was standing with two other women under an elm tree watching an equestrian show being put on by a travelling company of horsemen, when lightning struck the tree – killing all three women below. Onlookers rushed the infant home where she was revived in a bath of hot water. A local doctor declared her survival miraculous. Anning's family said she had been a sickly baby before the event but afterwards she seemed to blossom. For years afterward members of her community would attribute the child's curiosity, intelligence and lively personality to the incident.
Anning's education was extremely limited, but she was able to attend a Congregationalist Sunday school, where she learned to read and write. Congregationalist doctrine, unlike that of the Church of England at the time, emphasised the importance of education for the poor. Her prized possession was a bound volume of the "Dissenters' Theological Magazine and Review", in which the family's pastor, the Reverend James Wheaton, had published two essays, one insisting that God had created the world in six days, the other urging dissenters to study the new science of geology.
Fossils as a family business.
By the late 18th century, Lyme Regis had become a popular seaside resort, especially after 1792 when the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars made travel to the European mainland dangerous for the English gentry, and increasing numbers of wealthy and middle-class tourists were arriving there. Even before Anning's time, locals supplemented their income by selling what were called "curios" to visitors. These were fossils with colourful local names such as "snake-stones" (ammonites), "devil's fingers" (belemnites), and "verteberries" (vertebrae), to which were sometimes attributed medicinal and mystical properties. Fossil collecting was in vogue in the late 18th and early 19th century, at first as a pastime, but gradually transforming into a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology was understood. The source of most of these fossils were the coastal cliffs around Lyme Regis, part of a geological formation known as the Blue Lias. This consists of alternating layers of limestone and shale, laid down as sediment on a shallow seabed early in the Jurassic period (about 210–195 million years ago). It is one of the richest fossil locations in Britain. The cliffs could be dangerously unstable, however, especially in winter when rain caused landslides. It was precisely during the winter months that collectors were drawn to the cliffs because the landslides often exposed new fossils.
Their father, Richard, often took Anning and her brother Joseph on fossil-hunting expeditions to supplement the family's income. They offered their discoveries for sale to tourists on a table outside their home. This was a difficult time for England's poor; the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars that followed, caused food shortages. The price of wheat almost tripled between 1792 and 1812, but wages for the working class remained almost unchanged. In Dorset the rising price of bread caused political unrest, even riots. At one point, Richard Anning was involved in organising a protest against food shortages.
In addition, the family's status as religious dissenters—not followers of the Church of England—attracted discrimination. Dissenters were not allowed into universities or the army, and were excluded by law from several professions. Her father had been suffering from tuberculosis and injuries he suffered from a fall off a cliff. When he died in November 1810 (aged 44), he left the family with debts and no savings, forcing them to apply for parish relief.
The family continued collecting and selling fossils together, and set up a table of curiosities near the coach stop at a local inn. Although the stories about Anning tend to focus on her successes, Dennis Dean writes that her mother and brother were astute collectors too, and Anning's parents had sold fossils before the father's death.
Their first well-known find was in 1811, when Mary Anning was 12; her brother Joseph dug up a 4-foot ichthyosaur skull, and a few months later Anning herself found the rest of the skeleton. Henry Hoste Henley of Sandringham House in Sandringham, Norfolk, who was lord of the manor of Colway, near Lyme Regis, paid the family about £23 for it, and in turn he sold it to William Bullock, a well-known collector, who displayed it in London. There it generated interest, because at a time when most people in England still believed in the Biblical account of creation, which implied that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, it raised questions about the history of living things and of the Earth itself. It was later sold for £45 and five shillings at auction in May 1819 as a "Crocodile in a Fossil State" to Charles Konig, of the British Museum, who had already suggested the name "Ichthyosaurus" for it.
Anning's mother Molly initially ran the fossil business after her husband Richard's death, but it is unclear how much actual fossil collecting Molly did herself. As late as 1821, Molly wrote to the British Museum to request payment for a specimen. Her son Joseph's time was increasingly taken up by his apprenticeship to an upholsterer, but he remained active in the fossil business until at least 1825. By that time, Mary Anning had assumed the leading role in the family specimen business.
Birch auction.
One of the family's keenest customers was Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch, later Bosvile, a wealthy collector from Lincolnshire, who bought several specimens from them. In 1820 Birch became disturbed by the family's poverty. Having made no major discoveries for a year, they were at the point of having to sell their furniture to pay the rent. So he decided to auction on their behalf the fossils he had purchased from them. He wrote to the palaeontologist Gideon Mantell on 5 March that year to say that the sale was "for the benefit of the poor woman and her son and daughter at Lyme, who have in truth found almost "all" the fine things which have been submitted to scientific investigation ... I may never again possess what I am about to part with, yet in doing it I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that the money will be well applied." The auction was held at Bullocks in London on 15 May 1820, and raised £400 (the equivalent of £ in ). How much of that was given to the Annings is not known, but it seems to have placed the family on a steadier financial footing, and with buyers arriving from Paris and Vienna, the three-day event raised the family's profile within the geological community.
Fossil shop and growing expertise in a risky occupation.
Anning continued to support herself selling fossils. Her primary stock in trade consisted of invertebrate fossils such as ammonite and belemnite shells, which were common in the area and sold for a few shillings. Vertebrate fossils, such as ichthyosaur skeletons, sold for more, but were much rarer. Collecting them was dangerous winter work. In 1823, an article in "The Bristol Mirror" said of her:
The risks of Anning's profession were illustrated when in October 1833 she barely avoided being killed by a landslide that buried her black-and-white terrier, Tray, her constant companion when she went collecting. Anning wrote to a friend, Charlotte Murchison, in November of that year: "Perhaps you will laugh when I say that the death of my old faithful dog has quite upset me, the cliff that fell upon him and killed him in a moment before my eyes, and close to my feet ... it was but a moment between me and the same fate."
As Anning continued to make important finds, her reputation grew. On 10 December 1823, she found the first complete "Plesiosaurus", and in 1828 the first British example of the flying reptiles known as pterosaurs, called a flying dragon when it was displayed at the British Museum, followed by a "Squaloraja" fish skeleton in 1829. Despite her limited education, she read as much of the scientific literature as she could obtain, and often, laboriously hand-copied papers borrowed from others. Palaeontologist Christopher McGowan examined a copy Anning made of an 1824 paper by William Conybeare on marine reptile fossils and noted that the copy included several pages of her detailed technical illustrations that he was hard pressed to tell apart from the original. She also dissected modern animals including both fish and cuttlefish to gain a better understanding of the anatomy of some of the fossils with which she was working. Lady Harriet Silvester, the widow of the former Recorder of the City of London, visited Lyme in 1824 and described Anning in her diary:
In 1826, at the age of 27, Anning managed to save enough money to purchase a home with a glass store-front window for her shop, "Anning's Fossil Depot". The business had become important enough that the move was covered in the local paper, which noted that the shop had a fine ichthyosaur skeleton on display. Many geologists and fossil collectors from Europe and America visited her at Lyme, including the geologist George William Featherstonhaugh, who called Anning a "very clever funny Creature." He purchased fossils from Anning for the newly opened New York Lyceum of Natural History in 1827. King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony visited her shop in 1844 and purchased an ichthyosaur skeleton for his extensive natural history collection. The king's physician and aide, Carl Gustav Carus, wrote in his journal:
Carus asked Anning to write her name and address in his pocketbook for future reference—she wrote it as "Mary Annins"—and when she handed it back to him she told him: "I am well known throughout the whole of Europe". As time passed, Anning's confidence in her knowledge grew, and in 1839 she wrote to the "Magazine of Natural History" to question the claim made in an article, that a recently discovered fossil of the prehistoric shark "Hybodus" represented a new genus, as an error since she had discovered the existence of fossil sharks with both straight and hooked teeth many years ago. The extract from the letter that the magazine printed was the only writing of Anning's published in the scientific literature during her lifetime. Some personal letters written by Anning, such as her correspondence with Frances Augusta Bell, were published while she was alive, however.
Interactions with the scientific community.
As a woman, Anning was treated as an outsider to the scientific community. At the time in Britain women were not allowed to vote, hold public office, or attend university. The newly formed, but increasingly influential Geological Society of London did not allow women to become members, or even to attend meetings as guests. The only occupations generally open to working-class women were farm labour, domestic service, and work in the newly opening factories.
Although Anning knew more about fossils and geology than many of the wealthy fossilists to whom she sold, it was always the gentlemen geologists who published the scientific descriptions of the specimens she found, often neglecting to mention Anning's name. She became resentful of this. Anna Pinney, a young woman who sometimes accompanied Anning while she collected, wrote: "She says the world has used her ill ... these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages." Anning herself wrote in a letter: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone". Torrens writes that these slights to Anning were part of a larger pattern of ignoring the contributions of working-class people in early 19th-century scientific literature. Often a fossil would be found by a quarryman, construction worker, or road worker who would sell it to a wealthy collector, and it was the latter who was credited if the find was of scientific interest.
Along with purchasing specimens, many geologists visited Anning to collect fossils or discuss anatomy and classification. Henry De la Beche and Anning became friends as teenagers following his move to Lyme, and he, Anning, and sometimes her brother Joseph, went fossil-hunting together. De la Beche and Anning kept in touch as he became one of Britain's leading geologists. William Buckland, who lectured on geology at the University of Oxford, often visited Lyme on his Christmas vacations and was frequently seen hunting for fossils with Anning. It was to him Anning made what would prove to be the scientifically important suggestion (in a letter auctioned for over £100,000 in 2020 ) that the strange conical objects known as bezoar stones were really the fossilised faeces of ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs. Buckland would name the objects coprolites. In 1839 Buckland, Conybeare, and Richard Owen visited Lyme together so that Anning could lead them all on a fossil-collecting excursion.
Anning also assisted Thomas Hawkins with his efforts to collect ichthyosaur fossils at Lyme in the 1830s. She was aware of his penchant to "enhance" the fossils he collected. Anning wrote: "he is such an enthusiast that he makes things as he imagines they ought to be; and not as they are really found...". A few years later there was a public scandal when it was discovered that Hawkins had inserted fake bones to make some ichthyosaur skeletons seem more complete, and later sold them to the government for the British Museum's collection without the appraisers knowing about the additions.
The Swiss palaeontologist Louis Agassiz visited Lyme Regis in 1834 and worked with Anning to obtain and study fish fossils found in the region. He was so impressed by Anning and her friend Elizabeth Philpot that he wrote in his journal: "Miss Philpot and Mary Anning have been able to show me with utter certainty which are the icthyodorulites dorsal fins of sharks that correspond to different types." He thanked both of them for their help in his book, "Studies of Fossil Fish".
Another leading British geologist, Roderick Murchison, did some of his first field work in southwest England, including Lyme, accompanied by his wife, Charlotte. Murchison wrote that they decided Charlotte should stay behind in Lyme for a few weeks to "become a good practical fossilist, by working with the celebrated Mary Anning of that place...". Charlotte and Anning became lifelong friends and correspondents. Charlotte, who travelled widely and met many prominent geologists through her work with her husband, helped Anning build her network of customers throughout Europe, and she stayed with the Murchisons when she visited London in 1829. Anning's correspondents included Charles Lyell, who wrote to ask her opinion on how the sea was affecting the coastal cliffs around Lyme, as well as Adam Sedgwick—one of her earliest customers—who taught geology at the University of Cambridge and who numbered Charles Darwin among his students. Gideon Mantell, discoverer of the dinosaur Iguanodon, also visited Anning at her shop.
Financial difficulties and change in church affiliation.
By 1830, because of difficult economic conditions in Britain that reduced the demand for fossils, coupled with long gaps between major finds, Anning was having financial problems again. Her friend, the geologist Henry De la Beche assisted her by commissioning Georg Scharf to make a lithographic print based on De la Beche's watercolour painting, "Duria Antiquior", portraying life in prehistoric Dorset that was based largely on fossils Anning had found. De la Beche sold copies of the print to his fellow geologists and other wealthy friends and donated the proceeds to Anning. It became the first such scene from what later became known as deep time to be widely circulated. In December 1830, Anning finally made another major find, a skeleton of a new type of plesiosaur, which sold for £200.
It was around this time that Anning switched from attending the local Congregational church, where she had been baptised and in which she and her family had always been active members, to the Anglican church. The change was prompted in part by a decline in Congregational attendance that began in 1828 when its popular pastor, John Gleed, a fellow fossil collector, left for the United States to campaign against slavery. He was replaced by the less likeable Ebenezer Smith. The greater social respectability of the established church, in which some of Anning's gentleman geologist customers such as Buckland, Conybeare, and Sedgwick were ordained clergy, was also a factor. Anning, who was devoutly religious, actively supported her new church as she had her old.
Anning suffered another serious financial setback in 1835 when she lost most of her life savings, about £300, in a bad investment. Sources differ somewhat on what exactly went wrong. Deborah Cadbury says that she invested with a conman who swindled her and disappeared with the money, but Shelley Emling writes that it is not clear whether the man ran off with the money or whether he died suddenly leaving Anning with no way to recover the investment. Concerned about Anning's financial situation, her old friend William Buckland persuaded the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the British government to award her an annuity, known as a civil list pension, in return for her many contributions to the science of geology. The £25 annual pension gave Anning some financial security.
Illness and death.
Anning died from breast cancer at the age of 47 on 9 March 1847. Her fossil work had tailed off during the last few years of her life because of her illness, and as some townspeople misinterpreted the effects of the increasing doses of laudanum she was taking for the pain, there had been gossip in Lyme that she had a drinking problem. The regard in which Anning was held by the geological community was shown in 1846 when, upon learning of her cancer diagnosis, the Geological Society raised money from its members to help with her expenses and the council of the newly created Dorset County Museum made Anning an honorary member. She was buried on 15 March in the churchyard of St Michael's, the local parish church. Members of the Geological Society contributed to a stained-glass window in Anning's memory, unveiled in 1850. It depicts the six corporal "acts of mercy"—feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting prisoners and the sick, and the inscription reads: "This window is sacred to the memory of Mary Anning of this parish, who died 9 March AD 1847 and is erected by the vicar and some members of the Geological Society of London in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology, as also of her benevolence of heart and integrity of life."
After Anning's death, Henry De la Beche, president of the Geological Society, wrote a eulogy that he read to a meeting of the society and published in its quarterly transactions, the first such eulogy given for a woman. These were honours normally only accorded to fellows of the society, which did not admit women until 1904. The eulogy began:
I cannot close this notice of our losses by death without adverting to that of one, who though not placed among even the easier classes of society, but one who had to earn her daily bread by her labour, yet contributed by her talents and untiring researches in no small degree to our knowledge of the great Enalio-Saurians, and other forms of organic life entombed in the vicinity of Lyme Regis ...
Henry Stuart Fagan wrote an article about Anning's life in February 1865 in Charles Dickens' literary magazine "All the Year Round" (though the article was largely plagiarized and was long mistakenly attributed to Dickens) that emphasised the difficulties Anning had overcome, especially the scepticism of her fellow townspeople. He ended the article with: "The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it."
Major discoveries.
Ichthyosaurs.
Anning's first famous discovery was made shortly after her father's death, when she was still a child of about 12. In 1811 (some sources say 1810 or 1809) her brother Joseph found a skull, but failed to locate the rest of the animal. After Joseph told Anning to look between the cliffs at Lyme Regis and Charmouth, she found the skeleton— long in all—a few months later. The family hired workmen to dig it out in November that year, an event covered by the local press on 9 November, who identified the fossil as a crocodile.
Other ichthyosaur remains had been discovered in years past at Lyme and elsewhere, but the specimen found by the Annings was the first to come to the attention of scientific circles in London. It was purchased by the lord of a local manor, who passed it to William Bullock for public display in London where it created a sensation. At a time when most people in Britain still believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis, that the Earth was only a few thousand years old and that species did not evolve or become extinct, the find raised questions in scientific and religious circles about what the new science of geology was revealing about ancient life and the history of the Earth. Its notoriety increased when Sir Everard Home wrote a series of six papers, starting in 1814, describing it for the Royal Society. The papers never mentioned who had collected the fossil, and in the first one he even mistakenly credited the painstaking cleaning and preparation of the fossil performed by Anning to the staff at Bullock's museum. Perplexed by the creature, Home kept changing his mind about its classification, first thinking it was a kind of fish, then thinking it might have some kind of affinity with the duck-billed platypus (only recently known to science); finally in 1819 he reasoned it might be a kind of intermediate form between salamanders and lizards, which led him to propose naming it Proteo-Saurus. By then Charles Konig, an assistant curator of the British Museum, had already suggested the name "Ichthyosaurus" (fish lizard) for the specimen and that name stuck. Konig purchased the skeleton for the museum in 1819. The skull of the specimen is still in the possession of the Natural History Museum in London (to which the fossil collections of the British Museum were transferred later in the century), but at some point, it became separated from the rest of the skeleton, the location of which is not known.
Anning found several other ichthyosaur fossils between 1815 and 1819, including almost complete skeletons of varying sizes. In 1821 William Conybeare and Henry De la Beche, both members of the Geological Society of London, collaborated on a paper that analysed in detail the specimens found by Anning and others. They concluded that ichthyosaurs were a previously unknown type of marine reptile, and based on differences in tooth structure, they concluded that there had been at least three species. Also in 1821, Anning found the skeleton from which the species "Ichthyosaurus platydon" (now "Temnodontosaurus platyodon") would be named. In the 1980s it was determined that the first ichthyosaur specimen found by Joseph and Mary Anning was also a member of "Temnodontosaurus platyodon".
"Plesiosaurus".
In the same 1821 paper he co-authored with Henry De la Beche on ichthyosaur anatomy, William Conybeare named and described the genus "Plesiosaurus" (near lizard), called so because he thought it more like modern reptiles than the ichthyosaur had been. The description was based on a number of fossils, the most complete of them specimen OUMNH J.50146, a paddle and vertebral column that had been obtained by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch. Christopher McGowan has hypothesised that this specimen had originally been much more complete and had been collected by Anning, during the winter of 1820/1821. If so, it would have been Anning's next major discovery, providing essential information about the newly recognised type of marine reptile. No records by Anning of the find are known. The paper thanked Birch for giving Conybeare access to it, but does not mention who discovered and prepared it.
In 1823, Anning discovered a second, much more complete plesiosaur skeleton, specimen BMNH 22656. When Conybeare presented his analysis of plesiosaur anatomy to a meeting of the Geological Society in 1824, he again failed to mention Anning by name, even though she had possibly collected both skeletons and had made the sketch of the second skeleton he used in his presentation. Conybeare's presentation was made at the same meeting at which William Buckland described the dinosaur "Megalosaurus" and the combination created a sensation in scientific circles. The second fossil was named and described as "Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus" and is the type specimen (holotype) of this species, which itself is the type species of the genus.
Conybeare's presentation followed the resolution of a controversy over the legitimacy of one of the fossils. The fact that the plesiosaur's long neck had an unprecedented 35 vertebrae raised the suspicions of the eminent French anatomist Georges Cuvier when he reviewed Anning's drawings of the second skeleton, and he wrote to Conybeare suggesting the possibility that the find was a fake produced by combining fossil bones from different kinds of animals. Fraud was far from unknown among early 19th-century fossil collectors, and if the controversy had not been resolved promptly, the accusation could have seriously damaged Anning's ability to sell fossils to other geologists. Cuvier's accusation had resulted in a special meeting of the Geological Society earlier in 1824, which, after some debate, had concluded the skeleton was legitimate. Cuvier later admitted he had acted in haste and was mistaken.
Anning discovered yet another important and nearly complete plesiosaur skeleton in 1830. It was named "Plesiosaurus macrocephalus" by William Buckland and was described in an 1840 paper by Richard Owen. Once again Owen mentioned the wealthy gentleman who had purchased the fossil and made it available for examination, but not the woman who had discovered and prepared it.
Fossil fish and pterosaur.
Anning found what a contemporary newspaper article called an unrivalled specimen of "Dapedium politum". This was a ray-finned fish, which would be described in 1828. In December of that same year she made an important find consisting of the partial skeleton of a pterosaur. In 1829 William Buckland described it as "Pterodactylus macronyx" (later renamed "Dimorphodon macronyx" by Richard Owen), and unlike many other such occasions, Buckland credited Anning with the discovery in his paper. It was the first pterosaur skeleton found outside Germany, and it created a public sensation when displayed at the British Museum. Recent research has found that these creatures were not inclined to fly continuously in their search for fish.
In December 1829 she found a fossil fish, "Squaloraja", which attracted attention because it had characteristics intermediate between sharks and rays.
Invertebrates and trace fossils.
Vertebrate fossil finds, especially of marine reptiles, made Anning's reputation, but she made numerous other contributions to early palaeontology. In 1826 Anning discovered what appeared to be a chamber containing dried ink inside a belemnite fossil. She showed it to her friend Elizabeth Philpot who was able to revivify the ink and use it to illustrate some of her own ichthyosaur fossils. Soon other local artists were doing the same, as more such fossilised ink chambers were discovered. Anning noted how closely the fossilised chambers resembled the ink sacs of modern squid and cuttlefish, which she had dissected to understand the anatomy of fossil cephalopods, and this led William Buckland to publish the conclusion that Jurassic belemnites had used ink for defence just as many modern cephalopods do. It was also Anning who noticed that the oddly shaped fossils then known as "bezoar stones" were sometimes found in the abdominal region of ichthyosaur skeletons. She noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilised fish bones and scales, and sometimes bones from small ichthyosaurs. Anning suspected the stones were fossilised faeces and suggested so to Buckland in 1824. After further investigation and comparison with similar fossils found in other places, Buckland published that conclusion in 1829 and named them coprolites. In contrast to the finding of the plesiosaur skeletons a few years earlier, for which she was not credited, when Buckland presented his findings on coprolites to the Geological Society, he mentioned Anning by name and praised her skill and industry in helping to solve the mystery.
Recognition and legacy.
Anning's discoveries became key pieces of evidence for extinction. Georges Cuvier had argued for the reality of extinction in the late 1790s based on his analysis of fossils of mammals such as mammoths. Nevertheless, until the early 1820s it was still believed by many scientifically literate people that just as new species did not appear, so existing ones did not become extinct—in part because they felt that extinction would imply that God's creation had been imperfect; any oddities found were explained away as belonging to animals still living somewhere in an unexplored region of the Earth. The bizarre nature of the fossils found by Anning, — some, such as the plesiosaur, so unlike any known living creature — struck a major blow against this idea.
The ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaur she found, along with the first dinosaur fossils which were discovered by Gideon Mantell and William Buckland during the same period, showed that during previous eras the Earth was inhabited by creatures different from those living today, and provided important support for another controversial suggestion of Cuvier's: that there had been an "age of reptiles" when reptiles rather than mammals had been the dominant form of animal life. This phrase became popular after the publication in 1831 of a paper by Mantell entitled "The Age of Reptiles" that summarised the evidence that there had been an extended geological era when giant reptiles has swarmed the land, air, and sea. These discoveries also played a key role in the development of a new discipline of geohistorical analysis within geology in the 1820s that sought to understand the history of the Earth by using evidence from fossils to reconstruct extinct organisms and the environments in which they lived. This discipline eventually came to be called palaeontology. Illustrations of scenes from "deep time" (now known as palaeoart), such as Henry De la Beche's ground-breaking painting "Duria Antiquior", helped convince people that it was possible to understand life in the distant past. De la Beche had been inspired to create the painting by a vivid description of the food chain of the Lias by William Buckland that was based on analysis of coprolites. The study of coprolites, pioneered by Anning and Buckland, would prove to be a valuable tool for understanding ancient ecosystems.
Throughout the 20th century, beginning with H. A. Forde and his "The Heroine of Lyme Regis: The Story of Mary Anning the Celebrated Geologist" (1925), a number of writers saw Anning's life as inspirational. According to P. J. McCartney in "Henry De la Beche: Observations on an Observer" (1978), she was the basis of Terry Sullivan's lyrics to the 1908 song which became the popular tongue twister, "She Sells Seashells":
However, it has also been claimed that no evidence has ever been presented for any causal connection between Anning and the lyrics.
Much of the material written about Anning was aimed at children, and tended to focus on her childhood and early career. Much of it was also highly romanticised and not always historically accurate. Anning has been referenced in several historical novels, most notably in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1969) by John Fowles, who was critical of the fact that no British scientist had named a species after her in her lifetime. As Anning's biographer Shelley Emling noted, this contrasted with some of the prominent geologists who had used her finds, such as William Buckland and Roderick Murchison, who ended up with multiple fossil species named after them. The only person who did name a species after Anning during her lifetime was the Swiss-American naturalist, Louis Agassiz. In the early 1840s, he named two fossil fish species after Anning – "Acrodus anningiae", and "Belenostomus anningiae" – and another after her friend Elizabeth Philpot. Agassiz was grateful for the help the women had given him in examining fossil fish specimens during his visit to Lyme Regis in 1834. After Anning's death, other species, including the ostracod "Cytherelloidea anningi", and two genera, the therapsid reptile genus "Anningia", and the bivalve mollusc genus "Anningella", were named in her honour. In 2012, the plesiosaur genus "Anningasaura" was named after Anning and the species "Ichthyosaurus anningae" was named after her in 2015.
In 1999, on the 200th anniversary of Anning's birth, an international meeting of historians, palaeontologists, fossil collectors, and others interested in her life was held in Lyme Regis. In 2005 the Natural History Museum added Anning, alongside scientists such as Carl Linnaeus, Dorothea Bate, and William Smith, as one of the "gallery characters" (actors dressed in period costumes) it uses to walk around its display cases. In 2007 American playwright/performer Claudia Stevens premiered "Blue Lias, or the Fish Lizard's Whore", a solo play with music by Allen Shearer depicting Anning in later life. Among the presenters of its thirty performances around the Charles Darwin bicentennial were the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, museums of natural history at the University of Michigan and the University of Kansas, and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. In 2009 Tracy Chevalier wrote a historical novel entitled "Remarkable Creatures", in which Anning and Elizabeth Philpot were the main characters, and another historical novel about Anning, "Curiosity" by Joan Thomas, was published in March 2010. Also that month, as part of the celebration of its 350th anniversary, the Royal Society invited a panel of experts to produce a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science. They included Anning in the list.
In 2010, 163 years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.
Anning served as inspiration for Sarah Perry's fossil-hunting protagonist, Cora, in the 2016 novel "The Essex Serpent".
In August 2018, a campaign called "Mary Anning Rocks" was formed by an 11-year-old school girl from Dorset, Evie Swire, supported by her mother Anya Pearson. The campaign was set up to remember Anning in her hometown of Lyme Regis by erecting a statue and creating a learning legacy in her name. Patrons and supporters include Professor Alice Roberts, Sir David Attenborough and novelist Tracy Chevalier. A crowdfunding campaign began but was put on hold. The fundraising campaign rebooted in November 2020. As of January 2021, Evie Swire’s campaign has succeeded and a sculptor, Denise Sutton, has been commissioned.
A further emergency crowdfunding campaign began in August 2020 to raise funds to bid at auction to purchase a handwritten letter from Anning to William Buckland in 1829, 'regarding a box of coprolite (fossil poo) and detailing a new Plesiosaur that Mary had discovered at Lyme Regis, is a unique piece of local heritage and palaeontological history' according to the Jurassic Coast Trust, which gathered £18,532. The letter sold at Sotheby's for £100,800.
In 2018, a new research and survey vessel was launched as "Mary Anning" for Swansea University. And a suite of rooms named after her at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London.
A film based on segments of Anning's life and legacy entitled "Ammonite", directed by Francis Lee, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2020. Kate Winslet portrays Anning and Saoirse Ronan portrays Charlotte Murchison, with the two engaged in a speculative lesbian relationship. The film was released on 13 November 2020 in the US and 26 March 2021 in the UK.
Both the "Ammonite" film release and the "'Mary Anning Rocks"' statue fundraiser were delayed into 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Commemorative coins.
The Royal Mint has issued sets of commemorative 50 pence (£0.5 sterling) coins called '"The Mary Anning Collection"' minted in acknowledgement of her lack of recognition as 'one of Britain's greatest fossil hunters'. The coins have images of the Temnodontosaurus, the Plesiosaurus and the Dimophodon, which she discovered, and her discoveries were 'often overlooked at a time when the scientific world was dominated by men', and as 'a working class woman.'


Hottah (Mars)

Hottah is a rock outcrop on the surface of Aeolis Palus, between Peace Vallis and Aeolis Mons ("Mount Sharp"), in Gale crater on the planet Mars. The outcrop was encountered by the "Curiosity" rover on the way from Bradbury Landing to Glenelg Intrigue on September 14, 2012 (the 39th sol of the mission), and was named after Hottah Lake, the sixth largest lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada. The "approximate" site coordinates are: .
The outcrop is a well-sorted gravel conglomerate, containing well-rounded, smooth, abraded pebbles. Occasional pebbles up to a few centimeters across are embedded in amongst a matrix of finer rounded particles, up to a centimeter across. It has been interpreted as a fluvial sediment, deposited by a vigorously flowing stream, probably between ankle and waist deep. This stream is part of an ancient alluvial fan, which descends from the steep terrain at the rim of Gale crater across its floor.


Edward Sydney Simpson

Edward Sydney Simpson (11 March 1875 – 30 August 1939) was an Australian mineralogist and geochemist.
Simpson was born in Woollahra, New South Wales to an Irish father and English mother. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney where he graduated B.E. with honours, in 1895 and D.Sc. in 1919.
Simpson worked at the Rivertree silver mill, New South Wales and then for the Mount Morgan Gold-Mining Company in Queensland. In 1897 he became mineralogist and assayer with the Geological Survey of Western Australia. He helped to establish the Western Australian School of Mines.
Simpson was a founder of the Natural History and Science Society of Western Australia and its successor, the Royal Society of Western Australia which awarded him the Kelvin Medal in 1929. He was awarded the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1934.
Simpson published "A Key to Mineral Groups, Species and Varieties" in 1932 and a three-volume set "Minerals of Western Australia" was published after his death.


Carnedd Iago Formation

The Carnedd Iago Formation is a geologic formation in Wales. It preserves fossils dating back to the Ordovician period.


Cisco Group

The Cisco Group is a geologic group in Texas. It preserves fossils dating back to the Carboniferous period.


Microbially induced sedimentary structure

Microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS) are primary sedimentary structures formed by the interaction of microbes with sediment and physical agents of erosion, deposition, and transportation. The structures commonly form when microbial mats (which may comprise bacteria, fungi, protozoans, archaea or algae) are preserved in the sedimentary geological record. There are 17 main types of macroscopic and microscopic MISS. Of those, wrinkle structures and microbial mat chips are the most abundant in the fossil record. Other MISS include sinoidal structures, polygonal oscillation cracks, multidirected ripple marks, erosional remnants and pockets, or gas domes.
Although these structures have only recently been named and systematically described, links between microbes and distinctive structures in sediments and sedimentary rocks have been suggested by several early workers. MISS have been identified in beds formed in the Archean and may be the oldest complete fossils on Earth. In the Ediacaran period, they are often associated with the preservation of fossils of the Ediacara biota; subsequent to this point their prevalence declines as a result of the Agronomic revolution
A number of criteria have been proposed for recognising genuinely biological structures, and discriminating them from similar-looking features that can arise through geological processes. These relate to the extent of metamorphism to which the rocks have been subjected; their stratigraphic position with respect to sea-level; their depositional environment; their relationship to ancient hydraulics; and their texture.
Individual studies on microbial mat-induced sedimentary structures are summarized and illustrated in several recent books, including "Atlas of microbial mat features preserved in the siliciclastic rock record" and "Microbial Mats in Siliciclastic Depositional Systems Through Time".
According to a study on the planet Mars, there may be sandstone beds, associated with the Gillespie Lake Member of Yellowknife Bay, visited by the "Curiosity" rover, that are similar to MISS on Earth.


Rimae Fresnel

Rimae Fresnel is a 90km-long arcuate escarpment on the Moon at . Both the escarpment and the nearby Promontorium Fresnel were named after the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel.


Rushall Formation

The Rushall Formation is a geologic formation in England. It preserves fossils dating back to the Silurian period.


Dara Entekhabi

Dara Entekhabi is the Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research spans a variety of topics in hydrology, including land-atmosphere interactions, surface water - groundwater interactions, data assimilation, and remote sensing.
In 2015, he was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for "contributions to microwave remote sensing of soil moisture". In 2017, he was elected as a member of National Academy of Engineering "for leadership in the hydrologic sciences including the scientific underpinnings for satellite observation of the Earth's water cycle."


Soffioni

Soffioni (sometimes spelt "suffioni"), a name applied in Italy to certain volcanic vents which emit jets of steam, generally associated with hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, sometimes also with a little ammonia and marsh gas.
The soffioni are usually arranged in groups, and are best represented in the Maremma of Tuscany, where they contain a small proportion of boric acid, for which they are utilized industrially. For such natural steam-holes, the French geologists often use the term "soufflards" in place of the Italian "soffioni".


Herbert E. Merwin

Herbert Eugene Merwin (20 February 20 1878, Newton, Kansas – 29 January 1963, Washington, D.C.) was an American mineralogist and petrologist.
Merwin grew up in Hensonville, New York after moving there with his family when he was two years old. After graduating from high school, he taught for several years in New York State public high schools and at the Normal School in Oneonta. He then studied at Harvard University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1907 and his Ph.D. in 1911. He became in 1909 a staff member of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. and was employed there until his retirement in 1945. After retirement he continued there as a research associate until 1959.
He was considered a leading authority on crystal optics.
He was president in 1931 of the Mineralogical Society of America, whose Roebling Medal he received in 1949. The mineral merwinite is named in his honor.


Humboldt Formation

The Humboldt Formation is a geologic formation in Nevada. It preserves fossils dating back to the Neogene period.


Park Shale

The Park Shale is a geologic formation in Wyoming. It preserves fossils dating back to the Cambrian period.


Telegeodynamics

Telegeodynamics is an electromechanical earth-resonance concept for underground seismic exploration proposed by Nikola Tesla.
Description.
Tesla designed this system for use in prospecting and discerning the location of underground mineral structures through the transmission of mechanical energy through the subsurface.  Data from reflected and refracted signals can be analyzed to deduce the location and characteristics of underground formations.  Additional non-mechanical responses to the initial acoustic impulses may also be detectable using instruments that measure various electrical and magnetic parameters. Such predicted responses would--at least--take the form of induced electric and magnetic fields, telluric currents, and changes in earth conductivity.
The electromechanical oscillator was originally designed as a source of isochronous (that is to say, frequency stable), alternating electric current used with both wireless transmitting and receiving apparatus.  In dynamical system theory an oscillator is called "isochronous" if the frequency is independent of its amplitude. An electromechanical device runs at the same rate regardless of changes in its , so it maintains a constant frequency (hz).


Harry Thode

Henry George "Harry" Thode (September 10, 1910 – March 22, 1997) was a Canadian geochemist, nuclear chemist, and academic administrator. He was president and vice-chancellor of McMaster University from 1961 to 1972. Thode built a cyclotron capable of making radioactive isotopes and along with Dr. C.H. Jaimet, investigated the use of radioactive iodine in the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid disease in humans, the first medical application of radioactive iodine in Canada.
Born in Dundurn, Saskatchewan, he received his B.Sc in 1930 and his M.Sc in 1932 from the University of Saskatchewan. In 1934, he received his Ph.D in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago.
He joined McMaster University in 1939 as an associate professor of chemistry, became a full professor in 1944; was named director of research in 1947; appointed head of the chemistry department from 1948 to 1952; became principal of Hamilton College in 1949; appointed vice-president in 1957; and in 1961 became president and vice chancellor. He retired as president in 1972. Thode died in 1997 in Dundas, Ontario.
Honours.
He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to atomic research during World War II. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1943 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954. In 1967 he was the first scientist to be made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
The Science and Engineering library at McMaster University is named after him.


Fossil

A fossil (from Classical Latin: , literally 'obtained by digging') is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood, oil, coal, and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the "fossil record".
Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure the absolute ages of rocks and the fossils they host.
There are many processes that lead to fossilization, including permineralization, casts and molds, authigenic mineralization, replacement and recrystallization, adpression, carbonization, and bioimmuration.
Fossils vary in size from one-micrometre (1 µm) bacteria to dinosaurs and trees, many meters long and weighing many tons. A fossil normally preserves only a portion of the deceased organism, usually that portion that was partially mineralized during life, such as the bones and teeth of vertebrates, or the chitinous or calcareous exoskeletons of invertebrates. Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces (coprolites). These types of fossil are called trace fossils or "ichnofossils", as opposed to "body fossils". Some fossils are biochemical and are called "chemofossils" or biosignatures.
Fossilization processes.
The process of fossilization varies according to tissue type and external conditions.
Permineralization.
Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried. The empty spaces within an organism (spaces filled with liquid or gas during life) become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces. This process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils. For permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death, otherwise the remains are destroyed by scavengers or decomposition. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil. Some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth; other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis.
Casts and molds.
In some cases, the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an "external mold". If this void is later filled with sediment, the resulting "cast" resembles what the organism looked like. An endocast, or "internal mold", is the result of sediments filling an organism's interior, such as the inside of a bivalve or snail or the hollow of a skull. Endocasts are sometimes termed , especially when bivalves are preserved this way.
Authigenic mineralization.
This is a special form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism (or fragment of organism) can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, resulting in a nodule forming around it. If this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented examples of such mineralization.
Replacement and recrystallization.
Replacement occurs when the shell, bone, or other tissue is replaced with another mineral. In some cases mineral replacement of the original shell occurs so gradually and at such fine scales that microstructural features are preserved despite the total loss of original material. A shell is said to be "recrystallized" when the original skeletal compounds are still present but in a different crystal form, as from aragonite to calcite.
Adpression (compression-impression).
Compression fossils, such as those of fossil ferns, are the result of chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules composing the organism's tissues. In this case the fossil consists of original material, albeit in a geochemically altered state. This chemical change is an expression of diagenesis. Often what remains is a carbonaceous film known as a phytoleim, in which case the fossil is known as a compression. Often, however, the phytoleim is lost and all that remains is an impression of the organism in the rock—an impression fossil. In many cases, however, compressions and impressions occur together. For instance, when the rock is broken open, the phytoleim will often be attached to one part (compression), whereas the counterpart will just be an impression. For this reason, one term covers the two modes of preservation: "adpression".
Soft tissue, cell and molecular preservation.
Because of their antiquity, an unexpected exception to the alteration of an organism's tissues by chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules during fossilization has been the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, including blood vessels, and the isolation of proteins and evidence for DNA fragments. In 2014, Mary Schweitzer and her colleagues reported the presence of iron particles (goethite-aFeO(OH)) associated with soft tissues recovered from dinosaur fossils. Based on various experiments that studied the interaction of iron in haemoglobin with blood vessel tissue they proposed that solution hypoxia coupled with iron chelation enhances the stability and preservation of soft tissue and provides the basis for an explanation for the unforeseen preservation of fossil soft tissues. However, a slightly older study based on eight taxa ranging in time from the Devonian to the Jurassic found that reasonably well-preserved fibrils that probably represent collagen were preserved in all these fossils and that the quality of preservation depended mostly on the arrangement of the collagen fibers, with tight packing favoring good preservation. There seemed to be no correlation between geological age and quality of preservation, within that timeframe.
Carbonization and coalification.
Fossils that are carbonized or coalified consist of the organic remains which have been reduced primarily to the chemical element carbon. Carbonized fossils consist of a thin film which forms a silhouette of the original organism, and the original organic remains were typically soft tissues. Coalified fossils consist primarily of coal, and the original organic remains were typically woody in composition.
Bioimmuration.
Bioimmuration occurs when a skeletal organism overgrows or otherwise subsumes another organism, preserving the latter, or an impression of it, within the skeleton. Usually it is a sessile skeletal organism, such as a bryozoan or an oyster, which grows along a substrate, covering other sessile sclerobionts. Sometimes the bioimmured organism is soft-bodied and is then preserved in negative relief as a kind of external mold. There are also cases where an organism settles on top of a living skeletal organism that grows upwards, preserving the settler in its skeleton. Bioimmuration is known in the fossil record from the Ordovician to the Recent.
Types.
Index.
Index fossils (also known as guide fossils, indicator fossils or zone fossils) are fossils used to define and identify geologic periods (or faunal stages). They work on the premise that, although different sediments may look different depending on the conditions under which they were deposited, they may include the remains of the same species of fossil. The shorter the species' time range, the more precisely different sediments can be correlated, and so rapidly evolving species' fossils are particularly valuable. The best index fossils are common, easy to identify at species level and have a broad distribution—otherwise the likelihood of finding and recognizing one in the two sediments is poor.
Trace.
Trace fossils consist mainly of tracks and burrows, but also include coprolites (fossil feces) and marks left by feeding. Trace fossils are particularly significant because they represent a data source that is not limited to animals with easily fossilized hard parts, and they reflect animal behaviours. Many traces date from significantly earlier than the body fossils of animals that are thought to have been capable of making them. Whilst exact assignment of trace fossils to their makers is generally impossible, traces may for example provide the earliest physical evidence of the appearance of moderately complex animals (comparable to earthworms).
Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Prior to this they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones." They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms. Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to over 60 centimetres.
Transitional.
A "transitional fossil" is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group. Because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there is usually no way to know exactly how close a transitional fossil is to the point of divergence. These fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human constructs that have been imposed in hindsight on a continuum of variation.
Microfossils.
Microfossil is a descriptive term applied to fossilized plants and animals whose size is just at or below the level at which the fossil can be analyzed by the naked eye. A commonly applied cutoff point between "micro" and "macro" fossils is 1 mm. Microfossils may either be complete (or near-complete) organisms in themselves (such as the marine plankters foraminifera and coccolithophores) or component parts (such as small teeth or spores) of larger animals or plants. Microfossils are of critical importance as a reservoir of paleoclimate information, and are also commonly used by biostratigraphers to assist in the correlation of rock units.
Resin.
Fossil resin (colloquially called amber) is a natural polymer found in many types of strata throughout the world, even the Arctic. The oldest fossil resin dates to the Triassic, though most dates to the Cenozoic. The excretion of the resin by certain plants is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation for protection from insects and to seal wounds. Fossil resin often contains other fossils called inclusions that were captured by the sticky resin. These include bacteria, fungi, other plants, and animals. Animal inclusions are usually small invertebrates, predominantly arthropods such as insects and spiders, and only extremely rarely a vertebrate such as a small lizard. Preservation of inclusions can be exquisite, including small fragments of DNA.
Derived, or reworked.
A "derived", "reworked" or is a fossil found in rock that accumulated significantly later than when the fossilized animal or plant died. Reworked fossils are created by erosion exhuming (freeing) fossils from the rock formation in which they were originally deposited and their redeposition in a younger sedimentary deposit.
Wood.
Fossil wood is wood that is preserved in the fossil record. Wood is usually the part of a plant that is best preserved (and most easily found). Fossil wood may or may not be petrified. The fossil wood may be the only part of the plant that has been preserved: therefore such wood may get a special kind of botanical name. This will usually include "xylon" and a term indicating its presumed affinity, such as "Araucarioxylon" (wood of "Araucaria" or some related genus), "Palmoxylon" (wood of an indeterminate palm), or "Castanoxylon" (wood of an indeterminate chinkapin).
Subfossil.
The term subfossil can be used to refer to remains, such as bones, nests, or defecations, whose fossilization process is not complete, either because the length of time since the animal involved was living is too short (less than 10,000 years) or because the conditions in which the remains were buried were not optimal for fossilization. Subfossils are often found in caves or other shelters where they can be preserved for thousands of years. The main importance of subfossil vs. fossil remains is that the former contain organic material, which can be used for radiocarbon dating or extraction and sequencing of DNA, protein, or other biomolecules. Additionally, isotope ratios can provide much information about the ecological conditions under which extinct animals lived. Subfossils are useful for studying the evolutionary history of an environment and can be important to studies in paleoclimatology.
Subfossils are often found in depositionary environments, such as lake sediments, oceanic sediments, and soils. Once deposited, physical and chemical weathering can alter the state of preservation.
Chemical fossils.
Chemical fossils, or chemofossils, are chemicals found in rocks and fossil fuels (petroleum, coal, and natural gas) that provide an organic signature for ancient life. Molecular fossils and isotope ratios represent two types of chemical fossils. The oldest traces of life on Earth are fossils of this type, including carbon isotope anomalies found in zircons that imply the existence of life as early as 4.1 billion years ago.
Dating.
Estimating dates.
Paleontology seeks to map out how life evolved across geologic time. A substantial hurdle is the difficulty of working out fossil ages. Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating. This technique is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age, and can be accurate to within 0.5% or better. Although radiometric dating requires careful laboratory work, its basic principle is simple: the rates at which various radioactive elements decay are known, and so the ratio of the radioactive element to its decay products shows how long ago the radioactive element was incorporated into the rock. Radioactive elements are common only in rocks with a volcanic origin, and so the only fossil-bearing rocks that can be dated radiometrically are volcanic ash layers, which may provide termini for the intervening sediments.
Stratigraphy.
Consequently, palaeontologists rely on stratigraphy to date fossils. Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the "layer-cake" that is the sedimentary record. Rocks normally form relatively horizontal layers, with each layer younger than the one underneath it. If a fossil is found between two layers whose ages are known, the fossil's age is claimed to lie between the two known ages. Because rock sequences are not continuous, but may be broken up by faults or periods of erosion, it is very difficult to match up rock beds that are not directly adjacent. However, fossils of species that survived for a relatively short time can be used to match isolated rocks: this technique is called "biostratigraphy". For instance, the conodont "Eoplacognathus pseudoplanus" has a short range in the Middle Ordovician period. If rocks of unknown age have traces of "E. pseudoplanus", they have a mid-Ordovician age. Such index fossils must be distinctive, be globally distributed and occupy a short time range to be useful. Misleading results are produced if the index fossils are incorrectly dated. Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy can in general provide only relative dating ("A" was before "B"), which is often sufficient for studying evolution. However, this is difficult for some time periods, because of the problems involved in matching rocks of the same age across continents. Family-tree relationships also help to narrow down the date when lineages first appeared. For instance, if fossils of B or C date to X million years ago and the calculated "family tree" says A was an ancestor of B and C, then A must have evolved earlier.
It is also possible to estimate how long ago two living clades diverged, in other words approximately how long ago their last common ancestor must have lived, by assuming that DNA mutations accumulate at a constant rate. These "molecular clocks", however, are fallible, and provide only approximate timing: for example, they are not sufficiently precise and reliable for estimating when the groups that feature in the Cambrian explosion first evolved, and estimates produced by different techniques may vary by a factor of two.
Limitations.
Organisms are only rarely preserved as fossils in the best of circumstances, and only a fraction of such fossils have been discovered. This is illustrated by the fact that the number of species known through the fossil record is less than 5% of the number of known living species, suggesting that the number of species known through fossils must be far less than 1% of all the species that have ever lived. Because of the specialized and rare circumstances required for a biological structure to fossilize, only a small percentage of life-forms can be expected to be represented in discoveries, and each discovery represents only a snapshot of the process of evolution. The transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, which will never demonstrate an exact half-way point.
The fossil record is strongly biased toward organisms with hard-parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little to no role. It is replete with the mollusks, the vertebrates, the echinoderms, the brachiopods and some groups of arthropods.
Sites.
Lagerstätten.
Fossil sites with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues—are known as Lagerstätten—German for "storage places". These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus slowing decomposition. Lagerstätten span geological time from the Cambrian period to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates, the Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, and the Carboniferous Mazon Creek localities.
Stromatolites.
Stromatolites are layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria. Stromatolites provide some of the most ancient fossil records of life on Earth, dating back more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Stromatolites were much more abundant in Precambrian times. While older, Archean fossil remains are presumed to be colonies of cyanobacteria, younger (that is, Proterozoic) fossils may be primordial forms of the eukaryote chlorophytes (that is, green algae). One genus of stromatolite very common in the geologic record is "Collenia". The earliest stromatolite of confirmed microbial origin dates to 2.724 billion years ago.
A 2009 discovery provides strong evidence of microbial stromatolites extending as far back as 3.45 billion years ago.
Stromatolites are a major constituent of the fossil record for life's first 3.5 billion years, peaking about 1.25 billion years ago. They subsequently declined in abundance and diversity, which by the start of the Cambrian had fallen to 20% of their peak. The most widely supported explanation is that stromatolite builders fell victims to grazing creatures (the Cambrian substrate revolution), implying that sufficiently complex organisms were common over 1 billion years ago.
The connection between grazer and stromatolite abundance is well documented in the younger Ordovician evolutionary radiation; stromatolite abundance also increased after the end-Ordovician and end-Permian extinctions decimated marine animals, falling back to earlier levels as marine animals recovered. Fluctuations in metazoan population and diversity may not have been the only factor in the reduction in stromatolite abundance. Factors such as the chemistry of the environment may have been responsible for changes.
While prokaryotic cyanobacteria themselves reproduce asexually through cell division, they were instrumental in priming the environment for the evolutionary development of more complex eukaryotic organisms. Cyanobacteria (as well as extremophile Gammaproteobacteria) are thought to be largely responsible for increasing the amount of oxygen in the primeval earth's atmosphere through their continuing photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to create their food. A layer of mucus often forms over mats of cyanobacterial cells. In modern microbial mats, debris from the surrounding habitat can become trapped within the mucus, which can be cemented by the calcium carbonate to grow thin laminations of limestone. These laminations can accrete over time, resulting in the banded pattern common to stromatolites. The domal morphology of biological stromatolites is the result of the vertical growth necessary for the continued infiltration of sunlight to the organisms for photosynthesis. Layered spherical growth structures termed oncolites are similar to stromatolites and are also known from the fossil record. Thrombolites are poorly laminated or non-laminated clotted structures formed by cyanobacteria common in the fossil record and in modern sediments.
The Zebra River Canyon area of the Kubis platform in the deeply dissected Zaris Mountains of southwestern Namibia provides an extremely well exposed example of the thrombolite-stromatolite-metazoan reefs that developed during the Proterozoic period, the stromatolites here being better developed in updip locations under conditions of higher current velocities and greater sediment influx.
Astrobiology.
It has been suggested that biominerals could be important indicators of extraterrestrial life and thus could play an important role in the search for past or present life on the planet Mars. Furthermore, organic components (biosignatures) that are often associated with biominerals are believed to play crucial roles in both pre-biotic and biotic reactions.
On 24 January 2014, NASA reported that current studies by the "Curiosity" and "Opportunity" rovers on Mars will now be searching for evidence of ancient life, including a biosphere based on autotrophic, chemotrophic and/or chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, as well as ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments (plains related to ancient rivers or lakes) that may have been habitable. The search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic carbon on the planet Mars is now a primary NASA objective.
Pseudofossils.
"Pseudofossils" are visual patterns in rocks that are produced by geologic processes rather than biologic processes. They can easily be mistaken for real fossils. Some pseudofossils, such as geological dendrite crystals, are formed by naturally occurring fissures in the rock that get filled up by percolating minerals. Other types of pseudofossils are kidney ore (round shapes in iron ore) and moss agates, which look like moss or plant leaves. Concretions, spherical or ovoid-shaped nodules found in some sedimentary strata, were once thought to be dinosaur eggs, and are often mistaken for fossils as well.
History of the study of fossils.
Gathering fossils dates at least to the beginning of recorded history. The fossils themselves are referred to as the fossil record. The fossil record was one of the early sources of data underlying the study of evolution and continues to be relevant to the history of life on Earth. Paleontologists examine the fossil record to understand the process of evolution and the way particular species have evolved.
Ancient civilizations.
Fossils have been visible and common throughout most of natural history, and so documented human interaction with them goes back as far as recorded history, or earlier.
There are many examples of paleolithic stone knives in Europe, with fossil echinoderms set precisely at the hand grip, going all the way back to "Homo heidelbergensis" and Neanderthals. These ancient peoples also drilled holes through the center of those round fossil shells, apparently using them as beads for necklaces.
The ancient Egyptians gathered fossils of species that resembled the bones of modern species they worshipped. The god Set was associated with the hippopotamus, therefore fossilized bones of hippo-like species were kept in that deity's temples. Five-rayed fossil sea urchin shells were associated with the deity Sopdu, the Morning Star, equivalent of Venus in Roman mythology.
Fossils appear to have directly contributed to the mythology of many civilizations, including the ancient Greeks. Classical Greek historian Herodotos wrote of an area near Hyperborea where gryphons protected golden treasure. There was indeed gold mining in that approximate region, where beaked "Protoceratops" skulls were common as fossils.
A later Greek scholar, Aristotle, eventually realized that fossil seashells from rocks were similar to those found on the beach, indicating the fossils were once living animals. He had previously explained them in terms of vaporous exhalations, which Persian polymath Avicenna modified into the theory of petrifying fluids (). Recognition of fossil seashells as originating in the sea was built upon in the 14th century by Albert of Saxony, and accepted in some form by most naturalists by the 16th century.
Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote of "tongue stones", which he called glossopetra. These were fossil shark teeth, thought by some classical cultures to look like the tongues of people or snakes. He also wrote about the horns of Ammon, which are fossil ammonites, from whence the group of shelled octopus-cousins ultimately draws its modern name. Pliny also makes one of the earlier known references to toadstones, thought until the 18th century to be a magical cure for poison originating in the heads of toads, but which are fossil teeth from "Lepidotes", a Cretaceous ray-finned fish.
The Plains tribes of North America are thought to have similarly associated fossils, such as the many intact pterosaur fossils naturally exposed in the region, with their own mythology of the thunderbird.
There is no such direct mythological connection known from prehistoric Africa, but there is considerable evidence of tribes there excavating and moving fossils to ceremonial sites, apparently treating them with some reverence.
In Japan, fossil shark teeth were associated with the mythical tengu, thought to be the razor-sharp claws of the creature, documented some time after the 8th century AD.
In medieval China, the fossil bones of ancient mammals including "Homo erectus" were often mistaken for "dragon bones" and used as medicine and aphrodisiacs. In addition, some of these fossil bones are collected as "art" by scholars, who left scripts on various artifacts, indicating the time they were added to a collection. One good example is the famous scholar Huang Tingjian of the South Song Dynasty during the 11th century, who kept a specific seashell fossil with his own poem engraved on it. In the West fossilized sea creatures on mountainsides were seen as proof of the biblical deluge.
In 1027, the Persian Avicenna explained fossils' stoniness in "The Book of Healing":
From the 13th century to the present day, scholars pointed out that the fossil skulls of Deinotherium giganteum, found in Crete and Greece, might have been interpreted as being the skulls of the Cyclopes of Greek mythology, and are possibly the origin of that Greek myth. Their skulls appear to have a single eye-hole in the front, just like their modern elephant cousins, though in fact it's actually the opening for their trunk.
In Norse mythology, echinoderm shells (the round five-part button left over from a sea urchin) were associated with the god Thor, not only being incorporated in thunderstones, representations of Thor's hammer and subsequent hammer-shaped crosses as Christianity was adopted, but also kept in houses to garner Thor's protection.
These grew into the shepherd's crowns of English folklore, used for decoration and as good luck charms, placed by the doorway of homes and churches. In Suffolk, a different species was used as a good-luck charm by bakers, who referred to them as fairy loaves, associating them with the similarly shaped loaves of bread they baked.
Early modern explanations.
More scientific views of fossils emerged during the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci concurred with Aristotle's view that fossils were the remains of ancient life. For example, da Vinci noticed discrepancies with the biblical flood narrative as an explanation for fossil origins:
In 1666, Nicholas Steno examined a shark, and made the association of its teeth with the "tongue stones" of ancient Greco-Roman mythology, concluding that those were not in fact the tongues of venomous snakes, but the teeth of some long-extinct species of shark.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) included micrographs of fossils in his "Micrographia" and was among the first to observe fossil forams. His observations on fossils, which he stated to be the petrified remains of creatures some of which no longer existed, were published posthumously in 1705.
William Smith (1769–1839), an English canal engineer, observed that rocks of different ages (based on the law of superposition) preserved different assemblages of fossils, and that these assemblages succeeded one another in a regular and determinable order. He observed that rocks from distant locations could be correlated based on the fossils they contained. He termed this the principle of "faunal succession". This principle became one of Darwin's chief pieces of evidence that biological evolution was real.
Georges Cuvier came to believe that most if not all the animal fossils he examined were remains of extinct species. This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants he said:
Interest in fossils, and geology more generally, expanded during the early nineteenth century. In Britain, Mary Anning's discoveries of fossils, including the first complete ichthyosaur and a complete plesiosaurus skeleton, sparked both public and scholarly interest.
Linnaeus and Darwin.
Early naturalists well understood the similarities and differences of living species leading Linnaeus to develop a hierarchical classification system still in use today. Darwin and his contemporaries first linked the hierarchical structure of the tree of life with the then very sparse fossil record. Darwin eloquently described a process of descent with modification, or evolution, whereby organisms either adapt to natural and changing environmental pressures, or they perish.
When Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", the oldest animal fossils were those from the Cambrian Period, now known to be about 540 million years old. He worried about the absence of older fossils because of the implications on the validity of his theories, but he expressed hope that such fossils would be found, noting that: "only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy." Darwin also pondered the sudden appearance of many groups (i.e. phyla) in the oldest known Cambrian fossiliferous strata.
After Darwin.
Since Darwin's time, the fossil record has been extended to between 2.3 and 3.5 billion years. Most of these Precambrian fossils are microscopic bacteria or microfossils. However, macroscopic fossils are now known from the late Proterozoic. The Ediacara biota (also called Vendian biota) dating from 575 million years ago collectively constitutes a richly diverse assembly of early multicellular eukaryotes.
The fossil record and faunal succession form the basis of the science of biostratigraphy or determining the age of rocks based on embedded fossils. For the first 150 years of geology, biostratigraphy and superposition were the only means for determining the relative age of rocks. The geologic time scale was developed based on the relative ages of rock strata as determined by the early paleontologists and stratigraphers.
Since the early years of the twentieth century, absolute dating methods, such as radiometric dating (including potassium/argon, argon/argon, uranium series, and, for very recent fossils, radiocarbon dating) have been used to verify the relative ages obtained by fossils and to provide absolute ages for many fossils. Radiometric dating has shown that the earliest known stromatolites are over 3.4 billion years old.
Modern era.
Paleontology has joined with evolutionary biology to share the interdisciplinary task of outlining the tree of life, which inevitably leads backwards in time to Precambrian microscopic life when cell structure and functions evolved. Earth's deep time in the Proterozoic and deeper still in the Archean is only "recounted by microscopic fossils and subtle chemical signals." Molecular biologists, using phylogenetics, can compare protein amino acid or nucleotide sequence homology (i.e., similarity) to evaluate taxonomy and evolutionary distances among organisms, with limited statistical confidence. The study of fossils, on the other hand, can more specifically pinpoint when and in what organism a mutation first appeared. Phylogenetics and paleontology work together in the clarification of science's still dim view of the appearance of life and its evolution.
Niles Eldredge's study of the "Phacops" trilobite genus supported the hypothesis that modifications to the arrangement of the trilobite's eye lenses proceeded by fits and starts over millions of years during the Devonian. Eldredge's interpretation of the "Phacops" fossil record was that the aftermaths of the lens changes, but not the rapidly occurring evolutionary process, were fossilized. This and other data led Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to publish their seminal paper on punctuated equilibrium in 1971.
Synchrotron X-ray tomographic analysis of early Cambrian bilaterian embryonic microfossils yielded new insights of metazoan evolution at its earliest stages. The tomography technique provides previously unattainable three-dimensional resolution at the limits of fossilization. Fossils of two enigmatic bilaterians, the worm-like "Markuelia" and a putative, primitive protostome, "Pseudooides", provide a peek at germ layer embryonic development. These 543-million-year-old embryos support the emergence of some aspects of arthropod development earlier than previously thought in the late Proterozoic. The preserved embryos from China and Siberia underwent rapid diagenetic phosphatization resulting in exquisite preservation, including cell structures. This research is a notable example of how knowledge encoded by the fossil record continues to contribute otherwise unattainable information on the emergence and development of life on Earth. For example, the research suggests "Markuelia" has closest affinity to priapulid worms, and is adjacent to the evolutionary branching of Priapulida, Nematoda and Arthropoda.
Trading and collecting.
Fossil trading is the practice of buying and selling fossils. This is many times done illegally with artifacts stolen from research sites, costing many important scientific specimens each year. The problem is quite pronounced in China, where many specimens have been stolen.
Fossil collecting (sometimes, in a non-scientific sense, fossil hunting) is the collection of fossils for scientific study, hobby, or profit. Fossil collecting, as practiced by amateurs, is the predecessor of modern paleontology and many still collect fossils and study fossils as amateurs. Professionals and amateurs alike collect fossils for their scientific value.
Fossils as medicine.
These is some medicinal and preventive use for some fossils. Largely the use of fossils as medicine is a matter of placebo effect. However, the consumption of certain fossils has been proven to help against stomach acidity and mineral depletion. The use of fossils to address health issues is rooted in traditional medicine and include the use of fossils as talismans. The specific fossil to use to alleviate or cure an illness is often based on its resemblance of the fossils and the symptoms or affected organ. The use dinosaur bones as "dragon bones" has persisted in Traditional Chinese medicine into modern times, with Mid Cretaceous dinosaur bones being used for the purpose in Ruyang County during the early 21st century.


Cian Formation

The Cian Formation is a geologic formation in France. It preserves fossils dating back to the Permian period.