Mary Anning's first great discovery was made shortly after her father's death when she was just twelve. In 1810 her bother Joseph found what he thought was a crocodile skull, but the rest of the animal was not in evidence. Mary kept searching and a year later a storm weathered away part of the cliff and exposed part of the rest of the skeleton of the 17 ft (5.2m) long creature, which she was able to dig out of the cliff and collect with a little help from local quarrymen. Anning later discovered three more species.