Mary Anning Timeline

The notoriety of the ichthyosaur find increased when Sir Everard Home wrote a series of six papers, starting in 1814, describing it for the Royal Society, without crediting Anning.

Image source: Everard Home

Perplexed by the creature, Home kept changing his classification, finally reasoning in 1819 it might be an intermediate form between salamanders and lizards, proposing to name it Proteo-Saurus.

Charles Konig purchased the ichthyosaur skeleton for the British Museum in 1819. The skull is still held by the Natural History Museum in London, but the rest of the skeleton's location is unknown.

Image source: Natural History Museum, London

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De la Beche, both members of the Geological Society of London, collaborated on a paper analysing in detail the specimens found by Anning and others, also naming and describing the genus Plesiosaurus.

Image source: William Conybeare (geologist)

When Conybeare presented his analysis of plesiosaur anatomy to the Geological Society in 1824, he again failed to mention Anning by name, even though she had possibly collected both skeletons and made his presentation sketch.

It was to Buckland that 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.

Image source: Coprolite

Anning had found the first British example of a pterosaur in 1828, displayed at the British Museum as a flying dragon. In 1829 William Buckland described it as Pterodactylus macronyx (later renamed Dimorphodon macronyx by Owen), and unusually credited Anning with the discovery.

Image source: Dimorphodon

After further investigation and comparison with similar fossils found elsewhere, Buckland published the conclusion in 1829 that the stones were fossilised dung, naming them coprolites.

Charlotte Murchison helped Anning build her network of customers throughout Europe, and Anning stayed with the Murchisons when she visited London in 1829.

Image source: Charlotte Murchison

The Swiss palaeontologist Louis Agassiz visited Lyme Regis in 1834 and worked with Anning to obtain and study fish fossils found in the region, grateful for the help the women gave him examining specimens.

Image source: Louis Agassiz

As time passed, Anning's confidence grew, and in 1839 she wrote to the Magazine of Natural History questioning a claim that a recently discovered Hybodus fossil represented a new genus, since she had long known of sharks with straight and hooked teeth. This extract was the only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime.

In 1839 Buckland, Conybeare and Richard Owen visited Lyme together so that Anning could lead them all on a fossil-collecting excursion, showing the respect she commanded among leading geologists.

Image source: William Buckland

King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony visited her shop in 1844 and purchased an ichthyosaur skeleton for his extensive natural history collection, evidence of her international reputation.

Image source: Frederick Augustus II of Saxony

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 — honours normally accorded only to fellows, as women were not admitted until 1904.

Image source: Dorset Museum

Anning died from breast cancer at the age of 47 on 9 March 1847 in Lyme Regis. After her death, her unusual life story attracted increasing interest.

Members of the Geological Society contributed to a stained-glass window in Anning's memory, unveiled in 1850, honouring her contributions to science.

Image source: Lyme Regis

An anonymous article about Anning's life was published in February 1865 in Charles Dickens's literary magazine All the Year Round. Long attributed to Dickens himself, historians in 2014 determined Fagan had largely plagiarised it from Henry Rowland Brown's guidebook.

Image source: All the Year Round

In 1902, the Lyme Regis Museum was built on the site of Anning's former home, commemorating her connection to the town where she made her discoveries.

Beginning with H. A. Forde's The Heroine of Lyme Regis: The Story of Mary Anning the Celebrated Geologist (1925), a number of writers throughout the 20th century saw Anning's life as inspirational.

Anning has been referenced in several historical novels, most notably in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles, who was critical that no British scientist had named a species after her in her lifetime.

Image source: The French Lieutenant's Woman

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 in period costumes) used around its display cases.

In 2009, Tracy Chevalier wrote a historical novel entitled Remarkable Creatures, in which Anning and Elizabeth Philpot were the main characters, bringing her story to a wide readership.

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.

Image source: Royal Society

In 2012, the plesiosaur genus Anningasaura was named after Anning, and in 2015 the species Ichthyosaurus anningae was also named in her honour, partially remedying the lack of species named for her during her lifetime.

Image source: Anningasaura

The 2020 film Ammonite, directed by Francis Lee and based on segments of Anning's life and legacy, premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.

Image source: Ammonite (film)

In 2021, the Royal Mint issued sets of commemorative fifty pence coins called The Mary Anning Collection, designed by palaeoartist Bob Nicholls, minted in acknowledgement of her lack of recognition as one of Britain's greatest fossil hunters.

Image source: Mary Anning

Following the 'Mary Anning Rocks' campaign begun in August 2018 by schoolgirl Evie Swire, sculptor Denise Dutton produced a statue, which Professor Alice Roberts and Swire unveiled on 21 May 2022, the 223rd anniversary of Anning's birth.

Image source: Statue of Mary Anning

In March 2024, the Royal Mail issued a set of four stamps celebrating Mary Anning and her discoveries, further cementing her legacy.

In May 2024, a book that once belonged to Anning — Miller's Natural History of the Crinoidea, stolen between 1946 and 1979 and bought by Museums Victoria in 1985 — was returned to the museum in Lyme Regis from Australia on her 225th birthday.