Mary Anning was an impoverished, self-taught fossil hunter whose remarkable discoveries paved the way for modern paleontology. Through her carefully documented finds, she expanded human knowledge ...

Her small dog, Tray, would have been skittering by her side. Self-taught paleontologist Mary Anning would search for fossils along the Dorset coast, accompanied by her dog, Tray. Photograph by ...

Mary Anning was a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector. Her lifetime was a constellation of firsts. Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, in the southwest English county of Dorset.

My name is Mary Anning, and just as fossils are forgotten for many years, so too was I. As a child I walked the seafront with my father and brother to find what we then called curiosities.

Palaeontologist Mary Anning found some of the first known fossils of ancient animals such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterosaurs, before the term “dinosaur” had been invented. Anning ...