THE ULTIMATE
On this day, May 21st 1799, Mary Anning the pioneering fossil hunter was born.
Lyme Regis is famous for its Fossils, and Mary Anning was the pioneering female fossil hunter - the 'Princess of Paleontology', 1799 - 1847. She discovered the first ichthyosaur (aged 12), first plesiosaur and first British pterosaur. Her range of scientific discoveries did not gain her the credit they deserved, in the male dominated scientific community at the time. She took on the family fossil business, selling samples to the King of Saxony, and for display at the forerunner to the New York Academy of Sciences, the Lyceum of Natural History. She is buried in St. Michael's church, where there is a window dedicated to her. In 2010 the Royal Society placed her in a list of the ten British women who had most influenced science. Find out more: Video from the Smithsonian, the US museum in Washington DC, featuring David Attenborough as he visits the Natural History Museum in London, where you can see some of Mary Anning's finds in London: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/prolific-princess-of-paleontology-mary-anning/ Two Videos from the BBC on Mary Anning's life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNOh-85_Dmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEbgTpdwRgI
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It's called the 'Crazy Beast' and for good reason, it was a reasonably large, well bigger than a mouse or rat sized mammal, that lived amongst the last of the dinosaurs!
At around the size of a cat, and would have burrowed like a badger - which was probably how it escaped the dinosaurs to survive, or at least escaped the carnivorous ones. The 66 million year old fossil, was discoverd in Madagascar, and from a time when Madagascar had already broken away as an island. As the fossil breaks a lot of the known rule about mammals at this time it hasbeen called the 'Crazy Beast'! See more on the BBC at... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52465584 |
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