Mary Anning, Hidden Hero of History

A story of early Earth science in action! Mary Anning was a pioneering paleontologist and fossil hunter who reshaped our understanding of prehistoric life. Growing up by the seaside cliffs of Lyme Regis, England, she uncovered ancient creatures hidden in the rocks—like giant sea reptiles and even fossilized dinosaur poop! Her discoveries helped scientists understand that creatures could go extinct and that the Earth was much older than people once believed. Her work was often dismissed and she rarely received the credit she deserved. Today, she is known around the world as the unsung hero for the scientific study of life through fossils. 

Go to the episode webpage: https://jonincharacter.com/mary-anning/             

Get a free activity guide on Mary Anning: https://dorktalesstorytime.aweb.page/ep109freePDF 

If you enjoyed this story about Mary Anning, you may also enjoy learning about Evelyn Cheesman, another Earth Science’s hidden hero of history who observed, collected and catalogued previously undiscovered insects, reptiles, amphibians, and plants—over 70,000 of them: https://jonincharacter.com/evelyn-cheesman/ 

CREDITS: Hidden Heroes of History is a Jonincharacter production. Today’s story was written by Rebecca Cunningham, edited and produced by Molly Murphy and performed by Jonathan Cormur. Sound recording and production by Jermaine Hamilton at Pacific Grove Soundworks.

Chapters

• 2:01 Jonathan and Redge visit the Cliffs of Lore
• 2:02 Shrimp the Seagull's Nest of Curiosities!
• 4:24 Fossil Hunter Mary Anning's story begins
• 10:34 Mary Anning's ammonite discoveries
• 11:33 Mary Anning's ichthyosaur
• 15:29 Mary Anning's plesiosaur
• 16:43 Mary Anning's pterosaur and fossilized Dinosaur poop
• 19:09 Credits, how to contact Jonathan and Redge, theme song

Transcript

JONATHAN CORMUR: Hello Dork Squad. I'm Jonathan Cormur and you're listening to Dorktales Storytime, the podcast for kids and their pop culture-loving grown-ups, and this is an inspiring story about a hidden hero of history.

THEME SONG: It's a beautiful day for a story, adventure and glory, new friends and old ones too. It's an excellent day to get swept away in a tail, so let us regale you.

REDGE

Jonathan, get a picture of me with the Fanta-sea in the background. And please get my good side.

JONATHAN

Okay, Redge but I think every side is your good side.

REDGE

Oh, yes. Quite right, Jonathan! Let me just position myself so the water is in the background and…Ready. 

SFX Camera snap.

JONATHAN
 The photo looks great. Frameable. (sighs, taking it all in) Thanks for bringing me here, Redge. The smell of the ocean breeze, the views from up here. It’s all so … majestic.

REDGE
 The Cliffs of Lore are one of Once Upon a Time Land’s most popular tourist destinations. I can’t believe I haven’t brought you sooner. 

JONATHAN

Well, better late than never. I wanna get a souvenir to remember this day. 

REDGE

Excellent idea. Looks like there’s a stand over this way. Let’s have a look-see, shall we?

JONATHAN

Woah, the stuff here is so cool.

REDGE

Looks like a bunch of junk to me. Are these empty potato chip bags? Who would ever purchase this?

JONATHAN

I guess one hedgehog’s trash is another Jonathan’s treasure. Look at this. Seaglass, old books, and oh my gosh are these fossils?! I’ve gotta get one of these. But who do I pay?

SFX wings flapping.

SHRIMP

Mine! Mine!

REDGE/JONATHAN

Ah! 

REDGE

Mister Shrimp the Seagull, Poet Laureate of Once Upon a Time Land! You frightened us! Flying off the handle like that. 

SHRIMP

Sorry, Charlie. 

REDGE

Shrimp, you know my name is Reginald. 

SHRIMP

It’s an expression! 

JONATHAN

Shrimp, is this your stand here? 

SHRIMP 

You bet your barnacles. Welcome to Shrimp’s Nest of Curiosities! 

JONATHAN

It’s awesome. I love it! Take all my money.

SHRIMP

Why, thank you. As you know, I’ve spent my whole life collecting the most remarkable treasures at Biblio Beach and beyond. 

REDGE

Yes, I haven’t forgotten you swiping my sandwich last summer. 

SHRIMP

Hey, I gotta feed my family too! But anyway, one day I was reading this book and it hit me. I shouldn’t keep all of these collectibles to myself. I should sell them and help them find good homes. Where better to set up shop than the Cliffs of Lore? Tourists eat this stuff up.

REDGE

I wish I could’ve eaten my sandwich.

JONATHAN

What book inspired all of this? 

SHRIMP
 Read it and weep. The Life and Times of Mary Anning.

JONATHAN

Mary Anning? You mean the Mary Anning? Fossil collector and paleontologist, Mary Anning? 

SHRIMP

Oh, that’s right! She’s from your world, isn’t she Jonathan? Oh gully, do you know her?! 

JONATHAN

Well, I don’t know her personally. She lived over 100 years ago. But I’ve read about her too.

REDGE

In the event that someone didn’t know what a paleontologist was, how might you describe one?

JONATHAN

A paleontologist is a scientist who studies the fossils of plants and animals.

REDGE

Yes, good. And a fossil is … 

SHRIMP

The remains of plants or animals that lived a very, very long time ago. 

JONATHAN

Right! Those plants or animals were trapped in mud or rock and were preserved. Now, millions of years later, paleontologists like Mary Anning dig them up to learn about the past. 

SHRIMP

She is an icon. A true inspiration to hardworking collectors everywhere!

REDGE

She inspired you to sell empty potato chip bags? Hardly impressive.

JONATHAN

You know what this calls for? A Hidden Heroes of History story! 

(HHH trumpet sound) 

JONATHAN

Would you help me tell it, Shrimp? 

SHRIMP

It would be my honor!  (Shrimp clears his throat) Mary Anning was born on May 21, 1799 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. 

JONATHAN

A town that didn’t look too different from this spot. Giant cliffs jutting out of the Earth, and an ocean as vast as this one. 

SHRIMP

Mary was a remarkable girl. When she was 1-year-old, she was struck by lightning. 

REDGE

No! 

SHRIMP

Not to worry, Redge. Her parents were able to rush her home and revive her. She survived.

REDGE

A miracle.

JONATHAN

A miracle indeed. She was one heck of a survivor. She grew up to be whip-smart. She didn’t go to school like you and I did, but she did learn to read and write at a religious Sunday School, which was unusual for most girls at the time. Back then in England, only girls from wealthier families had the chance to go to school and learn the three R’s. 

REDGE

Reading, writing, and ruh… ruh… rutabagas?

SHRIMP

‘Rithmetic. Otherwise known as math.

REDGE

Ah, yes. Naturally.

JONATHAN

Even still, girls didn’t have nearly as much access to an education as boys did. And if a family didn’t have as much money like Mary’s? Well, their daughters didn’t get to go to school at all.

REDGE

That’s awful! And so unfair!

JONATHAN

It was. Thank goodness Mary was able to take those Sunday School classes. Her education really came in handy later on. But actually, let me back up. 

REDGE

Away from me? Am I stinky or something? 

JONATHAN

No, I mean in time. To about 250 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era– 

REDGE

Mesozoic era? I’m in more of my Fearless (Redge’s Version) era right now.

JONATHAN

Redge, the Mesozoic Era is the period when dinosaurs ruled the earth!

REDGE

Dinosaurs? This is getting good. Let me have a seat.

SHRIMP

All the way back then, most of the Earth was underwater, including the land that came to be known as Lyme Regis where Mary was born. 
 
 JONATHAN
 Giant sea dinosaurs ruled the seas. But over time, dinosaurs became extinct. 

That means they no longer exist. 

REDGE

Sad. But also good. I’ve seen that Steven Spielbird movie and I have no interest in co-existing with t-rexes. 

SHRIMP

They all went extinct and their bodies were buried under rock and sand. Their remains were preserved in clay which we now know as fossils. Like this one here. 

JONATHAN / REDGE

Ah! / Glorious! 

JONATHAN

This beauty is what paleontologists call an ammonite. 

REDGE

It looks like a beautiful swirly shell. 

SHRIMP

That’s what it is! But this shell is around 200 million years old. 

REDGE

That’s older than my grandmother–no, than my great-great grandmother Freida Hedgehog of Fairyquill.

SHRIMP

I’ve got news for you, Redge. This shell is older than anyone in your whole family tree.

JONATHAN
 That’s right. Humans didn’t exist then and neither did hedgehogs. 

REDGE

It’s hard to imagine a world without hedgehogs, the greatest creatures ever to exist.

SHRIMP

It is, isn’t it? Hey Jonathan, isn’t it true that Mary’s dad collected ammonites from the cliffs in Lyme Regis?
 
 JONATHAN
 That’s right, Shrimp. He was originally a cabinet maker, but he wasn’t making very much money, and the Anning family was struggling. He realized he could dig for fossils in the cliffs and sell them at a table in front of his house to tourists. He called them ‘curiosities’. 

REDGE

Like what you’re doing, Shrimp!

SHRIMP

Precisely. 

JONATHAN

Her dad would break open a clay rock with a chisel and it would reveal an ammonite just like this one. Except they didn’t have scientific terms for fossils back then, so he called ammonites ‘snakestones’.

REDGE

That’s clever. Because it looks like a snake coiled up.

JONATHAN
 Oh they had all kinds of fun names for fossils back then. Snakestones, angel wings, the devil’s toenail. 

SHRIMP

They sure were creative. 

JONATHAN

I’ll say. Mary’s dad taught her and her brother Joseph, how to work hard and be scrappy. Everyday he’d wake up early in the morning, dig for fossils, clean them up, and make little cabinets to display them in. 

REDGE

His cabinetry experience came in handy. 

SHRIMP

That’s right. And he taught Joseph and Mary how to do the same thing. He even gave Mary her own little pick-axe.

REDGE

Ooo – I want a pick-axe too, Jonathan. Please, can we get a pick-axe?

SHRIMP

I might have one here for you.  

JONATHAN

Eh! Ix-nay on the ick-pay axe-aye.

REDGE

What a beautiful language you’re speaking, Jonathan.

JONATHAN 

Thank you. Now back to Mary’s story. This is the part when things start to get sad. When Mary was 8 years old, Mary’s dad had an accident and passed away. 

REDGE

That must have been so hard for Mary.

JONATHAN

Yes, it really must have been. She truly loved her dad and he taught her everything she knew. Mary and her brother Joseph became responsible for earning money for the family. Joseph went and got a job and Mary started cleaning other people’s houses when she was only 11 years old. 

REDGE

Eleven!? She was meant to be playing and going to school at that age. 

SHRIMP

It was different times then and those times were hard. 

JONATHAN

But remember, Mary was a survivor. She was meant for something greater. There was a day that a storm came to town in Lyme Regis and after it broke, Mary went to visit the cliffs that reminded her of happy days with her father. When she got there she saw how the storm washed away the sand, rock, and stone and revealed all sorts of beautiful fossils. 

SHRIMP

She decided to go to the shore and collect some just like she did when her dad was alive. That’s when she found a beautiful ammonite or snakestone. 

JONATHAN

Well, wouldn’t you know it, a very well-dressed, fancy looking woman came right up to Mary and offered to buy it from her. It was enough money to feed Mary’s family and pay the rent for a week! 

REDGE

Amazing!

SHRIMP

Mary quit cleaning then and there and restarted the family business with a table like mine, selling treasures and fossils. 

REDGE

Yes, Mary! You go girl. 

JONATHAN

Her brother Joseph even started to help with finding the fossils. There was one morning when he found a fossil in the shape of what looked like a crocodile skull. It was four feet long! 

REDGE

Ah! No thank you.
 
 SHRIMP

Don’t worry. It wasn’t alive. And it didn’t have a body. 

REDGE

Oh, thank goodness.

JONATHAN

But they figured there must be a body somewhere. Mary spent an entire year looking for it. 

REDGE
 Sometimes I get distracted after five minutes of looking for my reading glasses. I can’t imagine looking for something for a whole year.

JONATHAN

Well, like I said, Mary was a hard worker and determined. After another storm which washed away some more rock, Mary found the creature’s different body parts. When she put the fossils all together, she realized it was 17 feet long! 

SHRIMP

For comparison, a giraffe is about 14-15 feet tall.

REDGE

Oh, that’s BIG.

SHRIMP

Yep. Someone purchased this curiosity from them for 23 pounds. 

JONATHAN

That was enough to pay for six months of food and rent. 

REDGE

Well done, Mary and Joseph. What did the rich person do with the fossils? 

SHRIMP

He turned around and donated it to William Bullock’s Museum, a museum in Liverpool, England that had art, fossils, and curiosities galore. 

JONATHAN

And Mary’s findings basically went viral. 

SHRIMP

That’s right. Thousands and thousands of people went to visit, but Mary had no idea.. She just worked and worked, trying to find more fossils and trying to survive. 

JONATHAN

Meanwhile, people all over the world were arguing about what to call this thing. They didn’t know how to categorize it. The word dinosaur hadn’t even been invented yet!

Most people at the time thought the Earth had only existed for 4,000 years, but they were looking at something that could be 250 million years old. It really upset a lot of people that Mary’s discovery went against everything they believed in. 

REDGE

That’s ridiculous. 

SHRIMP

Change can be hard for a lot of people, Redge. 

JONATHAN

They finally decided to call it an ichthyosaur.

REDGE

Icky-what-now? 

JONATHAN
 Ichthyosaur, also known as “Fish Lizard”. 

REDGE

How dare you. You’re a fish lizard. 

JONATHAN

No the Ichthyosaur is– never mind. 

SHRIMP

The point is I have one right here just behind this curtain. 

JONATHAN

Woah. That’s incredible, Shrimp!

REDGE

It looks like a giant dolphin with spiky teeth! This could be the ancestor of our dolphin friends Donna and Greta! 

JONATHAN

Maybe it is!

REDGE

Jonathan, remind me to alert them of this finding once this story is over. 

JONATHAN

You got it, Redge.

SHRIMP

Before Mary, no one had ever seen a creature like this. But again, because she was a girl and she wasn’t wealthy she hardly ever got the credit. Still, over the next few years, Mary kept working, and met people who had more money and more resources who helped her. 

JONATHAN

Including Henry de la Beche who lived in Lyme Regis and met Mary and Joseph when they were teenagers. Henry would go dig for fossils with them and grew up to become a world-renowned paleontologist. He got to join the Geological Society of London, which didn't admit women. And ultimately, he got to present a paper about Ichthyosauruses in which Mary was given absolutely no credit.

REDGE

How rude! 

SHRIMP

It was awful. But there was little Mary could do about it. So she just kept working. 

JONATHAN

Then at 23, she found some other really cool fossils. When she put them together, it looked like a giant strange-looking sea turtle.You couldn’t just take pictures of things at the time so Mary learned to draw the fossils she found. She drew this creature and her drawing made its way to the Geological Society. 

SHRIMP

People got upset again. They thought she made the whole thing up. 

PERSON 1

What a phony!

SHRIMP

They’d yell.

PERSON 2

The neck is super long and the head is only five inches? It’s way too weird looking to be real. 

REDGE

It really is hard for people to accept change. 

JONATHAN 

Truly. But over time people started to accept it as real because a man wrote a paper on it. That paper also never mentioned Mary. 

REDGE

I ought to find that paper and rip it up!

SHRIMP

It was a really unfair thing to not recognize Mary’s work. 

JONATHAN

You’re right, Shrimp. The turtle-looking dinosaur became known as the plesiosaur. 

REDGE

I’ve heard of those before. They are striking!

SHRIMP
 And she didn’t stop there! 

JONATHAN

She went on to find other amazing fossils like that of the pterosaurs, or “flying lizard”.

REDGE

Flying lizard? 

JONATHAN

Flying lizard. 
 
 SHRIMP
 She also found tiny fossil rocks inside the pelvises of bigger creatures. Care to take a guess what they were?

REDGE

Little tiny baby dinosaurs?

SHRIMP
 Nope. Fossilized poop!

REDGE
 Blegh. Disgusting. I’ve never pooped a day in my life.

JONATHAN

Everybody poops, Redge. Even ancient dinosaurs.

SHRIMP

Yeah, I poop on parked cars all the time! 

JONATHAN

Poop might seem like a silly thing to study but because of Mary, scientists learned more about what prehistoric creatures ate.

REDGE

Well, I guess that makes sense. Did she at least get credit for the poop?!

JONATHAN

Her name came up more and more but while her work was showing up in museums, Mary never even stepped foot in one. She never saw her discoveries displayed. By the time Mary was in her 40s, scientists finally started to accept the idea that creatures could go extinct and that they existed hundreds of millions of years ago. And a big reason they started to believe that was because of Mary’s findings.

SHRIMP
 And they finally invented the word dinosaur which means “terrible lizard.”

REDGE
 Terrible?! I’d call them terrific!

SHRIMP
 I think Mary thought they were terrific too. They changed her life. And because of that Mary changed the world. Unfortunately, Mary didn’t get to see how much she had changed the world. 

JONATHAN
 But today, she’s remembered as one of the most important fossil hunters of all time.

SHRIMP
 And now, museums proudly display her discoveries and give her the credit she deserves.

REDGE
 It’s about time! I have to say, I’m inspired. Maybe I’ll start a new hobby and become Redge the Fossil Finder! I could help you with your business, Shrimp. 

SHRIMP
 Oh I like the way you think! 

JONATHAN

Brilliant idea! 

SHRIMP

What should we call it? 

REDGE

Hmmm…Curios by the Cliffs!

JONATHAN

Fossil Finder Fellows!

SHRIMP

Gull & Hog’s Seaside Oddities! 

REDGE

Oooo I just can’t wait for this brand new adventure! 

JONATHAN CORMUR: This has been a Jonincharacter production. This Hidden Hero of History story was written by Rebecca Cunningham, edited and produced by Molly Murphy, and performed by Jonathan Cormur. Sound recording and production by Jermaine Hamilton at Pacific Grove Soundworks. We love hearing from you! Contact us at dorktalesstorytime@gmail.com or try our one-way text feature as a safe way to reach out. You can find even more ways to reach us in the show notes.

Now, go be the hero of your own story and we’ll see you next once-upon-a-time!

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