| 1811 |
After 1792, the French Revolution prevented the English gentry from travelling to Europe as they'd been wont to do. Instead, many of them began travelling tothe seaside town of Lyme Regis, in whose unstable cliffs fossils could be found - and were, by adventurous folk, but none so adventurous (and successful) as the Annings.
Mary Anning is famous for finding fossils while still a girl, but her mother and brother (and father before he died) were also excellent fossil hunters.
In 1811, Mary was 12 years old. Her brother Joseph dug up a 4-foot skull that would later be identified as an ichthyosaur, and a few months later Mary found the rest of the skeleton. Henry Hoste Henley of Sandringham, Norfolk, lord of the manor of Colway, near Lyme Regis, paid the family about 23 pounds for it, then sold it to William Bullock, a well-known collector who displayed it in London. It was sold at auction in May 1819 as "Crocodile in a Fossil State" to Charles Konig, of the British Museum, who had already suggested the name Ichthyosaurus for it, for 45 pounds and five shillings. |
