‹ The Hall of RecordsEntered into the record July 28, 2026
HISTORICAL RECORD · A DEMONSTRATIONFossils1799 to 1847

Filed under

A fossil seller at Lyme Regis, whose finds were supplied to the collectors and professors who wrote the papers. [A2]Rev. W. Buckland, "On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias at Lyme Regis" (from page 217) and "On the Discovery of Coprolites, or Fossil Faeces, in the Lias at Lyme Regis, and in other Formations", both read 6 February 1829, in Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, Volume 3. Full scanned text of the volume.Geological Society of London; scanned by the California Academy of Sciences Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archiveclass A · read 2026-07-28

Lifted off the plate

Autograph letter from Mary Anning describing the plesiosaurus discovery, headed by her own ink sketch of the skeleton scaled one inch to each foot.

[A8]Wellcome Collection, LondonCC BY 4.0read 2026-07-29Resized from 3083x4673 to 1451x2200 (long edge 2200, fit inside, no enlargement); converted JPEG to WebP at quality 80. No cropping, rotation, or tonal adjustment.Autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning; sketch of plesiosaurus. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

The record

The 1824 paper on the almost perfect Plesiosaurus names its owner, its professor and a neighbouring collector. It does not name the woman who dug it out. [A1]Rev. W. D. Conybeare, "On the Discovery of an almost perfect Skeleton of the Plesiosaurus", read 20 February 1824, in Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, Volume 1, Part the Second (London: printed by Richard Taylor, 1824), from page 381. Full scanned text of the volume, read and searched end to end for the absence claim.Geological Society of London; scanned by the California Academy of Sciences Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archiveclass A · read 2026-07-28

Mary Anning

Mary Anning searched, excavated and prepared fossil vertebrates from the Lias cliffs at Lyme Regis, and gained her livelihood by that work from childhood until her death in 1847. [A3]Sir Henry T. De la Beche, "Anniversary Address of the President", delivered at the Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848; the notice of Mary Anning at pages xxiv to xxv. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 4 (1848). Full scanned text of the volume.Geological Society of London; scanned by Smithsonian Libraries for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archiveclass A · read 2026-07-28

Works

What survives, and who holds it

Works

Works of record

Each work is listed with the institution that holds it and the rights statement that institution publishes, quoted as written.

Undated

Autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, with a sketch of the skeleton [A8]Autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning; sketch of plesiosaurus.Wellcome Collection, Londonclass A · read 2026-07-29

A letter in her own hand, held by the Wellcome Collection, headed by her ink drawing of the animal. The institution states no date for it, so none is stated here. It is licensed CC BY 4.0, and the credit line the licence requires is printed under the plate wherever it appears.

Held by
Wellcome Collection, London
Rights, as published
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

1811 to 1812

The ichthyosaur skeleton from the cliffs at Lyme Regis [A6]Marie-Claire Eylott, "Mary Anning: The unsung hero of fossil discovery", the Museum's own account of her life, the 1811 and 1812 ichthyosaur, the December 1823 plesiosaur, the December 1828 pterosaur, and the Geological Society's refusal to admit her.Natural History Museum, Londonclass A · read 2026-07-28

Her brother found the skull in the autumn of 1811; she found and excavated the five metre skeleton in November 1812. The Natural History Museum states that this was not the first ichthyosaur to be found, but the first to be scientifically studied and described in literature, and that her ichthyosaur is among the finds on display in its Fossil Marine Reptiles Gallery.

Held by
Natural History Museum, London
Rights, as published
The page carries one rights statement, in its footer, quoted verbatim: "The Trustees of The Natural History Museum, London", preceded by a copyright symbol. No licence permitting reuse is offered on the page, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that; nothing from this page is reproduced here beyond short quotation for citation.

1824

Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, holotype, NHMUK PV OR 22656 [A4]Specimen record NHMUK PV OR 22656: Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus Conybeare, 1824, holotype, collector Mary Anning, identifier William D. Conybeare, locality Lyme Regis, catalogue description "Mary Anning's plesiosaurus". Returned by the Collection specimens datastore.Natural History Museum, London, Data Portalclass A · read 2026-07-28

The Natural History Museum's specimen record carries the collector Mary Anning, the identifier William D. Conybeare, holotype status, the locality Lyme Regis, and the year 1824, the year the species was named. The description reads "Mary Anning's plesiosaurus". This is the skeleton the 1824 paper describes without naming her.

Held by
Natural History Museum, London, Data Portal
Rights, as published
The Data Portal records the licence of the Collection specimens dataset verbatim as "CC0-1.0". The specimen register image attached to this record carries "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" with the rights holder "The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London". The Museum's browser facing object page for this specimen sits behind a bot challenge, so the record was read at the Museum's own public API instead.

1829

Dimorphodon macronyx, holotype, NHMUK PV R 1034 [A5]Specimen records NHMUK PV R 1034 (Dimorphodon macronyx (Buckland, 1829), holotype, incomplete skeleton on slab, Church Cliffs, Lyme Regis, donor Mary Anning) and NHMUK PV R 1035 (same species, collector Mary Anning). Returned by the Collection specimens datastore.Natural History Museum, London, Data Portalclass A · read 2026-07-28

An incomplete skeleton on a slab from Church Cliffs, Lyme Regis, held by the Natural History Museum as the holotype of the species, with the naming authority recorded as Buckland, 1829 and the donor recorded as Mary Anning. A second Dimorphodon in the same collection, NHMUK PV R 1035, carries her name in the collector field.

Held by
Natural History Museum, London, Data Portal
Rights, as published
The Data Portal records the licence of the Collection specimens dataset verbatim as "CC0-1.0". The Museum's browser facing object page for this specimen sits behind a bot challenge, so the record was read at the Museum's own public API instead.

Record boundary

What the sources establish

Sources read
9
Primary or institutional
8
Distinct sources cited on this page
8
Works of record
4

Where the sources do not settle a question, this record does not answer it. Nothing above is inferred from anything else on the page.

What the record declines

That the tongue twister "She sells sea shells by the sea shore" is about her.

The record does not carry it. The attribution is folklore, and folklore is not a record: not one of the institutions that hold her specimens or printed her life connects the rhyme to her. [A6]Marie-Claire Eylott, "Mary Anning: The unsung hero of fossil discovery", the Museum's own account of her life, the 1811 and 1812 ichthyosaur, the December 1823 plesiosaur, the December 1828 pterosaur, and the Geological Society's refusal to admit her.Natural History Museum, Londonclass A · read 2026-07-28

Checked: The Natural History Museum's account of her life, Lyme Regis Museum's account of her life, and the Geological Society's printed notice of 1848 were read in full on 2026 07 28. None of the three mentions the rhyme at all.

That she discovered the first ichthyosaur ever found.

The Natural History Museum states the opposite in plain words: this was not the first ichthyosaur to be found, but the first to be scientifically studied and described in literature. The find also divides in two. Her brother Joseph found the skull in the autumn of 1811, and she found and excavated the rest of the skeleton the following November. [A6]Marie-Claire Eylott, "Mary Anning: The unsung hero of fossil discovery", the Museum's own account of her life, the 1811 and 1812 ichthyosaur, the December 1823 plesiosaur, the December 1828 pterosaur, and the Geological Society's refusal to admit her.Natural History Museum, Londonclass A · read 2026-07-28

Checked: The Museum's account of the 1811 and 1812 find, read on 2026 07 28. Lyme Regis Museum dates the same find to 1810 and 1811 and describes it as made with her brother, so the two institutions do not agree on the year. The record carries the disagreement rather than choosing a year.

That she was struck by lightning as a baby, and that the strike made her clever.

Half of this is in the record and half is not. The Geological Society's President told the Society in 1848 that on 19 August 1800, a child in arms sheltering under a tree during a thunderstorm, she survived the strike that killed her nurse and two other women, and "was by careful treatment revived, and found not to have sustained bodily injury". That account does not say the lightning struck her, and it attributes nothing about her mind to the storm. It attributes her learning to her father and to her reading. [A3]Sir Henry T. De la Beche, "Anniversary Address of the President", delivered at the Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848; the notice of Mary Anning at pages xxiv to xxv. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 4 (1848). Full scanned text of the volume.Geological Society of London; scanned by Smithsonian Libraries for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archiveclass A · read 2026-07-28

Checked: The passage at pages xxiv to xxv of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 4, read in full on 2026 07 28.

That she was a Fellow, or a member, of the Geological Society of London.

She was not, and no woman could be one while she lived. The year the bar came down is itself contested between the institutions that hold her work: the Natural History Museum gives 1908, Lyme Regis Museum gives 1904. Both fall long after 1847, so the only form the record states is the one they agree on. What the Society did do, on 18 February 1848, was have its President read her life and her work into the Anniversary Address printed in its Quarterly Journal. [A6]Marie-Claire Eylott, "Mary Anning: The unsung hero of fossil discovery", the Museum's own account of her life, the 1811 and 1812 ichthyosaur, the December 1823 plesiosaur, the December 1828 pterosaur, and the Geological Society's refusal to admit her.Natural History Museum, Londonclass A · read 2026-07-28

Checked: The Natural History Museum's statement that the Society did not allow women to become Fellows until 1908, and Lyme Regis Museum's statement that it did not admit women until 1904, both read on 2026 07 28, together with pages xxiv to xxv of the Quarterly Journal, Volume 4.

The record

Mary Anning has a source page.

The same renderer a customer's published page mounts, drawing the same facts this room holds the sources for. Everything below is its apparatus.

View the record →sourceofyou.com/mary-anning
One record, two views

The apparatus

What stands behind the record: the works and who holds them, the claims this record refuses, every source read and when, and the gate stack this figure passed before a page was compiled.

Sources

Sources

Class A is primary or institutional archival material. Class B is scholarly secondary work, cited with edition and page, and used only where class A could not be reached. Every source below was read at the URL given, on the date given.

  1. [A1]Class A

    Rev. W. D. Conybeare, "On the Discovery of an almost perfect Skeleton of the Plesiosaurus", read 20 February 1824, in Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, Volume 1, Part the Second (London: printed by Richard Taylor, 1824), from page 381. Full scanned text of the volume, read and searched end to end for the absence claim.

    Geological Society of London; scanned by the California Academy of Sciences Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archive

    https://archive.org/download/transactionsofge210geol/transactionsofge210geol_djvu.txtread 2026-07-28

    Quoted verbatim from the Biodiversity Heritage Library OAI record for item 111775, the same volume: "Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection." The Internet Archive item record for this scan carries no rights, licence or copyright status field of its own, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that.

  2. [A2]Class A

    Rev. W. Buckland, "On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias at Lyme Regis" (from page 217) and "On the Discovery of Coprolites, or Fossil Faeces, in the Lias at Lyme Regis, and in other Formations", both read 6 February 1829, in Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, Volume 3. Full scanned text of the volume.

    Geological Society of London; scanned by the California Academy of Sciences Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archive

    https://archive.org/download/transactionsofge23geol/transactionsofge23geol_djvu.txtread 2026-07-28

    The Internet Archive item record for this scan carries no rights, licence or copyright status field, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that. The Biodiversity Heritage Library states of the companion volume in the same scanned set: "Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection."

  3. [A3]Class A

    Sir Henry T. De la Beche, "Anniversary Address of the President", delivered at the Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848; the notice of Mary Anning at pages xxiv to xxv. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 4 (1848). Full scanned text of the volume.

    Geological Society of London; scanned by Smithsonian Libraries for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archive

    https://archive.org/download/quarterlyjournal41848geol/quarterlyjournal41848geol_djvu.txtread 2026-07-28

    The Internet Archive item record for this scan carries no rights, licence or copyright status field, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that. The volume was printed in London in 1848 and its author died in 1855, so it is out of copyright by date under any term.

  4. [A4]Class A

    Specimen record NHMUK PV OR 22656: Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus Conybeare, 1824, holotype, collector Mary Anning, identifier William D. Conybeare, locality Lyme Regis, catalogue description "Mary Anning's plesiosaurus". Returned by the Collection specimens datastore.

    Natural History Museum, London, Data Portal

    https://data.nhm.ac.uk/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb&q=22656&limit=5read 2026-07-28

    The Data Portal records the licence of the Collection specimens dataset verbatim as "CC0-1.0". The specimen register image attached to this record carries "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" with the rights holder "The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London". The Museum's browser facing object page for this specimen sits behind a bot challenge, so the record was read at the Museum's own public API instead.

  5. [A5]Class A

    Specimen records NHMUK PV R 1034 (Dimorphodon macronyx (Buckland, 1829), holotype, incomplete skeleton on slab, Church Cliffs, Lyme Regis, donor Mary Anning) and NHMUK PV R 1035 (same species, collector Mary Anning). Returned by the Collection specimens datastore.

    Natural History Museum, London, Data Portal

    https://data.nhm.ac.uk/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb&q=PV+R+1034&limit=3read 2026-07-28

    The Data Portal records the licence of the Collection specimens dataset verbatim as "CC0-1.0". The Museum's browser facing object page for this specimen sits behind a bot challenge, so the record was read at the Museum's own public API instead.

  6. [A6]Class A

    Marie-Claire Eylott, "Mary Anning: The unsung hero of fossil discovery", the Museum's own account of her life, the 1811 and 1812 ichthyosaur, the December 1823 plesiosaur, the December 1828 pterosaur, and the Geological Society's refusal to admit her.

    Natural History Museum, London

    https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/mary-anning-unsung-hero.htmlread 2026-07-28

    The page carries one rights statement, in its footer, quoted verbatim: "The Trustees of The Natural History Museum, London", preceded by a copyright symbol. No licence permitting reuse is offered on the page, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that; nothing from this page is reproduced here beyond short quotation for citation.

  7. [A7]Class A

    "Mary Anning", the museum's collections page on her story: the 1810 and 1811 ichthyosaur as this museum dates it, the 1823 plesiosaur, the 1828 pterodactylus, the annuity raised by members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of London, and the recording of her death by the Geological Society.

    Lyme Regis Museum (Lyme Regis (Philpot) Museum Trust Ltd)

    https://www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/mary-anning/read 2026-07-28

    The page carries one rights statement, in its footer, quoted verbatim: "Lyme Regis Museum, 2016-23", preceded by a copyright symbol. That notice covers the museum's page text and not the person or the facts; nothing from this page is reproduced here beyond short quotation for citation.

  8. [A8]Class A

    Autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning; sketch of plesiosaurus.

    Wellcome Collection, London

    https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cezbevj4read 2026-07-29

    Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  9. [B1]Class B

    Ross MacFarlane, "Mary Anning (1799-1847): Letters from Anning to Sir Henry Bunbury (1823)", chapter 31 of Wills, H., Harrison, S., Jones, E., Lawrence-Mackey, F., and Martin, R. (eds). 2023. Women in the History of Science: A sourcebook. The transcription of Wellcome Collection MS.8592/2, by the Wellcome Collection's own research engagement lead, used here only to corroborate a passage read at the manuscript image.

    UCL Press, London. UCL Press, 2023, chapter 31, pages 261 to 264; the passage quoted here at page 263.

    https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084155read 2026-07-29

    The book's copyright page states, verbatim: "This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0)." The attribution it requires is: "Wills, H., Harrison, S., Jones, E., Lawrence-Mackey, F., and Martin, R. (eds). 2023. Women in the History of Science: A sourcebook. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084155"

Clearance

How this record was cleared

Every record in the Hall passes the same gate stack before a page is compiled, and the result is published rather than merely filed.

Died
1847
Public domain basis
Every text quoted on this page was printed in London between 1824 and 1848 and is out of copyright by date under any term. The Biodiversity Heritage Library states of the Transactions volume carrying the 1824 paper: "Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection." The specimen facts quoted from the Natural History Museum Data Portal come from a dataset whose licence the portal records as "CC0-1.0". The two museum pages are quoted only in short citation form under their own footer notices.
Estate and licensing screen
Screened 2026 07 28. No enforcing estate, heir, foundation or licensing agent appears in any source consulted. She died in 1847 and her work is held and published by public institutions: the Natural History Museum publishes her specimen records openly under CC0, and Lyme Regis Museum publishes her life under its own page copyright, which covers that page's text and not the person. No approval or licence was required for anything on this page.
Trademark screen
Screened 2026 07 28, scoped to the sources consulted and no further. No trademark notice, registered mark or mark symbol attaches to the personal name on any of them: the Natural History Museum uses it unmarked in running text and for its Anning Rooms, and Lyme Regis Museum uses it unmarked throughout its collections pages. No national registry search was run from this environment, so the screen is a source screen and is reported as one.
Dignity screen
The rule applied here was: celebrate the record, never appropriate the wrong. Her exclusion from the Geological Society and her poverty are on the page as context, in the sources' own words, and neither is the hook and neither is a plaque. The argument of the page is her work: the cliffs, the specimens, the catalogue numbers that still carry her name, and the two papers, one that names her and one that does not. The Society's later acknowledgment, its President reading her life into the Anniversary Address of 18 February 1848, stands beside the 1824 silence, because the record holds both and telling only one would be a different kind of falsehood. Nothing here speaks in her voice: every quoted sentence belongs to someone else, printed in their own lifetime, with its citation attached.
Gate stack run
2026-07-28

The machine record

The structured representation this page is built from, printed field by field.

Every row below is a field of this figure's module, printed with its value and the citation key that settles it. Nothing here is summarised or inferred. It is shown as text for a reader: this page emits no machine-readable metadata, and it is excluded from the sitemap, from llms.txt, and from search indexes.

identity

slugmary-anning
handlemary-anning
nameMary Anning
disciplineFossils
entered2026-07-28
accent#2A4A55

claims

labelA fossil seller at Lyme Regis, whose finds were supplied to the collectors and professors who wrote the papers. [A2]
turnThe 1824 paper on the almost perfect Plesiosaurus names its owner, its professor and a neighbouring collector. It does not name the woman who dug it out. [A1]
lifespan1799 to 1847 [A3]
statementMary Anning searched, excavated and prepared fossil vertebrates from the Lias cliffs at Lyme Regis, and gained her livelihood by that work from childhood until her death in 1847. [A3]

story[7]

story[0]The Geological Society's own record of her, read to the Society in 1848, states that she was the daughter of a cabinet maker of Lyme Regis, that she was born in May 1799, and that from her father, who "appears to have been the first to collect and sell fossils in that neighbourhood, she learnt to search for and obtain them". [A3]
story[1]The Natural History Museum records that in the autumn of 1811, when she was twelve, her brother Joseph found a strange looking fossilised skull, and that about a year later, in November 1812, she searched for and painstakingly dug out the five metre skeleton beneath it. [A6]
story[2]In December 1823 she was the first to find a complete skeleton of a Plesiosaurus, a specimen so strange that rumours spread it was a fake, and Georges Cuvier disputed the find before further illustrations satisfied him it was real. [A6]
story[3]That skeleton is held today by the Natural History Museum as the holotype of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, catalogue number NHMUK PV OR 22656, with the collector recorded as Mary Anning and the identifier recorded as William D. Conybeare. [A4]
story[4]Conybeare's account of it was read to the Geological Society of London on 20 February 1824 and printed in the Society's Transactions, and the paper credits "the kind liberality of its possessor, the Duke of Buckingham", the investigation of "my friend Professor Buckland", and a comparative head "in possession of Miss Philpot", while the name Anning appears nowhere in it. [A1]
story[5]Five years later a paper read to the same Society opened by naming her: William Buckland wrote of the blue lias at Lyme Regis "in which so many specimens of Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus have been discovered by Miss Mary Anning, she has recently found the skeleton of an unknown species of that most rare and curious of all reptiles, the Pterodactyle". [A2]
story[6]She died at Lyme Regis on 9 March 1847, and at the Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848 the President of the Geological Society read an account of her life and work into his Anniversary Address, telling the room that there were those present "who know well how to appreciate the skill she employed". [A3]

schedule[8]

schedule[0] [A6]

span1811 to 1812
titleThe skull, and the skeleton under it
detailJoseph Anning found a fossilised skull in the cliffs in the autumn of 1811, when she was twelve. In November 1812 she searched out and dug the five metre skeleton it belonged to, a task that took several months. By 1820 the animal was recognised as an extinct marine reptile and named Ichthyosaurus.

schedule[1] [A6]

spanDecember 1823
titleThe first complete plesiosaur
detailShe was the first to discover the complete skeleton of a Plesiosaurus. The specimen was so unlike anything known that rumours spread it was a fake, and a special meeting on it was convened at the Geological Society of London.

schedule[2] [A1]

span20 February 1824
titleThe paper that names no finder
detail"On the Discovery of an almost perfect Skeleton of the Plesiosaurus" by the Rev. W. D. Conybeare was read to the Geological Society of London and printed in the Transactions, Second Series, Volume 1, Part the Second (London, 1824), from page 381. A full text search of the scanned volume returns the name Anning zero times.

schedule[3] [A6]

spanDecember 1828
titleThe winged one
detailShe uncovered a jumble of bones with a long tail and wings. These were the first remains attributed to a Dimorphodon, and the first pterosaur found anywhere outside Germany.

schedule[4] [A2]

span6 February 1829
titleThe paper that does name her
detailBuckland's "On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias at Lyme Regis" was read to the Geological Society and printed in the Transactions, Second Series, Volume 3, from page 217. Its opening sentence credits her by name. His companion paper of the same day credits skeletons supplied to collectors "by the skill and industry of Miss Mary Anning" and reports her own observations on coprolites as hers.

schedule[5] [A7]

spanNine years before her death
titleThe annuity
detailLyme Regis Museum records that she was given an annuity, an annual payment, raised by members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of London. Neither that account nor the Society's own 1848 notice states a year or an amount, so neither number is stated here.

schedule[6] [A3]

span9 March 1847
titleDeath at Lyme Regis
detailThe Geological Society's President recorded that with the annuity, the assistance of friends at Lyme Regis and what she could still earn from the sale of fossils when her health permitted, "she bore with fortitude the progress of a cancer on her breast, until she finally sunk beneath its ravages on the 9th of March, 1847".

schedule[7] [A3]

span18 February 1848
titleThe Society reads her into its record
detailAt the Annual General Meeting the President, Sir Henry T. De la Beche, closed his notice of the year's losses by death with an account of her life, her learning and her work, printed at pages xxiv to xxv of the Society's Quarterly Journal. No woman could be a Fellow of that Society in her lifetime.

figures[5]

figures[0] [A4]

labelNHMUK PV OR 22656
detailThe plesiosaur, held by the Natural History Museum as the holotype of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus. The catalogue records the collector as Mary Anning, the locality as Lyme Regis, and the description as "Mary Anning's plesiosaurus: a near complete and articulated skeleton including the skull preserved in dorsal view".

figures[1] [A5]

labelNHMUK PV R 1034
detailThe pterosaur, held by the Natural History Museum as the holotype of Dimorphodon macronyx, from Church Cliffs, Lyme Regis. The catalogue records the donor as Mary Anning.

figures[2] [A1]

label0
detailWord bounded occurrences of the name Anning in the full scanned text of the Transactions volume that carries the 1824 plesiosaur paper, counted on 2026 07 28.

figures[3] [A6]

label5 metres
detailThe length of the ichthyosaur skeleton she dug out of the cliffs at Lyme Regis across several months, as the Natural History Museum states it.

figures[4] [A3]

label2 pages
detailThe extent of the Geological Society's printed notice of her life, pages xxiv to xxv, read by its President at the Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848 and carried in the Society's Quarterly Journal, Volume 4.

works[4]

works[0] [A8]

titleAutograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, with a sketch of the skeleton
yearUndated
noteA letter in her own hand, held by the Wellcome Collection, headed by her ink drawing of the animal. The institution states no date for it, so none is stated here. It is licensed CC BY 4.0, and the credit line the licence requires is printed under the plate wherever it appears.
urlhttps://wellcomecollection.org/works/cezbevj4

works[1] [A6]

titleThe ichthyosaur skeleton from the cliffs at Lyme Regis
year1811 to 1812
noteHer brother found the skull in the autumn of 1811; she found and excavated the five metre skeleton in November 1812. The Natural History Museum states that this was not the first ichthyosaur to be found, but the first to be scientifically studied and described in literature, and that her ichthyosaur is among the finds on display in its Fossil Marine Reptiles Gallery.
urlhttps://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/mary-anning-unsung-hero.html

works[2] [A4]

titlePlesiosaurus dolichodeirus, holotype, NHMUK PV OR 22656
year1824
noteThe Natural History Museum's specimen record carries the collector Mary Anning, the identifier William D. Conybeare, holotype status, the locality Lyme Regis, and the year 1824, the year the species was named. The description reads "Mary Anning's plesiosaurus". This is the skeleton the 1824 paper describes without naming her.
urlhttps://data.nhm.ac.uk/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb&q=22656&limit=5

works[3] [A5]

titleDimorphodon macronyx, holotype, NHMUK PV R 1034
year1829
noteAn incomplete skeleton on a slab from Church Cliffs, Lyme Regis, held by the Natural History Museum as the holotype of the species, with the naming authority recorded as Buckland, 1829 and the donor recorded as Mary Anning. A second Dimorphodon in the same collection, NHMUK PV R 1035, carries her name in the collector field.
urlhttps://data.nhm.ac.uk/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb&q=PV+R+1034&limit=3

answers[5]

answers[0] [A1]

qDid the 1824 paper announcing the plesiosaur credit her?
aNo. It credits the specimen's possessor, the Duke of Buckingham, the professor who investigated it, Buckland, and a comparative head belonging to Miss Philpot. The name Anning does not appear in the paper, or anywhere in the volume that carries it.

answers[1] [A2]

qWas she ever named in the Geological Society's own Transactions?
aYes. Buckland's paper on the new pterodactyle, read on 6 February 1829, names her in its first sentence, and his companion paper of the same day credits specimens supplied to collectors "by the skill and industry of Miss Mary Anning" and reports her observations on coprolites as her own findings.

answers[2] [A3]

qWhat did she live on?
aThe sale of fossils. The Geological Society's President recorded in 1848 that she learnt the search from her father, the first in that neighbourhood to collect and sell fossils, and that her future life "was dedicated to this pursuit, by which she gained her livelihood".

answers[3] [A4]

qWhere can her work be seen, and under what numbers?
aAt the Natural History Museum in London. The plesiosaur is NHMUK PV OR 22656, holotype of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, with Mary Anning recorded as its collector in the Museum's own catalogue.

answers[4] [A3]

qHow did the Geological Society mark her death?
aAt its Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848 the President, Sir Henry T. De la Beche, closed the year's notice of losses by death with an account of her work on the Enalio-saurians and other fossil life near Lyme Regis, printed at pages xxiv to xxv of the Society's Quarterly Journal.

declines[4]

declines[0] [A6]

mythThat the tongue twister "She sells sea shells by the sea shore" is about her.
refusalThe record does not carry it. The attribution is folklore, and folklore is not a record: not one of the institutions that hold her specimens or printed her life connects the rhyme to her.
checkedThe Natural History Museum's account of her life, Lyme Regis Museum's account of her life, and the Geological Society's printed notice of 1848 were read in full on 2026 07 28. None of the three mentions the rhyme at all.

declines[1] [A6]

mythThat she discovered the first ichthyosaur ever found.
refusalThe Natural History Museum states the opposite in plain words: this was not the first ichthyosaur to be found, but the first to be scientifically studied and described in literature. The find also divides in two. Her brother Joseph found the skull in the autumn of 1811, and she found and excavated the rest of the skeleton the following November.
checkedThe Museum's account of the 1811 and 1812 find, read on 2026 07 28. Lyme Regis Museum dates the same find to 1810 and 1811 and describes it as made with her brother, so the two institutions do not agree on the year. The record carries the disagreement rather than choosing a year.

declines[2] [A3]

mythThat she was struck by lightning as a baby, and that the strike made her clever.
refusalHalf of this is in the record and half is not. The Geological Society's President told the Society in 1848 that on 19 August 1800, a child in arms sheltering under a tree during a thunderstorm, she survived the strike that killed her nurse and two other women, and "was by careful treatment revived, and found not to have sustained bodily injury". That account does not say the lightning struck her, and it attributes nothing about her mind to the storm. It attributes her learning to her father and to her reading.
checkedThe passage at pages xxiv to xxv of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 4, read in full on 2026 07 28.

declines[3] [A6]

mythThat she was a Fellow, or a member, of the Geological Society of London.
refusalShe was not, and no woman could be one while she lived. The year the bar came down is itself contested between the institutions that hold her work: the Natural History Museum gives 1908, Lyme Regis Museum gives 1904. Both fall long after 1847, so the only form the record states is the one they agree on. What the Society did do, on 18 February 1848, was have its President read her life and her work into the Anniversary Address printed in its Quarterly Journal.
checkedThe Natural History Museum's statement that the Society did not allow women to become Fellows until 1908, and Lyme Regis Museum's statement that it did not admit women until 1904, both read on 2026 07 28, together with pages xxiv to xxv of the Quarterly Journal, Volume 4.

sources[9]

sources.A1 [A1]

clsA
institutionGeological Society of London; scanned by the California Academy of Sciences Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archive
titleRev. W. D. Conybeare, "On the Discovery of an almost perfect Skeleton of the Plesiosaurus", read 20 February 1824, in Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, Volume 1, Part the Second (London: printed by Richard Taylor, 1824), from page 381. Full scanned text of the volume, read and searched end to end for the absence claim.
urlhttps://archive.org/download/transactionsofge210geol/transactionsofge210geol_djvu.txt
accessed2026-07-28
rightsQuoted verbatim from the Biodiversity Heritage Library OAI record for item 111775, the same volume: "Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection." The Internet Archive item record for this scan carries no rights, licence or copyright status field of its own, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that.

sources.A2 [A2]

clsA
institutionGeological Society of London; scanned by the California Academy of Sciences Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archive
titleRev. W. Buckland, "On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias at Lyme Regis" (from page 217) and "On the Discovery of Coprolites, or Fossil Faeces, in the Lias at Lyme Regis, and in other Formations", both read 6 February 1829, in Transactions of the Geological Society, Second Series, Volume 3. Full scanned text of the volume.
urlhttps://archive.org/download/transactionsofge23geol/transactionsofge23geol_djvu.txt
accessed2026-07-28
rightsThe Internet Archive item record for this scan carries no rights, licence or copyright status field, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that. The Biodiversity Heritage Library states of the companion volume in the same scanned set: "Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection."

sources.A3 [A3]

clsA
institutionGeological Society of London; scanned by Smithsonian Libraries for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, mirrored at the Internet Archive
titleSir Henry T. De la Beche, "Anniversary Address of the President", delivered at the Annual General Meeting of 18 February 1848; the notice of Mary Anning at pages xxiv to xxv. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 4 (1848). Full scanned text of the volume.
urlhttps://archive.org/download/quarterlyjournal41848geol/quarterlyjournal41848geol_djvu.txt
accessed2026-07-28
rightsThe Internet Archive item record for this scan carries no rights, licence or copyright status field, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that. The volume was printed in London in 1848 and its author died in 1855, so it is out of copyright by date under any term.

sources.A4 [A4]

clsA
institutionNatural History Museum, London, Data Portal
titleSpecimen record NHMUK PV OR 22656: Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus Conybeare, 1824, holotype, collector Mary Anning, identifier William D. Conybeare, locality Lyme Regis, catalogue description "Mary Anning's plesiosaurus". Returned by the Collection specimens datastore.
urlhttps://data.nhm.ac.uk/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb&q=22656&limit=5
accessed2026-07-28
rightsThe Data Portal records the licence of the Collection specimens dataset verbatim as "CC0-1.0". The specimen register image attached to this record carries "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" with the rights holder "The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London". The Museum's browser facing object page for this specimen sits behind a bot challenge, so the record was read at the Museum's own public API instead.

sources.A5 [A5]

clsA
institutionNatural History Museum, London, Data Portal
titleSpecimen records NHMUK PV R 1034 (Dimorphodon macronyx (Buckland, 1829), holotype, incomplete skeleton on slab, Church Cliffs, Lyme Regis, donor Mary Anning) and NHMUK PV R 1035 (same species, collector Mary Anning). Returned by the Collection specimens datastore.
urlhttps://data.nhm.ac.uk/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb&q=PV+R+1034&limit=3
accessed2026-07-28
rightsThe Data Portal records the licence of the Collection specimens dataset verbatim as "CC0-1.0". The Museum's browser facing object page for this specimen sits behind a bot challenge, so the record was read at the Museum's own public API instead.

sources.A6 [A6]

clsA
institutionNatural History Museum, London
titleMarie-Claire Eylott, "Mary Anning: The unsung hero of fossil discovery", the Museum's own account of her life, the 1811 and 1812 ichthyosaur, the December 1823 plesiosaur, the December 1828 pterosaur, and the Geological Society's refusal to admit her.
urlhttps://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/mary-anning-unsung-hero.html
accessed2026-07-28
rightsThe page carries one rights statement, in its footer, quoted verbatim: "The Trustees of The Natural History Museum, London", preceded by a copyright symbol. No licence permitting reuse is offered on the page, and that absence is recorded here as exactly that; nothing from this page is reproduced here beyond short quotation for citation.

sources.A7 [A7]

clsA
institutionLyme Regis Museum (Lyme Regis (Philpot) Museum Trust Ltd)
title"Mary Anning", the museum's collections page on her story: the 1810 and 1811 ichthyosaur as this museum dates it, the 1823 plesiosaur, the 1828 pterodactylus, the annuity raised by members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of London, and the recording of her death by the Geological Society.
urlhttps://www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/mary-anning/
accessed2026-07-28
rightsThe page carries one rights statement, in its footer, quoted verbatim: "Lyme Regis Museum, 2016-23", preceded by a copyright symbol. That notice covers the museum's page text and not the person or the facts; nothing from this page is reproduced here beyond short quotation for citation.

sources.A8 [A8]

clsA
institutionWellcome Collection, London
titleAutograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning; sketch of plesiosaurus.
urlhttps://wellcomecollection.org/works/cezbevj4
accessed2026-07-29
rightsLicence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

sources.B1 [B1]

clsB
institutionUCL Press, London
titleRoss MacFarlane, "Mary Anning (1799-1847): Letters from Anning to Sir Henry Bunbury (1823)", chapter 31 of Wills, H., Harrison, S., Jones, E., Lawrence-Mackey, F., and Martin, R. (eds). 2023. Women in the History of Science: A sourcebook. The transcription of Wellcome Collection MS.8592/2, by the Wellcome Collection's own research engagement lead, used here only to corroborate a passage read at the manuscript image.
urlhttps://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084155
accessed2026-07-29
rightsThe book's copyright page states, verbatim: "This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0)." The attribution it requires is: "Wills, H., Harrison, S., Jones, E., Lawrence-Mackey, F., and Martin, R. (eds). 2023. Women in the History of Science: A sourcebook. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084155"
editionUCL Press, 2023, chapter 31, pages 261 to 264; the passage quoted here at page 263.

clearance

died1847
diedSrcA3
pdBasisEvery text quoted on this page was printed in London between 1824 and 1848 and is out of copyright by date under any term. The Biodiversity Heritage Library states of the Transactions volume carrying the 1824 paper: "Public domain. The BHL considers that this work is no longer under copyright protection." The specimen facts quoted from the Natural History Museum Data Portal come from a dataset whose licence the portal records as "CC0-1.0". The two museum pages are quoted only in short citation form under their own footer notices.
estateScreened 2026 07 28. No enforcing estate, heir, foundation or licensing agent appears in any source consulted. She died in 1847 and her work is held and published by public institutions: the Natural History Museum publishes her specimen records openly under CC0, and Lyme Regis Museum publishes her life under its own page copyright, which covers that page's text and not the person. No approval or licence was required for anything on this page.
trademarkScreened 2026 07 28, scoped to the sources consulted and no further. No trademark notice, registered mark or mark symbol attaches to the personal name on any of them: the Natural History Museum uses it unmarked in running text and for its Anning Rooms, and Lyme Regis Museum uses it unmarked throughout its collections pages. No national registry search was run from this environment, so the screen is a source screen and is reported as one.
dignityThe rule applied here was: celebrate the record, never appropriate the wrong. Her exclusion from the Geological Society and her poverty are on the page as context, in the sources' own words, and neither is the hook and neither is a plaque. The argument of the page is her work: the cliffs, the specimens, the catalogue numbers that still carry her name, and the two papers, one that names her and one that does not. The Society's later acknowledgment, its President reading her life into the Anniversary Address of 18 February 1848, stands beside the 1824 silence, because the record holds both and telling only one would be a different kind of falsehood. Nothing here speaks in her voice: every quoted sentence belongs to someone else, printed in their own lifetime, with its citation attached.
checkedAt2026-07-28

HISTORICAL RECORD · A DEMONSTRATION

A demonstration record, compiled from public archives. Every line on this page carries its source. Mary Anning did not write it; the institutions cited here did.

Corrections are wanted, and they are treated the way a falsehood on any Source of You page is treated: they jump the queue. If a line here is wrong, or a source is misread, write to hello@sourceofyou.com and the page comes down while it is checked.