The Dragon in the Cliff (18 page)

But I did not disapprove. I was excited by what the Reverend Buckland was saying, exhilarated to find that I am not the only one who has seen these things and not the only one to have such questions. The Reverend Buckland is a respected, learned gentleman, a man of God, and yet he is troubled by the same questions that trouble me.

I cannot give up hunting fossils, not now. I want to find fossils for him and for those like him, who are trying to read the record of the world's history. I want to be numbered among those who are working to uncover the mystery of the earth and life on it, even if my part is a small one. It is a noble endeavor, and I must be part of it. Of course, I did not say anything about this to him or to anyone else. It is a private resolve.

After tea was served, we all trooped back into the drawing room to continue our talk. I was anxious as I saw Henry approach me, not quite knowing what I would say, but he soon put me at my ease. “Did I give a fair representation of your position, Miss Anning?” he asked. The question was straightforward, but his eyes were laughing.

Perhaps he would never be the kind of companion I had wished he would be, but I realized that he was still my friend, a geological friend. And I am grateful to have such a friend. I nodded. “Yes. Thank you,” I said. “I certainly got myself into a pickle with Miss Mary, didn't I?”

He smiled at me. “It is an easy enough pickle to get into with people who don't understand anything about geology or science. I know I've been in a few myself.”

“Do you think it will ever change?” I asked.

His expression became earnest. “That people will be less ignorant and benighted? I don't know. But I have hope that as we continue to find evidence and to inform the public about our discoveries, science will prevail.”

“I do, too,” I said.

At that moment the Reverend Buckland broke into our conversation, saying, “I am determined to write to Home about the ribs and vertebrae you so kindly allowed me to study. The man needs to be set straight. He wrote in the
Transactions
that the mode of attachment of the ribs in the fossil animal is like those found in fishes, but he is wrong.”

“You might also write Home that there was no bony separation between the nostrils in the skull that Miss Anning found recently,” added Miss Elizabeth, who had just moved her chair to sit nearby.

“I think Home wrote that it was broken or missing,” Mr. South said, challenging her. I held my breath awaiting Miss Elizabeth's response.

“Yes, I think he did,” Miss Elizabeth replied mildly. “It was an easy error to fall into with only one example. But I have discussed the matter with Miss Anning, and now that there are two such heads available for study and neither shows any evidence of such a bony separation it seems entirely possible that the creature did not have one. I've looked into the matter and found that birds do not have such a separation between their nostrils. That seems significant to me.”

“Are you suggesting then, Miss Philpot, that the creature was related to the birds?” Mr. South asked sharply.

“I am suggesting no such thing, sir,” Miss Elizabeth replied, standing her ground. “Only that not all animals have such a bony separation. And that among those that do not, are the birds, which breathe air.”

Mr. South retreated from this battle into silence. I was pleased that Miss Elizabeth had not withered under his sharp attack and had held her ground, showing him that she was able to participate in real scientific debate. And I was touched that she had acknowleged me.

Mr. Johnson, who had been listening to all of this with interest, said that he also intended to write to Home to inform him of the newly found paddle that he had bought from me. He thinks Home is mistaken in believing the animal to be allied to fishes. It is, he believes, related to lizards, an extinct group of lizards that possessed paddles for swimming.

There was much discussion in the room about this proposal, which ended when Mr. Johnson said, “With all of us contributing evidence as it is found, the truth of the matter will soon be determined.”

“But someone must find the evidence first, and that is where you come in, Miss Anning,” the Reverend Buckland said to me with a gallant nod in my direction. “Your talents at uncovering the evidence are crucial to this enterprise.”

A compliment is a small thing, yet it is this remark that decided me. Some might call it vanity, but it is not the Reverend Buckland's flattery that has turned me around. It is the recognition that I really do have a role to play in the discovery. I had seen immediately that Henry was at home in such discussions as we had had at that tea party, but I had been mistaken in believing that I did not have a place there, too. Now I can see that I do. I cannot stop hunting fossils now while we are still trying to learn what it is I found in the cliffs. I know what I must do.

AN UNDERSTANDING

Reading over this account of my life, I can see that, from the beginning, my fate has been guided by fossils. They have been the center of my existence since the first time I went fossil hunting with Papa and Joseph, and even before. At first it might have been because Joseph was doing it that I wanted to hunt fossils, but soon enough it was the fossils themselves and the thrill of the hunt that held me. But even more than the fossils themselves, it was my fascination with their mystery that made me continue. And it has been this fascination that has sustained me through losses and hardships. It has even led to triumphs, small though they be. If ever Papa gave me anything it was this.

Mama maintained from the beginning that allowing me to go down to the beach to hunt fossils would make people talk, but that did not keep me from wanting to go. The name-calling and taunting at school did not cool my passion for the beach and the cliffs; nor did the hardships of earning our bread in this way. It was too late for me to turn back, even then when I was only a seven-year-old starting school. I was already captive to the strange stones, clues to unimaginable worlds that preceded our own. And in being so captivated I was made different from others; I could not fit in, would not fit in. I did work that my neighbors and friends thought strange for a girl; work that many did not approve of. And this work led me to wonder about things that they do not wonder about and to think thoughts that they do not think.

My work has brought me in contact with people from other classes who are as captivated as I am by fossils and the story they tell of a world prior to our own, but I have found that I do not belong among them either. The fossils are my livelihood, not just something to collect and study.

It is somewhere in between the two—the Lyme of my neighbors and the world of the geological gentry—that I must find a place for myself. It is not a place where others have stood before. But I will find it, and standing there, I will make room for others to stand, too.

EPILOGUE

Although there were other occasions when she despaired of her profession and spoke of finding some other occupation, Mary Anning continued hunting fossils to the end of her life. In 1816, Sir Everard Home published another paper in the
Transactions of the Philosophical Society
based on the paddle, the ribs, and the vertebrae that Mary Anning had found and sold to Mr. Johnson and the Reverend Buckland. As in the first account, Sir Home named the owners of the fossils and thanked them for their communications. Mary Anning is not mentioned. This pattern was repeated in the accounts that Sir Home published in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
in 1818 and 1819.

The discovery of posterior paddles showed that the fossil could not be any kind of fish, as Sir Home had first supposed it to be, but was an animal intermediate between a fish and a lizard. The only animal that he could find that was not a fish yet had similar vertebrae was the salamander, Proteus, and thus he named the fossil animal Proteosaurus in a paper he read in 1819. Charles Konig proposed that the animal be called ichthyosaur, or “fish lizard,” which is what it is called today.

Since that time it has been discovered that it bore its young live, had skin, not scales, and in many ways resembled a dolphin. It lived 180 million years ago.

In 1824, almost ten years after she found the first “small-headed” creature's bones, Mary Anning found the first complete skeleton of the plesiosaur, a long-necked creature that looked somewhat like a snake threaded through a turtle that lived alongside the ichthyosaur in the sea. She sold the fossil to the Duke of Buckingham for 150 guineas. He bought it on behalf of members of the Geological Society of London.

In 1828 she discovered the first British specimen of a pterosaur, or “winged lizard,” the gliding lizardlike creature that lived 160 to 180 million years ago. One or two fragments had been found before, but Mary Anning's specimen was nearly complete and allowed the Reverend Buckland to describe and name the creature. Mary Anning also discovered many small fossil marine creatures.

Though several scientists of the time used Mary Anning's finds to establish their own scientific reputations, she never received the recognition that she should have had. Species are usually named by the person who first describes them in the scientific literature. No one thought to name any of the creatures Mary Anning discovered in her honor. Instead, they were named for the people who bought them from her or for those who first described them in print. Even her discovery of the ichthyosaur was contested. After her death, her nephew, Charles Churchill Anning, wrote to Henry de la Beche that it was not Mary, but her brother Joseph who first discovered the ichthyosaur head in 1812. It is impossible to determine whether Charles Churchill Anning's assertion is true or whether it was an attempt to take credit away from Mary Anning when she was no longer able to defend herself. In any event, it was Mary Anning, and not Joseph, who was the fossilist.

Henry de la Beche's interest in geology was not a passing fancy. At the age of twenty-one, he became a member of the Geological Society of London, at that time the most important forum for discussions of geology and paleontology and for the presentation of new findings in Great Britain. He wrote many scientific papers and was the author of a popular text on geology. He founded the Geological Survey of Great Britain and was its first director. He remained on friendly terms with Mary Anning throughout her life.

When she died at the age of forty-seven, de la Beche, who was then President of the Geological Society, granted her the unique honor of reading the following obituary in the Society's annual notices. It is the only obituary ever accorded a non-member of the society.

I cannot close this notice of our losses by death without adverting to that of one, who though not placed among even the easier classes of society, but who had to earn her daily bread by her labor, yet contributed by her talents and untiring researches in no small degree to our knowledge of the great Enaliosaurians, and other forms of organic life entombed in the vicinity of Lyme Regis. Mary Anning was the daughter of Richard Anning, a cabinetmaker of that town, and was born in May, 1799
.

…
From her father, who appears to have been the first to collect and sell fossils in that neighborhood, she learnt to search for and obtain them. Her future life was dedicated to this pursuit by which she gained her livelihood; and there are those among us in this room who know well how to appreciate the skill she employed (from her knowledge of the various works as they appeared on the subject), in developing the remains of the many fine skeletons of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, which without her care would never have been presented to comparative anatomists in the uninjured form so desirable for their examination. The talents and good conduct of Mary Anning made her many friends; she received a small sum of money for her services, at the intercession of a member of this Society with Lord Melborne when that nobleman was premier. This, with some additional aid, was expended upon an annuity, and with it, the kind assistance of friends at Lyme Regis, and some little aid derived 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
.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Because there are so few known facts about Mary Anning, Sheila Cole decided that the truest way to tell her story was through fiction. She spent years researching the story, including living in England for a year. She walked along the beaches in Lyme Regis where Mary worked and read her day book in The British Museum in London. Even more than the scientific work, it was Mary Anning's character that intrigued Ms. Cole and inspired her to write.

Ms. Cole has written for both children and adults and has had articles published in many national magazines. Her most recent book for Lothrop is
When the Tide Is Low
. Married and the mother of two children, she lives in Solana Beach, CA.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Originally published by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard.

Copyright © 1991, 2005 by Sheila R. Cole

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3299-5

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