Tom Sharpe
@tomsharperocks
Geologist, expedition travel guide, author of The Fossil Woman A Life of Mary Anning, Dovecote Press, Nov 2020 (hb), July 2021. (pb). Patron Lyme Regis Museum.
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20-10-2020 08:02:52
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#MaryAnning was always seen with her little dog and had several during her life. She sketched one in her notes in the 1820s. Its death in a rockfall in 1833 was local news in Dorset. Its replacement, which she called 'Tray', appears in her famous portrait of 1842. #NationalPetDay
#OTD in 1821 The Geological Society, William Conybeare read his and Henry De la Beche's paper on a new fossil animal which they named #Plesiosaurus . The best specimens were in the collection of Col. Thomas Birch who may have bought them from #MaryAnning and her family.
#FossilFriday : a partial #ichthyosaur found by #MaryAnning in 1832 and sold to Thomas Hawkins. Natural History Museum bought his collection in 1834 but this was missing. He had sold it to another collector and instead sent the museum a plesiosaur which they later found was mostly plaster.
#OTD in 1819 anatomist Sir Everard Home read his 5th paper The Royal Society on the 'crocodile' fossils found by #MaryAnning and her family. He figured this skull, sold by them to Col. Thomas Birch and then purchased for Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris at the sale of Birch's collection in 1820.
In 1844 #MaryAnning told a visitor 'I am well-known throughout the whole of Europe' and indeed she was. Here, she and her discoveries of #coprolites and fossil #sepia are mentioned in Alexander von Humboldt's book, 'Kosmos', published in Stuttgart in 1845:
#FossilFriday : a fossil which #MaryAnning would have seen on the beach between Lyme Regis and Charmouth, the serpulid worm Vermicularia (now Rotularia) concava in fallen blocks of the Lower Cretaceous Upper Greensand from high on Black Ven. Described by James Sowerby in 1813.
Cambridge geologist #AdamSedgwick was born OTD in 1785 in Yorkshire. In Lyme Regis on 20 Sept 1820 he noted in his journal 'After breakfast purchase fossils of Miss Anning', suggesting that by then #MaryAnning had taken over running the family fossil shop from her mother.
Thanks to sleuthing by Oxford University Museum of Natural History researcher Sue Newell, we now know our Dapedium fossil is a Mary Anning specimen 😎🐟
AND! We recently collaborated with Royal Mail to put it on a stamp, modelled here by me & Librarian + Archivist extraordinaire Danielle Czerkaszyn
#FossilFriday
Just picked up Michael Taylor's new book. Great cover of Guerin's copy of Goldfuss' copy of De la Beche's #DuriaAntiquior . #MaryAnning is prominent in the index so that's where I'm headed first, obviously! Looking forward to seeing how her discoveries are treated in the narrative.
Great to see the colourful artwork and distinctive style of Heart's Romy Blümel on the cover of the new English Heritage handbook. She also designed the cover for my #MaryAnning biography, 'The Fossil Woman' published by Dovecote Press.
The first day cover of this week's new #MaryAnning #Stamps from Royal Mail Stamps has this appropriate and rather lovely Lyme Regis ammonite postmark.
A #plesiosaur which #MaryAnning discovered in 1830 and described as the most beautiful fossil she had ever seen is on one of the new #Stamps . Bought by Lord Cole, one of her richest clients, it can be seen in Natural History Museum which purchased Cole's collection in the early 1880s.
The #MaryAnning stamps feature an #ichthyosaur , of course, appropriately an example of Ichthyosaurus anningae, bought as Ichthyosaurus communis from Anning in the 1830s by what is now Natural History Museum. Great to see that its #coprolite just makes it onto the left side of the stamp.
