Great Minds: Mary Anning, "The Greatest Fossilist in the World"
Learn about Mary Anning, one of England's most important contributors to the field of paleontology. Hosted by: Hank Green ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help ...
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Mary Anning was born in 1799 to relatively poor parents on the southern coast of Britain. Their backyard ran into the cliffs at Lyme Regis, an area now renowned for its wealth of amazing Jurassic era fossils. Back then, fossil collecting was done by amateurs, sometimes as a hobby, other times for profit. But not, really, for science. It’s important to note that, when Anning began collecting fossils, the prevailing scientific theory is that they were just preserved remains of existing animals. The idea that an animal had ever gone extinct had been proposed, but wasn't widely accepted. Anning’s father, Richard, was a cabinet-maker, but he dabbled in fossil-collecting and passed that love on to his daughter. But when Mary was 11, her father died, so she and her mother and her brot...
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Mary Anning was born in 1799 to relatively poor parents on the southern coast of Britain. Their backyard ran into the cliffs at Lyme Regis, an area now renowned for its wealth of amazing Jurassic era fossils. Back then, fossil collecting was done by amateurs, sometimes as a hobby, other times for profit. But not, really, for science. It’s important to note that, when Anning began collecting fossils, the prevailing scientific theory is that they were just preserved remains of existing animals. The idea that an animal had ever gone extinct had been proposed, but wasn't widely accepted. Anning’s father, Richard, was a cabinet-maker, but he dabbled in fossil-collecting and passed that love on to his daughter. But when Mary was 11, her father died, so she and her mother and her brot...
