Mary Anning was an English fossil collector and self-taught paleontologist who made some of the most important fossil discoveries of the 19th century. Growing up poor in Lyme Regis, England, she began hunting fossils along the coastal cliffs as a child to help support her family. At just twelve years old, she found the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton, and she later discovered the first plesiosaur skeleton and the first British pterosaur fossil. Her discoveries helped shape early scientific understanding of prehistoric life, though as a woman, she was barred from joining the Geological Society of London and rarely received credit for her work during her lifetime.
