Mary Anning is a REALLY important figure in natural science. She's had museums and museum wings named after her, commemorative coins made in her honour, and even a biopic starring Kate Winslet. But for a long time she was actually a very obscure figure in British science and history! Come with us on a journey through time to learn all about the mother of palaeontology - her life, her family, her amazing discovery at the age of 12, and the amazing thing she learned about "bezoars"! And don't forget to stick around for more history facts - why not learn all about Charles Darwin, or Beatrix Potter?

1. She was a palaeontologist

Mary Anning was a pioneer in the field of palaentology, which is the study of life before the Holocene era (which started about 11,700 years ago). Palaeontologists study all sorts of life forms, including dinosaurs! Fossils are very important in this field. A fossil is the preserved remains of a life form, and they can be bones, shells, items preserved in amber, or impressions left in stone. Fossils have to be at least 10,000 years old, and the oldest known fossils are about 4 billion years old!

2. She lived from 1799 to 1847

Mary Anning was born in 1799 and she died in 1847. She was only 47 when she passed, but a lot happened in Britain in this time! Four monarchs sat on the throne - George III from 1760 to 1820, George IV from 1820 to 1830, William V from 1830 to 1837, and Queen Victoria from 1837! A lot of social and scientific change happened in this time period. The Industrial Revolution completely changed the world, and it is generally agreed to have taken place between 1760 and 1840. In fact, all branches of science were gaining momentum in Britain. The Enlightenment Period (1690 - 1820), where Western cultures focused on science and discovery, helped to promote a culture of learning - though Mary's own journey into palaeontology was quite difficult (more on that later!).

3. She was from Lyme Regis

Mary was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, and it is also where she died. Dorset was the perfect place for palaentology, as it is home to the Jurassic Coast. This is a 95-mile stretch of coast in Dorset and Devon, teeming with rocks, geological formations - and fossils! It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in some places you can't go for a walk without coming across a fossil!

4. Her family weren't wealthy

Britain was a wealthy global power by the time Mary was born, but that didn't mean everyone who lived there was wealthy. In fact, Mary's family were not very well off at all. She was one of ten children, and eight of Mary's siblings died as children - only she and her brother Joseph lived to adulthood. This wasn't unusual at the time. In the 19th century almost half of children died before the age of five because overcrowding, poor hygiene and unsafe housing caused disease and accidents. Mary's father worked as a cabinetmaker and carpenter - an important job, but it didn't pay very well. He had a side hustle finding shells and fossils, and selling them to tourists. Mary didn't receive a formal education because her family couldn't afford it - attending school wasn't compulsory at this time, so poor children usually worked. She did attend Sunday school at her Congregationalist church, where she learned to read and write. She was very clever though, and was almost entirely self-taught in science and geology!

5. She was almost struck by lightning!

As a baby, Mary had a terrifying brush with death! Mary's neighbour, Elizabeth Haskings, was watching a local equestrian show with two other women, and holding 15-month-old Mary in her arms. They were standing under an elm tree, which was suddenly struck by lightning. All three women were killed, but Mary was rescued and revived in a hot bath. Her family said that she was sickly before the strike but seemed healthy afterwards, and the local community attributed her curiosity and intelligence to the lightning strike!

6. She worked with her dad

Mary's father took her and her brother Joseph on his expeditions to find fossils and shells. He taught her to identify different types and clean them up for display outside his cabinetmaker's shop. The coastal cliffs around Lyme Regis, where the family went fossil-hunting, are steep and can be very unstable, especially in the winter when heavy rains would weaken them. This is the best time to go fossil-hunting though, because the rains and cold weather expose fossils buried deeper. Unfortunately Mary's father slipped and fell off a cliff in 1810, and the injuries he sustained weakened him greatly. He passed away not long after from tuberculosis, leaving his family in debt.

7. The Napoleonic Wars helped her business

The Napoleonic Wars, which raged between 1803 and 1815, saw Britain and France locked in violent conflict. This had many effects on British life, a huge one being food shortages, which made life for Mary's family and others like them extremely difficult. Mary's father was actually involved in organising a protest against food shortages. But there was one advantage for the Anning family. The wars meant that wealthy people couldn't go abroad to go on holiday, and so tourists flocked to sunnier parts of the UK for a summer break. This included Lyme Regis, and so Mary and her family saw a small boost in sales and an increase in interest.

8. She made an amazing discovery, aged just 12!

When Mary was just 12 years old, she made an astonishing discovery - one that marked the official start of her career as a scientist! In 1811, about a year after their father died, Mary's brother Joseph found a 4-foot fossilized skull. Mary searched for and then excavated the rest of the creature's skeleton. It turned out to be a 5.2 metre ichthyosaur, a type of giant ocean reptile that went extinct about 95 million years ago. A local Lord bought the fossil for £23 (about £1100 today), and later sold it to a collector. It was a (literally) groundbreaking discovery. This was 48 years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species, a controversial book which publicised the theory of evolution. Fossils are an important part of proving the theory, and Mary's work helped to bring the theory into the light!

9. And she kept making more!

Jospeh Anning took up an apprenticeship to become an upholsterer, and so Mary became the head of the family business as she grew up. At the age of 22 she made another astonishing discovery when she became the first person to unearth the full skeleton of a plesiosaur, another giant marine reptile. It was so strange-looking that some scientists thought it was fake, including Georges Cuvier, who is sometimes called the father of palaentology. After a meeting at the Geological Society of London it was decided that the skeleton was real - but the meeting was not open to women, so Mary could not attend herself. This big discovery did mean that other scientists took Mary a little more seriously, and realise she was a talented scientist despite her gender and her background. Another huge discovery she made was the first pterosaur (flying lizard) skeleton found outside of Germany.

10. She discovered something very important about poo...

Fossils are made of organic material, which can include any type of organic material - even poo! These strangely-shaped stones were known as "bezoars", and Mary was among the first to suggest that they were actually fossilized droppings! These are very useful to palaentologists, because examining them can teach us about the diets of prehistoric animals.

11. She made ancient ink!

Another huge discovery Mary made was the existence of ink sacs in fossilized cephalopods. You probably know that modern-day octopuses, squid and cuttlefish can squirt ink as a defence mechanism against predators. Mary found dried ink inside a belemnite fossil (sort of like a prehistoric squid). Ink was found inside the remains of other cephalopods, and artists revived the ink to use in their own fossil drawings! More importantly, Anning noticed that the ink chambers were very similar to those of modern squid and cuttlefish, which she'd dissected to study. She proposed that they used ink for defence in the same way, which was another point in favour of evolution!

12. She was a woman in science, which was hard

Women are still a minority in most branches of science even today - so you can imagine how hard it must have been in Mary's lifetime! Women then couldn't attend university, hold public office, or even vote. Even though she gained respect and even admiration for her work in finding, cleaning and studying fossils, most of her discoveries went uncredited in the published literature. Entire lectures would be given on her discoveries with no mention of the woman who had made them! The Geological Society of London, who made great use of Mary's work, would not allow her to attend lectures as a guest, and they didn't admit women as members until 1904. Mary became quite resentful of her lowly status in the geological community, once writing: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone."

13. Her life was not easy

Mary Anning lived a very difficult life for a number of reasons, and not just because she was a woman scientist. She was also working class, which meant that she was doubly discounted by the scientific elite. It was thought that the working class were not capable of being clever enough to work in the sciences - the geological discoveries of working class men also went uncredited. On top of this, Mary also struggled with poverty for her entire life. By 1830 the demand for fossils as souvenirs had gone down a lot, and in 1835 she lost her life savings in a bad investment (though it's unclear what actually happened). At the end of her life Mary developed breast cancer, and at that time there was no treatment available. This slowed her work down, and she eventually passed away in 1847.

14. She Sells Seashells?

You might have heard the tongue-twister: "She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore. The sea-shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure." Maybe you can even say it, too! It's been a bit of a myth for a while now that the rhyme, which comes from a 1908 song written by Terry Sullivan, is about Mary Anning and her seaside shell and fossil business. It sounds like it could be true - TV quiz show QI said it WAS true! - but there's no evidence that the song is about her at all. After all, Mary sold fossils AND sea shells, but that doesn't really fit into the tongue-twister!

15. You can visit her home!

Despite not crediting her discoveries, The Geological Society didn't abandon Mary completely. In 1846, they raised money to support her at the end of her life, and upon her death they helped to fund a stained glass window in her memory. The Dorset County Museum in Dorchester also made Mary an honourary member. Nowadays you can still experience Mary's legacy if you visit the Natural History Museum, where several of her finds are still on display. You can also visit Lyme Regis, where the Lyme Regis Museum is built on the site of Mary's home and shop. A blue plaque is there now to commemorate her, and you can go on a fossil walk to experience Mary's life and work for yourself!