The Rosetta Stone - II of III

When the Rosetta Stone was first discovered, it was thought that the hieroglyphs would be deciphered in two weeks. As it turned out, it took twenty years. One cause of the troubles was that the three inscriptions turned out not to be word-for-word translations of one another. They do match up but in an imprecise manner like three peoples’ summaries of the same movie. Moreover scripts can run left to right, like English, or right to left, like Hebrew and Arabic, or top to bottom, like Chinese and Japanese. The symbols appeared without a break.  How could anyone know where one word ended and the next began (if they were words at all)?

Jean-François Champollion, the man who was destined to decipher the hieroglyphs, was born in 1790. By all accounts, he was a child prodigy. When he was five years old, he learned how to read by comparing a list of words he had learned by heart with the written text. He was barely seven years old when he first heard the magical name of Egypt. 

When Champollion was 11, Jean-Baptiste Fourier, the famous mathematician and physicist, had a conversation with him. Fourier was so taken by his intelligence that he invited him to his home, and showed him his Egyptian collection. The little boy was enchanted by hieroglyphic inscriptions on stone tablets. “Can anyone read them?” he asked. Fourier shook his head. “I am going to do it,” little Champollion announced with absolute certainty. “In a few years I will be able to. When I am big.” 

Champollion explored the most esoteric topics. At the age of twelve, he wrote his first book, History of Famous Dogs. At thirteen he began to learn Arabic, Syrian, Chaldean, and Coptic. He studied textual excerpts from the Zend, Pahlavi, and Parsi. Using every source he could lay hands on, in the summer of 1807 Champollion, then seventeen years old, drew up the historical chart of the kingdom of the Pharaohs.

When he applied to a college, the authorities asked him to write a paper on a subject of his own choosing. He wrote a whole book for them: Egypt under the Pharaohs. On September 1, 1807 he read the introduction to this projected work to an assembly of students and teachers. The professors were overwhelmed to such a degree that on the spot they elected the boy to join them on the faculty. And so overnight Champollion was graduated from student to teacher.

He studied all the Oriental languages trying to understand their idiomatic developments. He wrote to his brother asking for a Chinese grammar, “for amusement”. He learned to speak Arabic so perfectly that he sounded like a native speaker. Through books alone, he acquired an extensive knowledge of Egypt. He spoke and wrote Coptic so well — “I speak Coptic to myself,” he said — that for practice he kept journals in Coptic. (Coptic was the only language providing a link with the Old Egyptian. The Coptic tongue had actually been spoken in Upper Egypt as late as the seventeenth century.)

A matter that kept occupying him was the Rosetta Stone but he kept holding himself back because he thought he was not prepared enough for such a big task. His first attempt to decipher the stele in his late teens enabled him to find the correct values for an entire row of letters. Then he got the horrendous news that that the hieroglyphs had been deciphered. He was relieved when he examined the proofs and realized that it was nonsense. 

In 1821 he published a monograph where he outlined the rudiments of a successful decoding method. The dominant tendency for centuries was to look for a purely symbolic meaning in the pictures.  Champollion showed how far from the truth this was. Egyptian writing actually had developed far beyond the original symbolism. One might think that the discovery of the Rosetta Stone would have put an end to wild guessing, but just the opposite proved to be the case. 

All manner of cabalistic, astrological, and gnostic doctrines were attributed to them, as well as agricultural, mercantile, and administrative allusions to practical life. Biblical quotations were discovered in them, even an antediluvian literature, not to mention excerpts from the Chaldean, Hebrew, and Chinese. “It was as if the Egyptians,” Champollion remarks, “had nothing to express in their own language.” Champollion sat unmoved among these reworks, patiently ordering, comparing, testing, slowly climbing the long hill.

Champollion hit on the idea that the hieroglyphic pictures were “letters”. Once he had grasped basic principles, he saw that decipherment must begin with the names of the kings. But why with the names of Egyptian kings? In the hieroglyphic section of the text was a group of signs enclosed in an oval ring which came to be known as a cartouche. Perhaps these ovals were special? Perhaps they signaled that the hieroglyphs they enclosed were noteworthy in some way (as italics or bold type instructs us to pay particular attention to certain words).

Cartouche

It seemed reasonable to suppose that these cartouches, since they were the only signs in the text showing evidence of special emphasis, might contain the Egyptian word for the king’s name. One should then be able to pick out the letters of the name Ptolemy from the Greek text and so correlate the eight hieroglyphic signs with eight letters. (In Greek, each letter is sounded individually; there are no silent letters. Greek speakers pronounce the P in Ptolemy.) 

Much of the work till this point was done by another genius called Thomas Young. But from this point onwards, Champollion raced ahead. By sheer luck, he got hold of the inscription on the Obelisk of Philæ, which was taken to England in 1821. This obelisk bore a message also written in hieroglyphics and Greek. And here again the name Ptolemy was framed in a cartouche, as was also another unfamiliar group of hieroglyphs that through comparison with the Greek were shown to be the Egyptian word for Cleopatra.

The key bit of good fortune was that Ptolemy and Cleopatra contained several letters in common, namely P, T, O, L and E.  Champollion had just assigned hieroglyphs to P, T, O, and L, based on the Rosetta Stone’s Ptolemy cartouche. Now he looked to see if those hieroglyphs turned up in the right place in the new cartouche. Substituting the letters from Ptolemy, this new cartouche read: _ L E O P _ T _ _. 

With this, he found new letters to assign to the hieroglyphs — the ones corresponding to the sounds c, r, and a — to add to his collection. Then he looked at other inscriptions and other bits of papyrus, searching for more cartouches. With persistence, mis-steps, frustration and inspired guesses, he found the key to the hieroglyphs and with it, the key to all the locked doors of Egyptian antiquity. (The whole story is related in Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick.)

(Why are inspired guesses required? A script can have numerous complications. Consider a person who has no idea about English. Is it read from right to left or from left to right? There are synonyms, homonyms, figures of speech, etc. 'Bank' could mean different things depending on the context. How to interpret 'She gave him the cold shoulder'? There are capital and small letters. How to know that 'cap' and 'CAP' mean the same thing? There are many punctuation marks.)

The Rosetta Stone - I of III

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the British Museum. The term "Rosetta Stone" is often used to refer to the crucial clue that opens up a new field of knowledge. It is said that the spectrum of the hydrogen atoms has proven to be the Rosetta Stone of modern physics. The flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana has been called the "Rosetta Stone of flowering time". A gamma-ray burst (GRB) found in conjunction with a supernova has been called a Rosetta Stone for understanding the origin of GRBs.

The bilingual Greek-Brahmi coins that allowed initial progress towards deciphering the Brahmi script, thus unlocking ancient Indian epigraphy, have been described as "little Rosetta stones". I had written in my blog that the piece of paper on which Jaya quickly scribbled down the letters of the alphabet became the Rosetta Stone for interpreting my dumb charades. So, what exactly is this Rosetta Stone? 

The story begins in 1798 when Napoleon sailed to Egypt with a large force. Though Napoleon’s expedition was unsuccessful militarily, it started a scientific examination of its antiquities that continues to this day. Napoleon had taken one hundred and seventy five “learned civilians” to Egypt. They included astronomers, geometers, chemists, mineralogists, Orientalists, technicians, painters, and poets. They brought along a large library, containing practically every book on the land of the Nile available in France, and also dozens of crates of scientific apparatus and measuring instruments.

These intellectuals brought back with them several plaster models, memoranda of all kinds, transcripts, drawings, and collections of animal, plant, and mineral specimens, several sarcophagi and twenty-seven pieces of carved stone, mostly fragments of statuary. Included in these findings was a stele (an upright stone slab typically bearing an inscription) made of polished black basalt, bearing an inscription in three different forms of writing. The heavy plaque became famous as the Rosetta Stone, key to the mysteries of Egypt.

A team of French soldiers had been assigned to rebuild a broken-down fort in Rashid, in the Nile delta. (The French called the town Rosetta.) Sources attribute a man called Dhautpoul or Bouchard with the discovery of Rosetta Stone. In actual fact, it was dug up by some unknown soldier. Somehow he seems to have recognized its importance. Or, he was superstitious and mistook the signs on the stone for witchcraft, so creating a disturbance that brought Bouchard’s attention to the slab. Beneath the dust and dirt on the stone’s dark surface, you could just make out some strange marks. Could this be something?

But in September 1801, upon the capitulation of Alexandria, France had to hand over to the English the conquered regions of Upper Egypt, and with them the expedition’s collection of Pharaonic antiquities. By the instructions of George III, the pieces were placed in the British Museum. The French felt that their whole year’s work was lost. Then it was realized that every single thing in the vast collection had been faithfully copied. Enough material would reach Paris to occupy the minds of a whole generation of scholars.

For Europeans, Egypt conjured up a hodgepodge of beauty (Cleopatra!) and grandeur (the pyramids!) and mystery (the Sphinx!) and some shivery horror (mummies!). That awe extended to hieroglyphs, Egypt’s ancient and imposing system of writing. Before the Rosetta Stone yielded its secrets, the mystery of the hieroglyphs seemed out of reach. Egypt’s monuments, tombs, temples, obelisks, papyrus sheets, the caskets that enclosed mummies, and even the mummies’ bandages were covered with elaborate picture-writing that no one knew how to decipher.

When, occasionally, scholars attempted interpretation, it was wrong. No one had any notion how to make empiric, concrete explanations. The hieroglyphs were simply unreadable. People were introduced to an entirely new world but its inner relationships, and significance were a mystery. Was it possible to decipher the hieroglyphics? De Sacy, the great Parisian Orientalist, said that “the problem is too complicated, scientifically insoluble.” Here is where the Rosetta Stone comes in. 

It was about the size of a table top, three feet nine inches in length, two feet four and a half inches in breadth, and eleven inches in thickness. Its jagged top showed that it was a fragment of a larger original. One side of the heavy stone was covered with inscriptions in three distinct scripts. At the top of the stone were fourteen lines of hieroglyphs, drawings of circles and stars and lions and kneeling men. That section was incomplete. Judging by the length of the other two inscriptions, about half the hieroglyphs are missing. 

In the stone’s middle section was a longer section of simple curves and curlicues, thirty-two lines altogether. These looked like letters from some unknown script or perhaps symbols from a code, but  not like the pictures in the hieroglyphic section. It would turn out that the middle inscription was a sort of shorthand that had developed because hieroglyphs were too elaborate for everyday writing. It was called Demotic. The third set of marks of fifty-four lines, below the other two was Greek and  was instantly recognizable. It was not quite easy to read, because it was written more like a legal document than an everyday note, but it was easy enough. 

The Rosetta Stone

From the Great section, it could be seen that the message recorded a decree of the Egyptian priesthood, issued in 196 B.C., praising Ptolemy Epiphanus, who was the Pharaoh at that time, for benefacial acts. The very arrangement of the columns suggested that all three parts of the inscription contained the same text. Once the Greek inscription had been properly translated, it seemed unlikely there would be much difficulty in establishing a connection between the hieroglyphic signs and the Greek words. The best minds of the day applied themselves to the task but failed to crack the code. 

A happy occasion

Sujit and Sharika got married in Trivandrum, Kerala on 23rd November. Both are working in different branches of Federal Bank at Erode, Tamil Nadu. We all wish them a long and happy married life.

Siraj ud-daula - II

Strangely, Siraj had a strong hold on his grandfather, Alivardi Khan. The old man had had no sons of his own, only three daughters, and after the death from smallpox of his only other grandson, Siraj’s elder brother, all his hopes rested on the survivor. Even when Siraj had revolted against Aliverdi in 1750 and seized Patna, the fond grandfather had forgiven him. For some time there was hope that Aliverdi Khan might see sense and appoint as successor his generous and popular son-in-law, Nawazish Khan, who was married to his eldest daughter. According to the consensus of the court, this would have been the perfect choice. 

But instead, in 1754, Siraj was formally named his heir. By 1755, this had become a matter of real concern, for it was clear to everyone that the eighty-year-old Nawab, stricken with dropsy, was nearing the end. At around this time, he received reports that the English had built fortifications around Calcutta against his express orders against this since they feared an attack by the French. They were defiant and insolent which did not please the Nawab. 

But before he decided on his course of action, Alivardi died and was succeeded by Siraj ud-daula. He had strained relations with the English and he decided on an aggressive course of action rather than the diplomatic means preferred by Alivardi. Accordingly, he marched off with his army, 70,000-strong, to conquer Calcutta, and bring its arrogant merchants to heel. The English thought that the new Nawab was merely bluffing and would never dare to attack Fort William. But in the battle that followed, they were hopelessly outnumbered and defeated. 

Six months later, troops led by Clive reached Calcutta from Madras and retook it. He then declared war on Siraj ud-Daula in the name of the Company; the first time that the EIC had ever formally declared war on an Indian prince. Two weeks later, Siraj ud-Daula again descended on Calcutta with a 60,000 strong army. In the battle that followed, the English managed to terrify Siraj into signing a treaty which restored almost all their privileges. 

The situation was now complicated by the outbreak of hostilities globally between the British and the French in what became known as the Seven Year War. As part of this war, the British captured the nearby French colony of Chandernagar. Siraj was in two minds about who to support - his relations with the French were better but he dare not offend the British. At one point he sent a relief force towards Chandernagar, hesitated, and then withdrew it. A day later, he sent a message to Clive telling of his 'inexpressible pleasure’ at his victory. With the message he sent a present. But it was now too late.

There the whole Bengal campaign would have ended, but for the hatred and disgust now felt for Siraj ud-Daula by his own court, and especially Bengal’s all-powerful dynasty of bankers, the Jagat Seths. He had alienated many of his grandfather’s old military commanders, particularly the veteran general Mir Jafar Ali Khan, an Arab soldier of fortune. Mir Jafar had helped in many of Aliverdi’s most crucial victories and had led the successful attack on Calcutta. But having taken the town and defeated the Company in battle, he had then been sidelined, and the governorship given instead to a Hindu rival, Raja Manikchand. He and many others were tired of living under such an administration. 

They now decided to use the EIC’s military forces to overthrow Siraj. The Company learned that Mir Jafar was prepared to offer the Company the vast sum of 2.5 crore rupees if they would help him remove the Nawab. Further investigation by the EIC revealed that the scheme had wide backing among the nobility but that Mir Jafar, an uneducated general with no talent in politics, was simply a front for the real force behind the coup – the Jagat Seth bankers. The offer was increased to Rs.2.8 crore, a further Rs110,000 a month to pay for Company troops, zamindari rights near Calcutta, a mint in the town and confirmation of duty-free trade. Dalrymple writes: 

This was something quite new in Indian history: a group of Indian financiers plotting with an international trading corporation to use its own private security force to overthrow a regime they saw threatening the income they earned from trade. 

Then came the Battle of Plassey after a lot of hesitation on the part of Mir Jaffer. Siraj's army was about twenty times larger than that of the Company and luck in the form of a storm was required for the latter to win. The Company troops made sure to keep their powder and fuses dry under tarpaulins; but the Mughals did not. Naturally, Siraj's guns were silenced while the Company's guns were not and it is not hard to guess who won. Thus it was that fortuitously, Mir Jaffer became Nawab of Bengal. 

Now a fugitive, Siraj ud-Daula fled the capital. A fakir he had oppressed in the past recognized him and gleefully informed his enemies. He was caught and brought back to Murshidabad and brutally put to death. He was only twenty-five years old.

Siraj ud-daula - I

The common story we read in school history textbooks is that Siraj ud-doula was betrayed by Mir Jaffer enabling the British to defeat the former at the battle of Plassey. This usually is taken to be start of British rule in India. But, as is usually the case with history, the truth seems a bit more complicated than is depicted in school books. 

The seeds of destruction of the Mughal dynasty were laid during Aurangzeb's reign and after his death, the empire disintegrated rapidly. Succession disputes and devastating Maratha raids led to several Mughal regional governors behaving as if they were independent rulers. They still used the name of the Mughal state, and the name of the Emperor to invoke authority, but in practice they began to feel more and more independent.

The one partial exception to this pattern was Bengal, where the Governor, Murshid Quli Khan, remained fiercely loyal to the Emperor, and continued annually to send bounty to Delhi. By the 1720s, Bengal was providing most of the revenues of the central government, and to maintain the flow of funds, Murshid Quli Khan used increasingly harsh methods to collect axes. As the country grew increasingly anarchic, Murshid Quli Khan found innovative ways to get the annual tribute to Delhi since the roads were now not safe enough to transport bullion. 

Instead, he used the credit networks of a family of Marwari Oswal Jain financiers called the Jagat Seths, the Bankers of the World. They exercised influence and power that were second only to the Governor himself, and they soon came to achieve a reputation akin to that of the Rothschilds. East India Company (EIC) officials realised that the Jagat Seths were their natural allies and that their interests in most matters coincided. They also took liberal advantage of the Jagat Seths’ credit facilities. This access of EIC to streams of Indian finance would have a big influence on subsequent events. 

In 1740, Aliverdi Khan came to the throne in Bengal in a military coup financed and masterminded by the Jagat Seth bankers, who now controlled the finances of Bengal. The Jagat Seths could make or break anyone in Bengal, including the ruler. Aliverdi proved to be a popular, cultured and capable ruler. His bravery, persistence and military genius kept the Maratha invasions at bay, something few other Mughal generals had ever succeeded in doing. 

Aliverdi Khan created a strong and stable political, economic and political centre in Murshidabad. Under his rule, Bengal was a rare island of calm and prosperity amid the anarchy of Mughal decline. Bengalis came to remember the last years of Aliverdi Khan as a golden age. There was only one cloud on the horizon: Aliverdi Khan’s grandson and heir apparent, Siraj ud-Daula. William Dalrymple writes in The Anarchy: 

Not one of the many sources for the period – Persian, Bengali, Mughal, French, Dutch or English – has a good word to say about Siraj: according to Jean Law, who was his political ally, ‘His reputation was the worst imaginable.’ The most damning portrait of him, however, was painted by his own cousin, Ghulam Hussain Khan, who had been part of his staff and was profoundly shocked by the man he depicts as a serial bisexual rapist and psychopath: ‘His character was a mix of ignorance and profligacy,’ he wrote.

Siraj was known for all kinds of debauchery and for his revolting cruelty. An example was that when women were bathing in the Ganges, he would send his henchmen in small boats to carry them off. Sometimes, he would intentionally ram the ferry boats to jolt them, or make them spring a leak, in order to experience the cruel pleasure of frightening a hundred or more people. He had no real talent for government, ruling only by inspiring fear. He was by nature rash, but lacking in courage, was stubborn and irresolute, quick to take offense, was treacherous at heart, without faith or trust in anyone. 

The nobles and commanders, who had served Alivardi loyally, had conceived a dislike to the prince because of his levity, his harsh language and the hardness of his heart. His most serious error was to alienate the great bankers of Bengal, the Jagat Seths. Anyone who wanted to operate in the region did well to cultivate their favour; but Siraj did the opposite. Jagat Seth was often used with slight and derision, and Siraj had mortally affronted him by sometimes threatening him with circumcision. The Jagat Seth was in his heart totally alienated and lost to Siraj’s regime.

Mary Anning - III

Once while searching for fossils after a storm, Mary came across a winged creature unlike anything she had ever encountered. This fossil had a long tail with dozens of vertebrae, hints of claws and wings and an enormous skull, rounded jaw and long beak. The entire fossil was less than four feet long. It looked to be a cross between a vampire bat and some kind of reptile. Mary’s discovery would eventually be called a Dimorphodon, the earliest type of Jurassic pterosaur. But, like before, Mary was not given credit for the discovery. 

It was the first pterosaur — or “winged lizard” — ever discovered outside of Germany. First appearing about 200 million years ago — almost 70 million years before the first known bird — pterosaurs had existed alongside dinosaurs. A contemporary of Mary’s earlier finds, the ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur, the pterosaur was believed to be the biggest creature ever to fly. Over time, other pterosaur skeletons would be found. Although some were as small as today’s birds, others had wingspans of nearly 40 feet.

In March 1829, she uncovered the second complete skeleton of the long-necked plesiosaur. So magnificent was the skeleton that an international battle erupted between museums wishing to be the first to showcase it. Finally, the British Museum purchased it for £105 pounds. The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal made mention of her fossil finds that year in the first-ever published list of Britain’s greatest geological collections. 

In December 1829, Mary came across a fossil that wasn’t enormous in size but certainly was peculiar in appearance. A mere 18 inches long, it had a long snout and looked a bit like a fish, but not a regular one. In 1833, scientists agreed that the fossil was indeed a fish, a fish-eating chimaeroid with a body like an otter’s and a flat tail like a beaver’s. The name chimaeroid was derived from a fire breathing she-monster in Greek mythology that boasts a lion’s body and a serpent’s tail.

It was a fossil of a cartilaginous fish — a fish later lumped together with the likes of sharks, skates, rays, and other vertebrates with internal skeletons made entirely of cartilage. It was ancestor to both the shark and the ray. To the untrained eye, the importance of the find might have seemed somewhat contrived. But it was a significant find because it was a transitional creature between sharks and rays. Most important for Mary, it was her fourth major discovery, one that kept her in the spotlight for some time.

Mary ended 1830 on a high note unearthing that December yet another species of plesiosaur, a large-skulled creature with a neck at least three times as long as its head. What made it still more interesting was that resting on the bones of the pelvis was its Coprolite (fossilized feces) finely illustrated. Eventually this creature was deemed to be a new type of plesiosaur — one with more neck bones than other types. As usual it was never mentioned during the formal proceedings that it was Mary who originally found the plesiosaur.

One of the few scientists who had acknowledged her work was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist Luis Agassiz. In 1841, he would pay Mary her official due by naming a species of fish after her: the Acrodus anningiae. In 1844 he named yet another species of fish after her: Belenostomus anningiae. Such acts of respect for women were unheard of among Mary’s British colleagues. Every one of her own finds had been named after men. In July 1846, Mary was paid some due locally when she was named the first honorary member of the new Dorset County Museum in Dorchester, established the same year. 

Lacking adequate treatment, Mary Anning finally succumbed to breast cancer, dying on Tuesday, March 9, 1847, after having endured serious pain for at least two years. Her body was buried in the yard outside St. Michael’s church that overlooks the sea, at the top of the eroding Church Cliffs she had combed so often. Members of the church and the Geological Society in London paid tribute to Mary with a stained-glass window at St. Michael’s that portrays six acts of mercy from the Bible. The window was dedicated “in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology . . . her benevolence of heart, and integrity of life.” 

By the end of her life she had become one of the most recognized names in geological circles, working closely with many of Europe’s most famous learned gentlemen scientists. With them, she’d debated the meaning of fossils and resolved disagreements. Mary’s steady stream of discoveries, begun when she was 12, had laid the foundations for groundbreaking reports on a broad array of bizarre prehistoric creatures.

Even London’s literary giant, Charles Dickens knew of her life. He wrote about Mary in his weekly literary magazine. In it he praised her “good stubborn English perseverance,” her intuition, her courage, physical and mental, in the face of locals who initially mocked her eccentricity. In his article, Dickens highlighted the strange lack of appreciation and the overall disregard for Mary from those in her own town.

At scientific societies, such as the Royal Society and the Geological Society, men still held sway, as women were barred until 1919. Even in the 1830s, men still regarded women as mostly weak and frivolous, more of a hindrance than a help in the scientific arena. Mary complained how “these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal by publishing works of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages." But what was even worse was the careless disregard of museums when handling her discoveries.

As for Mary’s actual discoveries, many aren’t there. Some are housed in various institutions across the country, but too many have been lost or misplaced. The skull of the first ichthyosaur found by Mary’s brother, Joseph, in 1811 is on display at the Natural History Museum in London. The rest of the 17-foot skeleton is nowhere to be found. Although the British Museum purchased the whole specimen in 1819, it either neglected to keep the body or else somehow lost track of it over the years. 

It was fossils like the ones Mary discovered that scientists relied on the most in helping them to decipher the global geologic record. It was Mary’s spectacular marine reptiles that pushed them into finally contemplating a different explanation for the world’s origin. Mary’s many finds also laid the groundwork for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, elucidated in his 1859 On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary’s fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present. At the time, merely suggesting such an idea was considered outrageous and even downright blasphemous.

London’s Natural History Museum refers to Mary on its website as the “greatest fossil hunter ever known.” Stephen Jay Gould said, "Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology."

Mary Anning - II

Between about 1815 and 1819, when Mary was not even 20, she unearthed several more complete specimens of ichthyosaurs. Some she uncovered were only the size of a trout; others, nearly as big as a baleen whale. For scientists, Mary’s skeletons provided a picture of the kind of creatures that inhabited the seas during the remote past. For geologists, the ichthyosaur specimens raised the possibility that a link once existed between fish and reptile.

In spite of her fossil finds, she was struggling to make ends meet but fortunately she somehow managed to draw the attention of a very important admirer. He had a fossil collection which he decided to sell. The sale brought in more than £400 — comparable to nearly $50,000 today — all of which he handed over to the Annings. For the first time in their lives, Mary and her family were financially secure. The event also delivered a much-needed publicity boost, and across Europe, an increasing number of fossil collectors began asking about this young woman from Lyme Regis named Mary Anning, the young recipient of the auction’s proceeds. 

A year after the auction, in early 1821, she discovered and excavated a beautifully preserved ichthyosaur only five feet long. That same month she spent days digging out another much larger ichthyosaur skeleton, this one a fearsome 20 feet long. Later that year she found another five-foot fossil that was eventually named Ichthyosaurus vulgaris. Early in 1822 she retrieved yet another large ichthyosaur, this one at least nine feet long. As before, these finds were credited not to her but to the monied gentlemen collectors who purchased them.

By 1823, when Mary was 24, the family’s financial situation was once again precarious. The fossil business was an unpredictable one and, as geology grew into a popular science, there were more people hunting for fossils, meaning more competition. Early in the year, Mary sold an exceptionally well- preserved ichthyosaur skeleton to a collection of geologists. But, as usual, during the presentation, the lecturer failed to mention the young woman who had found it.

This time, however, the oversight did not go unnoticed. Local geologist and fossil collector George Cumberland immediately fired off a letter to a Bristol newspaper praising the “persevering industry of a young female fossilist of the name of Hanning.” (He spelled her name the way local Dorset residents pronounced it.) He told readers how Mary had removed from the cliffs “relics of a former world . . . at the continual risk of being crushed by the suspended fragments they leave behind. . . . [T]o her exertions we owe nearly all the fine specimens of Ichthyosauri of the great collections."

Then she discovered a strange creature that resembled a turtle with a flat mouth and stubby short tail and, oddest of all, an abnormally long neck. It was named Plesiosaurus, meaning “near to reptile.” News of the find spread to the eminent Georges Cuvier who expressed suspicions that the new animal might be a sham. The length of the neck seemed unrealistic. To the scientific community, Cuvier was far too good at what he did to be wrong. If he was dubious, then everyone else would be too.

For Mary, Cuvier’s misgivings were a disaster. If he convinced others that the new fossil was a forgery, the Anning family’s reputation could be ruined forever. At a special meeting to arbitrate on the matter, many recognized that its features precisely matched all the earlier similar findings of parts of an animal. After a lengthy discussion, the society members were convinced that Mary’s skeleton wasn’t a fake. Perhaps for the first time, Cuvier was shown to be fallible. Later, after more careful study of Mary’s drawings and eventually the bones themselves, Cuvier admitted that he’d rushed to judgment and made a mistake. In The Fossil Hunter, Shelley Emling writes: 

It was Mary’s discovery of the plesiosaur that gave impetus to serious contemplations on evolution, which would years later feed into Darwin’s theories on evolution. Although the ichthyosaur was the first extinct animal known to science, it wasn’t completely unlike modern dolphins and tuna. But plesiosaurs were so different from any modern animal that they couldn’t be so easily dismissed as a variety of a known existing creature.

Mary continued digging up fossils that fit no blueprint previously imagined. She discovered several new species of ammonites and continued to master anatomy by cutting up and studying both the soft tissue of modern fish and the dried up bones of ancient ones, without ever stepping foot inside any museum or university. At a time when a woman did not walk in public with a man to whom she was not related, Mary was visited frequently by many great scholars, all of them men, in search of information as much as fossils. 

For years, while out searching for fossils, Mary had stumbled across twisted, rounded dark-gray pebbles, some with black spots. Often they were no more than four inches long and only an inch or so in diameter. But sometimes they were much larger. On at least a few occasions, Mary had found these stones inside the skeletons of ichthyosaurs, leading her to believe they might be fossilized clumps of undigested food that remained in the intestines, if not ejected at death.

To her, the reason these masses had taken on their puzzling shapes and spiral markings might have been obvious: They simply had passed in a soft form through the intestines of ancient animals. In 1828, a scientist who studied these pebbles that Mary had discovered, named the fossilized feces “coprolites”. The study of fossilized feces would turn out to be one of the most important techniques available to paleontologists. Years later, it was coprology that led scientists to determine that the Tyrannosaurus rex was a carnivore.