The Fossil Hunters...

This fascinating story of the pioneers of fossil hunting is described in the Museum starting with Mary Ann Mantel a doctor’s wife who it is said while accompanying her husband on a house call in 1822 found the first fossil ever truly identified in a pile of stones being used to repair the road. The stones had been quarried close to their home in Lewis West Sussex . The fossil was later identified as belonging to a long since extinct creature Iguanodon it is still seen on the coat of arms for Maidstone Kent in recognition of the find.

The name Dinosaur was invented by Sir Richard Owen famous for his part in the setting up the Natural History Museum previously part of the British Museum. Before then all extinct fossil remains where known as Dragons!

Dinosaurs (or the bones of dinosaurs) have been present on this earth for more than 200 million years, but no one had ever heard of them until 1841 simply because there was no name or definition of them as a group of fossils. This was 165 years after the first published illustration of a dinosaur bone and many years after the first dinosaur was named and described, Dinosauria, comes from deinos, the Greek for terrible and sauros, Greek for lizard. Most fossils are now named in this way part Greek part Latin.

Mary Anning
Born 1799 died 1847

British paleontologist who was the FIRST person to discover a fossils of a plesiosaurus and a pterodactyl. She was born in Lyme Regis where her father was a carpenter and a vendor of specimens. In 1811 she discovered the fossil skeleton of an ichthyosaurus, the FIRST known of its kind, in a local cliff. It is now in the British Museum
she made her first find aged 11, she was struck by lightning as a baby in her pram while being walked by her nanny, unfortunately the nanny was killed outright. Mary grew up to become acknowledged by many to have been the greatest fossil collector of all time.

She would sell her finds on the local beaches and is colorfully gifted with the origin of the tongue twister She sells sea shell by the sea shore.

Many other fossil hunters are described in the exhibition but we like these because they lived right here on our door step.

1 - Dr Robert Plot, 2- Mary Mantell, 3 - Dr Gideon, 4 - Sir Richard Owen, 5 - Edward Cope, 6 - Othniel Marsh

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