Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown

Rare Treasure tells the story of the greatest "fossilist" of all time - Mary Anning of Lyme Regis in Dorset, England. Mary was born on May 21, 1799 to a cabinetmaker who supplemented his income by selling the strange finds from the fossil beds by the town. Although Mary's parents, Richard and Molly had ten children, only Mary and her brother Joseph survived to adulthood.

When Mary was a toddler, she was with a group of women watching an equestrian show when a storm blew up. The women took shelter beneath a tree when it was struck by lightning. Only Mary survived. This event seemed to mark a change in Mary who grew into a lively child full of curiosity.  Although Mary learned to read and write, she never received much education. The Anning family was poor and because of war on the continent, (England was at war with France), there were often food shortages.

Lyme Regis soon became a tourist mecca for the English looking to get away from the polluted, dirty cities of the north.  Richard Anning took Mary and Joseph with him as he scoured the limestone and shale cliffs around Lyme Regis looking for fossils. They would then set up a table in the town and sell their finds to tourists.

In November 1810, Mary's father passed away, leaving the family in even more serious poverty. To supplement their income from the parish relief they received Mary continued to hunt for fossils on the cliffs of Lyme Regis. Over the years she built up a substantial business and a reputation.

Her first major find was in 1811 when she was twelve years old. Over the period of several months she and Joseph dug up a fossilized skeleton of an what would later be called an ichthyosaur. Other substantial finds included a pleisosaur  in 1823, a pterosaur in 1828 and a squaloraja in 1829.

Although Mary Anning had received little schooling she read scientific papers and even studied the anatomy of living creatures to better understand the fossils she was finding. She lived at a time when women had few rights, the could not vote and were not allowed entry into universities. Although she was often not given full credit for her discoveries, eventually her contributions to the field of paleontology was recognized by several prominent geologists of the time. Mary Anning's discoveries had a profound influence on how humans thought about the planet and its past. At the turn of the century, the belief that the Earth and everything in it was created in six days by God was common. However, the fossils that Mary Anning discovered were of creatures that no longer existed and they made scientists rethink the past and how the present came to be.

Mary Anning's sketch of a Plesiosaur, 1824

Rare Treasure is a well written, short account of Mary Anning's life. Brown is a capable storyteller, capturing the more important parts of Mary Anning's life; her family's struggles with poverty, the dangerous work of searching for fossils on the shore, the wonderful discoveries she made, and her desire to understand what she found.Although some of the obstacles Anning encountered are omitted, Brown does emphasize that Mary Anning came to be highly regarded by many prominent scientists of the day including William Buckland and Richard Owens.  The pen, ink and watercolour illlustrations of Don Brown are a wonderful supplement to the story of this intelligent and courageous English woman.

Rare Treasure is recommended for young readers, especially girls interested in dinosaurs, earth science or science in general.

Book Details:

Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company     1999