Mary Anning

Mary Anning hunted fossils on the cliffs at Lyme Regis from childhood to support her poor family, and with her brother uncovered the first ichthyosaur skeleton to be correctly identified, followed by the first nearly complete plesiosaurs in the 1820s. Leading geologists bought her finds and sought her opinion, though as a working-class woman she could not join the Geological Society. Her expertise came entirely from years on the beach.