August 5, 2025 • 43 mins
Mary Anning Facts and Fossils
This episode of 'She Changed History' delves into the remarkable life of Mary Anning, a pioneering palaeontologist from the early 19th century. Now often in kids’ books and on the BBC, Mary made groundbreaking fossil discoveries on the Jurassic Coastline in Dorset England, including the first complete ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons, and the first pterosaur skeleton found outside of Germany. The episode highlights the numerous challenges Mary faced, from being excluded from scientific communities to having her work misattributed to male scientists. Despite these injustices, Mary's work fuelled public interest in palaeontology and left an indelible mark on the field. The episode also captures emotional moments, such as Mary's close bond with her dog Tray and her relentless dedication to her work, even under dangerous conditions. Mary Anning's legacy endures today, honoured by the Natural History Museum and a statue on the Jurassic Coast, celebrating her as a key figure in the history of palaeontology.
Other episodes mentioned: 36. Betsy Cadwaladr
00:00 Introduction and Technical Setup
00:53 Exciting News: A New Baby!
02:34 Introducing Mary Anning
03:37 Mary's Early Life and Challenges
11:58 Mary's First Major Discovery
15:21 The Ichthyosaurus: A Groundbreaking Find
18:21 Mary's Continued Success
20:36 Mary Anning's Remarkable Discovery
21:38 Sexism in Palaeontology
22:41 Recognition and Rejection
24:14 The Geological Society's Exclusion
27:41 Mary's Resilience and Companion
29:53 The Third Discovery: Pterodactyl
36:05 Mary's Contributions and Legacy
41:05 The Tragic End and Lasting Impact
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
This is what, this is what'sbeen keeping me going, so, so I
just gotta get through to eight.
Just gotta get through to eight.
Aw, that's nice.
That's so lovely.
Uh, should we try again and seehow we go?
Yeah, yeah.
Hi Kara.
Hi Vicki.
How's it going?
I'm good.
How are you?
Yes, very well, thank you.
(00:28):
We seem to have worked out anylittle glitchy gremlins in the.
In the connection here so far?
Yeah, I think we're doing good.
Yeah, let's see how we go.
Um, I was just saying to you howmuch, um, I've been looking
forward to this recording, um,because it's um, such a, like,
such a cool, like all our agesare cool, but I dunno, I just
feel so invigorated about thisstory, so I'm really excited.
(00:51):
Love it.
To share that with you.
And the other exciting bit ofnews that we've got is we've got
some proper, proper, she changehistory news, haven't we?
We have, um, so wonderful Simon.
Another, she Chase history host.
He, and his lovely wife, cathave welcomed their new baby
into the world, which iswonderful.
(01:13):
Um, everyone's doing well.
Mum, baby dad we think is doingwell, and, her name is Adeline.
And, um, yes, we, it is just,just a really happy, there's
lots of photo spam isn't thereof like, baby Oh yeah.
Spam.
And it's just full of love andit's just the most adorable
thing.
It's such a nice, lovely thingto have a gorgeous bit of news
(01:36):
like that to share.
We're all so happy.
Yes.
It's just happy, happy news.
The quiet chat is blowing up.
It's just all these, little oldladies swooning over Adeline,
It's the cutest thread.
So when she finally gets,introduced properly to the choir
in person, it's going to have tobe like, they're they'll have to
be a security perimeter.
Yeah.
(01:56):
'cause it will be a full onstampede.
It's gonna be an event.
Like they're gonna need to planthat.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Maybe they should be on stage sothat people can't, you know, get
too close because it's, it'sgonna be intense.
That feels a bit jesusy.
That feels like you would withJesus Lion.
Don't you think we Lion Kingwant to Ego Booster Lion.
Oh my God, she's a baby.
She won't remember.
It'll be fine.
(02:18):
Lion King.
That baby up show every day.
I like that.
And then we can all singCorrelate to her.
That'll be cool.
Yeah.
Um, but between now and then,would you like to hear a story?
Does that sound good?
Yes, please.
Wonderful.
Um, so.
Imagine a glint in the stone, ashape emerging.
Unlike anything the world hasever seen, the thrill of unearth
(02:42):
in a creature from a forgottenage.
A true pioneer, Mary Ningbrought, never seen before,
dinosaurs to light, yet picturethe sting, the injustice.
When your monumental discoveriesborn of your own grit and
genius, accredited to others,simply because you are a working
class woman in a man's world.
(03:04):
This is her story.
So sources today are, um, lotsof national history Museum
articles.
'cause of course, um, A BBCarticle.
The Times did a really good, um,kind of, not so much about Mary,
but about beach, British beachesin general.
(03:24):
Strange science.
Berkeley, university have anarticle and a really good blog.
I just wanted to check this oneout called Fossil Bias Blog,
which is all about sexism inpaleontology, which is just such
a cool blog.
Wow.
I know.
So let me introduce you to Mary.
So Mary was born in thesouthwest, um, English county of
(03:46):
Dset, which I'm going to thisweekend.
So it's all meant to be now.
It's just all coming together.
I didn't know that.
And this is in 1799.
So this is, a period whereGeorge II was on the throne.
Napoleon, was being Napoleonlots there.
And also it was around the timethat Jane Austen, was writing,
(04:08):
her work so Sense sensibility.
So the town that Mary was bornin was called Lime s um, and
it's a small coastal town.
Endorse it and what we call theJurassic Coastline.
And the reason we call itJurassic will become very, very
clear shortly.
I've got a little quote aboutMary in her upbringing, if you'd
like to read it for me.
(04:29):
Yeah, you bet.
Mary Ning was three things.
You did not want to be in 19thcentury Britain.
She was female working class andpoor, says campaigner, Anya
Pearson.
Um, so Anya Pearson will come uplater, but yes, she was those
three things.
So she was female, working classand poor.
I think that just shows thehardship.
She was up against whatever Marywanted to do.
(04:51):
On top of that, her family werevery religious, but they were
Protestant, who.
Separated from the Church ofEngland.
So there was a lot of prejudicearound that community in general
at that time.
Yeah.
Every direction.
Gosh.
Like shes getting, oh my gosh,just give the girl a break.
Mary's father, Richard, um, wasa cabinet maker, but he was also
(05:13):
an, an mature fossil collector,very telling.
And by the time, um, Mary was,primary school age, like five or
six, she was out helping him.
Like, because what else are yougonna do with his child when
you've got to go and do things?
Her dad took her on these littleadventures, which was very
unusual at the time for theseGeorgian girls growing up in
(05:34):
this quite oppressive society.
So it was her dad who taughtMary how to look for how to
clean fossils, how to, displaythem in the right way and all
this kind of stuff.
And he actually sold some in hisshop.
So that was a very importantincome for the family because
these fossils were very, um,very new at the time.
(05:56):
Right.
And, um, this kind of time inBritain is.
It's very interesting forscience in general in the
educated spheres.
But it's also a really importanttime for gothic literature is
coming up and all these kind ofinterests in different, spaces.
So, um, it was kind of a bit ofa novelty feature, but if you
(06:17):
are on the coastal town inBritain and there will be people
to, to sell that to.
The, um, the resourcefulness ofit that they are living in a
seaside town.
They've got these fossils, sothey make the most of what
they've got and perhaps ifthey'd been living someplace
else, it would've been someplaceelse, something else.
But yeah, just as much asteaching her how to find and
(06:40):
look after fossils, he'steaching her how to survive and
make the most of what the worldgives you.
Oh my gosh, absolutely.
It's harvesting off the land,isn't it?
It's the same as if you were afarmer.
It same if you had a bunch ofapple trees in your garden, of
course you're gonna, and it wasa lifeline for this family in
terms of financial income.
Absolutely hit the nail on thehead.
(07:02):
So Mary had little, littleeducation, which wasn't unusual
for working class girls at thetime.
She was able to read, which waslike tick one up.
Brilliant.
But on top of that, she taughtherself geology and anatomy.
So she studied in her own timeof her own back.
No one was asking her to dothis.
(07:22):
She was just fascinated andwanted to learn, which I'm there
for it absolutely.
Her dad, suddenly died in 1810from tb and Joseph, her brother,
took up a poster as anapprentice in, upholstering,
which kind of leans into thatcabinet, building that her
father did.
And it was Molly, actually hermother, who really encouraged
(07:46):
Mary to keep finding thesefossils because they needed the
money and they needed to pay offsome debt.
So it was Molly who was like,you know, it's on you now.
Like off you go, go hunting kindof thing.
As I alluded to earlier, you'dthink, well, who are, who's
buying these fossils?
You know, who's interested inthem?
And it's a really interestingtime in, British history is that
(08:08):
it's the first time the Britishseaside holiday really came to
light.
So British cytologies are quitea cultural kind of phenomenon
now, aren't they?
Absolute.
You know, you think duck chairson the beach, you think,,
handkerchiefs on the head, youthink, um, what else do you
think?
Hooker duck, candy, Flos donut,all that kind of stuff.
(08:29):
It's a lifeline, like you say,for those small coastal towns up
and down the country is such a,such a British staple of culture
for me.
Absolutely.
And the.
That was the type of thing thatcompanies would organize.
The, um, the company Bino wherethey would hire a little, a
little bus and um, kind of geteverybody loaded in with their
(08:50):
family and off they'd all go tothe seaside.
I wonder if that's about theperiod where that sort of thing
is starting to, to take off.
Yeah.
And there's reasons for that.
So one of the reasons is,because Napoleon was out, you
know, raging on, um, civilianswere instead encouraged of going
abroad, like taking a shipsomewhere or doing something.
(09:12):
It was encouraged for them tostay home so they would flock to
towns like Lime, Regis.
Um, lime res was very superioras well in terms of that.
It had a bathing machine, which,um, is like, so you could public
bath.
So it is just like a.
A public bath.
I think that's kind of how Iread it.
(09:32):
And there was one in Brighton,great Yarmouth Margate as well.
And what really kind of put thecherry on the cake of the great
British holiday was King Georgeiii, in 1789, chose, he could
have gone anywhere in the world.
He's the king of the England,the British Empire.
He, he chose to go to Waymouthfor his summer holiday.
(09:52):
Wow.
And he wanted to be on Britishsoil.
And that because of that,everyone wanted to do it too.
I mean, it's, he's aninfluencer.
He's getting out there settingthe trends.
Damn right.
Damn right.
He might've, might've been mad,but, you know, he was also mad
for it on the, on the part ofthe party train.
And what you gonna do whenyou're on the beach can, I don't
(10:14):
think candy floss has preventedyet, so you're gonna go fossil
hunting.
Basically, it became like a bitof a pastime.
Um, it was very fashionable forJordan, so you can imagine in
the attire going out and,inspecting and things like that.
So it turns out Mary was bang ontrend whether she wanted to be
or not.
Like I said, Mary started whenshe was five or six.
(10:34):
So over time she got morerefined at finding these
fossils, because I'm not beingfunny.
Fossils aren't lying about, weare not collecting seashells
right now.
We are digging, we are hunting.
We are diving into layers ofrock.
Okay.
We're not just, you know, goingabout with our little, little
bucket.
Um, and actually the work offossil hunting is really hard
(10:55):
work.
Like it's effort.
It's, you have to carry heavytools with you, you have to
almost hike as well.
Like the Jurassic coastline isnot flat, like it is hilly.
It's dangerous.
The erosion of cliffs and stuff.
It's even now there are signseverywhere.
Just saying how dangerous it isto be near.
Don't die.
Those surfaces don't die.
Yeah.
Like, and um, also you've gotthe English channel thriving at
(11:18):
you, you have to be skilled atthis.
You can't just bob along.
Like it's all right, the touristlike doing it for a day.
And I'm not really funny, maybefinding the odd rock, but like
actually to do proper fossilhunting is really quite, a huge
undertaking.
And for that to be yourlivelihood, you are relying on
your skill of finding andhunting.
(11:39):
Like you dunno what's coming.
It's not, constant flow is itof, income that's gonna come
your way.
Um, but.
Her hard work did pay off.
So I'm gonna talk you through afew of her fines, three in
detail, and they'll kind of takeus through her life.
Does that sound good?
Yeah.
so around 1811, Mary was 12 andit was actually Joseph who
(12:03):
actually did the fine.
So he found this strange lookingcreepy skull and he didn't know
what the skull was of, right?
So it was quite narrow, quitelong.
And he was like, Mary, look atthis.
And she was like, well, what isit?
And it was Mary then whosearched and.
Painstakingly dug the outline ofthis skeleton, right.
(12:25):
And this skeleton just keptgoing and going and going.
And by the time she was donethis skeleton that she had
uncovered it deep in rock,right?
Dirty, and on her own, in herlittle bonnet, she managed to
find a 5.2 meter long skeleton.
Oh my God.
That's like, I can't imagine 15feet long.
(12:48):
So a car, a modern car, twocars, car, oh, maybe.
Yeah, I think two cars, probablytwo compact cars.
That's crazy.
And that act of taking it out ofthe rock without damaging it and
the anxiety it took months.
Oh yeah.
Somebody could come and find itand steal it away.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's so true.
(13:09):
Actually.
High drama.
And this took months as well.
So by, by the time shediscovered it, everyone in town
kind of knew what she was doing.
How you actually.
Fossil hunt is that you have bigtools and you have little tools.
So you have,, hammers andchisels that remove the top
layer of the rock and the soil.
And that layer is called theoverburden.
(13:30):
So that's quite big hacking kindof ability.
And then, after you've got thattop player off, you go further
in and you go with like moredelicate tools.
You go dental picks, you goknives, brushes, that kind of
thing, um, to remove thesurrounding material.
But what you do is follow the,um, natural plane of the rock
(13:52):
and the bone.
So you find weaknesses in therock.
So that's how you kind of chiparound the bone is like just
chipping out the weakest part.
So that's how you preserve thebone.
So that is a skill, right?
You can't just be bashing inthere right where you are.
With your chisel.
And also, like you said, today,these are so fragile.
These are not wanting to breakthem and not wanting, they've
(14:15):
been preserved for millions ofyears.
And here's you with this hammercoming in as well.
Like if, if you were handed arock and you were told there is
a, you know, a bird's skullinside this rock, you've got a
mental image of what that skullmight look like because you have
textbooks and you went toscience class and you have the
(14:36):
internet.
But this is a 12-year-old kid inGeorgian times who maybe might
have seen a picture in a book ifshe was very, very lucky.
So working on her intuition andlooking really, really
carefully, if she's not todamage this thing, that's an
incredible thing to need to dowithout any mental image of what
(14:58):
you're actually going to try toget out of that rock.
Yeah.
And on top of all that, she's12.
12.
Just the idea of a little12-year-old kid wailing away
with a pick, trying to break upa rock.
That's craziness.
Absolutely.
So she very carefully and veryaccurately with that skill we
(15:18):
just spoke about, uncovered thismassive skeleton.
And obviously scientists gotwind of this right in, in London
and they initially thought itmust have been some kind of
crocodile and they also assumedat that time because it was
completely unrecognizable, itmust be migrated of some, far
off land.
Like they saw it as like, um,foreign in a mysterious way, the
(15:42):
term far off land makes me thinkof like Arabian knights and kind
of things like that.
Just completely ununrecognizable territory.
Napoleon Spy Crocodiles.
That's the but no, that youpicked up on three words.
I've said I'm, that's, that'sthe headline for me.
There we go.
(16:03):
But no, that I understand.
They kind of looked at it andwent, well, dunno what that is.
Must have come here from faraway.
It's something exotic like,yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
That's it.
You've got the vibe.
And this was debated about whatthe skeleton was for years,
right?
It was this kind of perplexingcreature that they'd uncovered
and in the end they actuallynamed it themselves.
(16:26):
They were like, well, it must benew.
It must be something we haven'thad before.
So they named it the, um, I,I'll probably butcher this, but
we'll give it a Go Iru, whichmeans fish lizard.
Literally what it means.
Um, because they couldn't maketheir mind up if it was a fish
short lizard.
(16:47):
So they were like, why not?
We'll call it, just call it bothFish lizard, you know.
Covers all your bases.
And they eventually determinedthat it lived 201 to 194 million
years ago.
And Mary just took that up.
Pretty cool.
Fun fact, these fish lizards arestill being discovered two
today.
(17:08):
as recently as 2021, um, one wasuncovered in Rutland Water
Nature Reserve, after a LagoonIsland was drained out for
landscaping and that it took twomonths to excavate that one as
well.
And that is with moderntechnology doing that.
So that's, that just shows youpresumably not, not 12 year olds
(17:28):
either.
Like that's, that's soimpressive.
I know.
I've got little quote therefrom, a paleontologist who
worked on that Rutland discoveryshe wants.
Dr.
Dean Lomax, a paleontologist whospecializes in ik.
Theos says Britain is thebirthplace of Ik.
Theos, their fossils have beenunearthed here for over 200
(17:50):
years with the first scientificfindings dating back to Mary
Ning and her discoveries alongthe Jurassic Coast.
And it all, it's all because ofMary.
It is incredible.
I have a fondness for Ithe OSAsbecause when I was really small,
I had a book that mom boughtthat had dinosaurs and that was
the, like the facing inside thebook.
(18:10):
I think the first picture insidethe cover was this Ithe
skeleton.
And now I know that that waslike a shout out to our girl.
That's, that's incredible.
Woohoo.
Love it.
So Mary keeps on ticking, youknow, this is her livelihood,
remember?
So she's letting the scientistshash it out and she carries on.
And in 1823, Mary was again thefirst person.
(18:34):
This is twice now.
She's the first person todiscover a complete skeleton of
a au, um, which translates?
It's less exciting.
It just means near to a reptile.
Something near reptile, right.
Ish.
Um.
Yeah.
This is another,, quote justabout this one for me, if that's
(18:54):
okay.
It is distinguishable by itssmall head, long and slender
neck, broad turtle, like body, ashort tail, and two pairs of
large elongated paddles.
It lends its name to the orderple, Soria of which is, it is an
early but fairly typical member.
(19:17):
This is probably my favorite oneout of the three because it just
looks like a diplo, so it's likeunderwater.
So I've, if you scroll down alittle bit.
Oh, um, that's the, that guy,that's what they think it's
gonna like.
Yeah, but doesn't he look justfab?
Just what I, what?
He's having a great time.
He's just, yeah.
With his paddle, like with hisfins, it is pretty amazing.
(19:39):
Just supremely adapted to hisenvironment, isn't he?
And like the size of that, evenin that image just there, you're
like, that is a beast.
That is.
So those things he's chasing inthat photo.
Photo.
Yes.
That photo that, let's try thatagain.
The things he's chasing in thatwhat is clearly an illustration,
(19:59):
are they supposed to befull-sized squid because he is a
unit?
If that's true.
I think so.
I agree.
I think that's true.
Holy cow.
Okay.
Yeah, that's a big old skeletonfor now.
What?
13, 14-year-old girl.
Yeah.
Excavated.
So it's about three meters long,so that kind of makes sense,
doesn't it?
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Um, so.
(20:19):
I just think it's so cool.
So Mary, to make up thisskeleton again, digging and
chiseling and all weathers.
This is an all year round job.
In her big skirt.
She's not even in like mountinggear or anything.
She's like this big floppy skirtand bonnet.
So she uncovered 600 pieces ofbone that made up the skeleton.
(20:41):
That it's 600 pieces of bone, soit is not like the pleso is made
up of 600 bones.
It's just that both break,right?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
I'm with you.
But she uncovered them all andshe worked out, um, it was all
together.
She understood that it was, onebeast., Again, this is not a
(21:02):
small job.
This is humongous what sheuncovering and that she's doing
it piece by piece by hand.
I would not have the patience.
I don't have the attention span.
It must have been physicallyquite strong as well, because
the just.
Getting like individual bits ofa nine meter long, like
(21:22):
presumably the skull, the, thevertebrae, they're all gonna be
super, super heavy.
So yeah, 100%.
Yeah., So it was a strangespecimens one cover, and again,
news spreads'cause it's like,what on earth is this?
It's the excitement, it's thecraziness of it.
And to be honest, in thebeginning they thought it was a
girl just making it up forattention, for media, for money,
(21:45):
and this just shows the sexismin all, in all of this.
It just shows again, how Mary isnot being properly welcomed into
the world of paleontologybecause simply because she's, a
female.
That's it.
Because she's doing the work.
She's taught herself.
She's uncovered the work.
She's sharing the work, which isso important in science, isn't
(22:05):
it?
There's no point in coveringsomething if you just keep it to
yourself.
And again, she's just notallowed in at all.
It's that, um, same thing with,Betsy Cadwalader that, um, you
know, she had these tales of heradventures.
And rather than people going,oh, that's so interesting.
It was like, yeah, no, thatdidn't happen.
And I, at least Mary Ning wasable to go, here it is.
(22:28):
Like, here's, here's the, theskeleton.
I didn't make it a completeskeleton.
Not even like, I've made a bitup.
This is the whole freakinganimal I've given you.
I've given you, oh, JesusChrist.
Yes, you're right.
It was completely disputed.
And it was even disputed byGeorge Kvi, who is a very
important man in paleontologyhistory.
(22:49):
He's like considered thegrandfather of paleontology.
He's the guy who made the field,started the field, um, and under
and how it relates to modernday.
He was a French, um, ologist,but also a stateman, so a
statesman.
So he's also very high in termsof ranking.
Um, he's described as one of thefinest minds in history it's
(23:12):
also important, um, just toreference that, Kir is also
remembered as a racist, anegomaniac and had a reputation
that intimidated others.
So just a bit of a dick.
He just Okay.
Just one of those kind of guysthat might account for him
despite having this obviousinterest and passion in his
(23:32):
field, being willing towholesale discount a discovery
for no good reason other than hewasn't that keen on who happened
to a gal.
Found it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And having been on social mediafar too much this week, reading,
some of the comments under theS'S wins.
It's the same.
It's exactly the same.
(23:53):
Yeah.
You know.
No, thank you.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
The.
Plessi sous caused finding,caused so much uproar and media
frenzy, if you like, um, that aspecial meeting was held because
no one could, believe Mary orcould work out it, if Mary was
telling the truth or not.
(24:14):
So a special meeting wasscheduled at the Geological
Society of London.
Because it was a big thinghappening in the industry in
quite a,, infantile industry,,and this is like a potentially a
life changing discovery.
What's happened?
And to be honest, these meetingsare quite common in medicine.
You know, people need to gettogether and they need to talk
(24:34):
about it.
But guess what?
Mary was not invited to thismeeting.
Heaven's a burp, even thoughshe's the only fricking person
who found it and was near it andwas actually looking at it in
like that much detail.
The, geological Society ofLondon refused to admit her for
this meeting, but also didn'tadmit any women into the society
(24:55):
until 1904.
It's such a, it's such a missedopportunity.
It's such a.
A shame because yeah, just thinkhow much more could have been
achieved if we had all, yeah,all the people had been welcome
to the table.
And also Mary found this and it,a woman found this and it also
(25:16):
took them 80 years to then belike, maybe we should invite
them in.
Then there was an 80 year gapbetween Mary and 1904.
Anyway, so at this meeting afterlengthy debate, er admitted to
his mistake and declared thatthe skeleton was a genuine
skeleton.
Um, please note he did notapologize to Mary well, we know
(25:38):
he is a bit of a turd, so thatisn't entirely surprising.
Still annoying, but stilldisappointing.
Just be polite.
Be polite.
Yeah.
Yet, despite Mary's growingreputation for finding and
identifying fossils, thescientific community was
hesitant to recognize her work.
What did they do?
Instead of recognizing her work,Cara not gonna like it.
(25:59):
They claim credit for her workinstead.
That is outrageous.
It's just theft.
Yes, absolutely.
It's just, and it's like we sawin the paintings, like we saw of
Judith.
They miss and they, what youwould say today is
misattributed, which is not trueeither.
(26:19):
It's stolen, stolen, stolen.
Um, so male s scientists whofrequently bought the fossils
from Mary.
You know, it would pop to hershop and buy some, Mary was the
one who uncovered these fossils,cleaned them, prepared them,
identified them.
I'm not being funny.
She even did like detailedillustrations of them to like
(26:41):
map them because recording it issuch an important part of
paleontology.
It's not just the finding, theidentifying the digging.
It is then recording this forfuture generations.
So she was a very talented,illustrator on top of everything
else.
They buy all this of Mary andthen would not credit her in
scientific papers.
(27:03):
Even when, um.
Talking about the, um, I sawthat we spoke about earlier.
So even that one where, youknow, it was even then, that's
quite a cool story, isn't it, atthese two 12 and a 10-year-old,
like finding this, like theydidn't even spin it that way,
you know?
I mean they just took credit,took credit.
(27:24):
I guess they were thinking like,who's gonna know?
Well, jokes on you chump becausewe know, we know now and, um,
she changed history 2025.
No.
Yes.
Right?
That's, who knows, does they notthink about this?
We're very disappointed in you.
Um, but that didn't stop Mary.
Of course it didn't because likeall our women in all our
(27:46):
podcasts, she carried on.
She was resilient, she neededfood on the table and nothing
was gonna stop her.
So she carried on searchingacross the dangerous, Jurassic
Coastline.
But she was, um, just a littleside note, she always had the
company of her trusted and loyalcompanion.
Trey, the dog.
So, um, Trey we think is kind oflike a spaniel type dog.
(28:10):
He's depicted in the onlyillustration we have of Mary.
He's like curled up, next to herin.
In the painting of Mary, thePortrait of Mary.
And we don't know much aboutTrey, but you just know, can you
see them just bobbing along thiscoastline together?
Oh, he's having a great time andgoing on ous.
Oh my God.
And she's having a great time,you know, just fabulous.
(28:32):
We don't have to imagine howsudden she was by his death in
1833 when a landslide, thatnearly killed Mary as well.
Caught Trey.
And again, just showing howdangerous this work that she's
doing is'cause it is a dangerouscoastline.
We know a bit about Trey becauseshe then wrote a heartfelt
(28:53):
letter to her friend, CharlotteMerchant, telling her about Trey
and how it made her feel.
Oh, that's so sad.
Oh, it's so sad.
But, so it's such an importantpart of who Mary is and also I
imagine he was so good atnavigating for her, like
spaniels are and you know,protecting and you can just
(29:14):
imagine it can't you So sweet.
Um, today there is a book outthere, about Mary's life told
from Trey's, the dog'sperspective.
Oh, how cute is that?
Oh my God.
I know.
Because dogs are the best andsuch lonely work and just have a
(29:35):
little buddy with you and, youknow, helping you along
rollicking about Yeah.
Keeping the vibe up.
Love it.
Companion.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Um, so yeah, it's very, um.
Five went on a picnic orsomething, isn't it?
You can totally kind of get thatvibe around it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So now we move on to the thirddiscovery I want to talk about
(29:56):
today.
So in 1828, Mary Again andcovered a strange jumble of
bones, it says in this article,which is a great line, because
it also just, it also shows thatshe's just finding these odd
things and then piecing themtogether, like it's really,
really quite fascinating.
But this time, um, she uncoveredsome bones, but in a formation
(30:18):
that she hadn't seen before.
And she worked out, they wereactually wings.
Oh.
So we are moving away fromlizards and things into winged
beings.
Once again, news traveled fast.
So scientists from London toParis, found out about her,
winged discovery.
And then they began to theorize.
(30:38):
And what this was, I would saythis about Mary, she knows how
to create a buzz.
Like people, she's like, here wego.
Ro always found another thingoff we go.
And I, not even, it does soundgenuinely exciting.
Awe inspiring, I think to be thefirst person to lay eyes on
something in millions of years.
Absolutely.
(30:59):
So casually, she found the firstever pterodactyl just as she
did, just casually.
At the time it wasn't calledpterodactyl, so they called it a
Dior, Fordom, which was thefirst type of, ter saw, to be
discovered outside of Germany.
(31:21):
And then the idea of the, theyrecoined it Axo, which is what
we know, later.
Um, I dunno, why, don't ask mewhy.
I dunno.
Um, the, again, she wasn'tallowed to publish this finding
at all.
Instead William Bookland, whowas Oxford's first geology
professor, presented this fossilto the Society of paleontology
(31:45):
and then casually took creditfor it, feeling like there's
some classism, uh, coming uphere.
Like in your intro you said.
About the things that she wasbeing, being working class as
part of this, because it's like,oh, you know, you are just an
(32:07):
ignorant laborer who's dug somerocks up.
Yeah, we'll take it from here.
And her, it's, you know, almostusing that lack of status to
sort of like, write her out ofthe picture and just ignore her
contribution.
He wasn't out there working andlooking and, you know, using his
(32:29):
skills.
Has it?
Can you imagine?
No, no, sorry.
Oh, it's very Downton Abbey,isn't it?
So upstairs, downstairs, it'spretty gross.
Mary also discovered like a, a,a ray like fish Squalor.
Raya.
Again, she, found it, produced areally high quality sketch of
(32:50):
the fossil.
So that illustration piececoming in again.
Oh.
But she was still not allowed tobe part of the academic
community around this.
And again, people are debatingwhat this, squid very like
fossil thing was without her inthe room.
It's insane.
I think includes an illustrationjust to show you what she was
producing, like the quality thatis incredibly detailed, really
(33:13):
beautiful.
I illustrative work.
Yeah, that's, I really took thatfrom it as well.
Like, these are beautiful.
Like imagine that and we wallIt's pretty exciting, isn't it?
It's pretty cool.
Even, even the penmanship isquite exciting, to be honest.
Oh yeah.
The whole thing.
Jesus.
For them to see that quality of,you know, self-taught work and
(33:36):
not think this is somebody whoseopinion we really need to get
in, just goes to show howfragile and petty these men
were.
Mm-hmm.
That, that's tragic.
What a loss.
What's a loss?
And I think also her passion forit wasn't just the big, exciting
stuff she was interested in,like her passion for this as a
field really comes throughbecause she was even and finding
(33:59):
these like cone shaped rocks onthe beach and she found them
every so often.
They were getting washed up whenshe was out there with tray.
And um, they were clearly notpebbles.
They were clearly not the kindof limestone pebbles that you
get on the, on the coastline.
Um, and she kept finding themand she kept cracking them open
with her hammer.
Because she's interested, right?
(34:21):
Mm.
She's actually wanting tocontribute to this society that
is cutting her out.
And um, what she found when sheopened them with a hammer is
that they tended to be full offishbones.
Right?
And she also noticed that theywould congregate in the middle
sections of her findings, of herskeletons.
And what she put together wasthe fact that, um, it's
(34:43):
basically dinosaur poop.
That's what she was puttingtogether, right?
So what she's known then isactually what they're eating.
Um, that's something we didn'tknow because we've only just
found these fossils.
So she even worked that out aswell.
And, um, it was her whosuggested that to William
Bookland'cause she contacted him'cause she knows him, that she
(35:04):
found these stones and that sheactually thinks they're feces.
And, and now that is a wholesection of paleontology.
Like there's a whole dedicatedarm of paleontology, to, they
call it coprolite now.
Um, but she fat basically foundthat arm of paleontology.
She was the one who made thatconnection.
Like, come on.
She's making waves in all thesedifferent realms.
(35:25):
Even if it is dinosaur pooh.
Well it's, it's what happenswhen a suitably curious mind
comes to the fore that somebodysays.
What else?
What else is going on?
What can I find out?
Yes.
What's go, what's that thing?
That passion and drive?
Yes.
And curiosity.
And I think it can be the casethat, that leads a person to
(35:49):
formal education or when thoseopportunities aren't there.
It can be the case that she'sout there with a hammer
discovering po.
And despite this discovery,Butland still receives more
credit a day than she ever doesin this, coprolite kind of arm
of paleontology.
And that is due to the bias,which, the blog I mentioned
earlier really focuses on, Marycontinues on a seriously fossil,
(36:12):
after fossil, after fossil,because she's selling these, but
also she's discovering them.
The other contribution, um,outstanding contribution that
she has made to this field isfueling public interest in
geology, in paleontology.
People were interested becauseof what she was finding and that
it was exciting and you had thistourist piece that I spoke about
(36:34):
earlier, and then suddenly,fossil museums started to become
a thing and, there was a pointwhere she was struggling to keep
up with the band of the museumsbecause so many people were
interested in it.
And there's.
A little quote there, which kindof touches a little bit on this,
um, this tussle we've gotbetween her wanting to survive
(36:56):
and eat, and this is herlivelihood, but also against
the, I want to be part of thisrealm that I'm not allowed in
and I'm banging on the door.
So if you could read that forus, that'd be cool.
But she was a commercial fossilhunter.
She had to sell what she found.
Therefore, the fossils tended tobe credited to museums in the
(37:17):
name of the rich man that paidfor them rather than the poor
woman who found them.
This isn't just about gender.
The history of science islittered with the neglected
contributions of working classscientists, which just shows how
on the money you were with yourinsights earlier that you were
spot on.
This is just such a tussle of,um, science.
(37:40):
So it's really important tonote, which I found in one of
the articles that everything weknow about Mary is basically
based on really poorly cited andpoorly referenced material
written decades after her death,because, very importantly,'cause
she wasn't allowed in.
So no one was making notes, noone was documenting her
contributions.
No one was diarizing it.
(38:01):
Mary never got to publish herown material, but she did write
many letters and journals, whichwe kind of referenced earlier
with Trey.
But these letters and journalswere often mishandled and lost
by museums because they weren'tdeemed important enough.
For example, a personal letter,of Mary's was marked by the
British Museum as quote unquotelacking importance.
(38:26):
I know.
And you just know that theyweren't doing this with the
men's discoveries and the men'spersonal letters and everything
like that, that you just knowthey're not, so frustrating.
And what else have we lost?
Because of people being sexist,like with post heaven sake.
And some of the.
The fossils that she's found hasalso been lost because they were
founded by a woman and they werejust not deemed as important.
(38:49):
So they just got either tossedout or archived, never found.
There's a really, strong quotehere that just shows what I'm
trying to get at.
In the world of, museums, weoften assume that any portrayal
of a woman scientist isrepresentation.
Is it really representation ifwe rely on Heavily mythologized
(39:11):
versions of women that are notbased in fact.
Yeah.
So what this is kind of gettingat, is this idea of, um.
They saw Mary as playing,playing with sandcastles almost,
and just like a little girltoting along the beach and oh,
(39:32):
oh, she's just stumbled across.
And she just got lucky and itkind of makes her sound really
childish and because of what weknow of her, that's how
sometimes she comes across.
They're presented as a fairytalein a way.
Um, but I'm not being funny.
That's how I found Maryoriginally, was that there was a
book in a charity shop, and Iwas looking through it, it was
(39:52):
what it was called, but it wasvery much one of those books
where each page had it, uh, eachpage had a woman on it.
And, um, it was beautifulillustrations and it was like,
and it's presented in childlikelanguage because it is a
children's book.
But that's how I found Mary.
And it's like, oh, come on.
You know what I mean?
Like, I should have found Maryin a different way and I should
(40:13):
have found, or there should havebeen like a next level where
when you were a teen and youwere in school, you were told
more about.
In more detail that sort of likecircular curriculum where you
get age appropriatesupplementary.
Yes.
So this is my dream.
My dream is to mess up thehistory curriculum and like,
(40:35):
this is what I want this to be.
I don't wanna spend six weeks onWorld War I.
Yes, it's important, but there'sso much other, more history out
there.
And it's taken me until like,what?
I'm 30, whatever now to reallydig into this part of me that
loves these stories.
Right.
Because I wasn't allowed to atschool.
So you're totally right.
There should have been a nextlevel of a hundred percent.
Um, anyway, I've totally goneoff a tangent because I'm angry.
(40:56):
I'm just an angry.
I love your rage.
No, it's driving so much anger.
Keep being angry.
It's good.
Good.
Um.
So Mary, died in 1847.
She was only 47 years old.
She tragically died of breastcancer.
Imagine what more she could havedone.
She didn't.
And she did unfortunately sufferfinancial strain throughout her
(41:19):
lifetime, the Natural HistoryMuseum actually does showcase
now several of Mary's finesincluding, um, the skeletons
that we spoke about today, andher legacy does live on,
throughout the Jurassic Coast,which I'm going to this weekend.
So I cannot wait to find outabout that.
It's gonna be amazing.
The Jurassic Coast is now, aUNESCO site of World Heritage
(41:39):
and it's where scientists,amateurs and, adventurous
children alike gather around allyear round to hunt for the next
big find.
We've ended with the Statue ofMary that is there.
Maybe I can go see it thisweekend.
That would be cool.
Oh, that'd be amazing.
And you can see, can you seeTrey in the statue?
I he made it to the statue.
(42:01):
So this is the statue that thatlady you quoted at the
beginning, Anya Pearson,campaigned for, so she managed
to get this bronze statue.
I'm so glad she, it's pretty'swonderful and I love the little
detail of the fossils on herhemline.
Can you see that?
That's pretty special.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
(42:21):
It's pretty cool.
Um, and we've just got a littlequote to end, she was not a
simple minded country womanselling seashells by the
seashore.
Yay.
And that is the story ofMaryanne.
Thank you so much.
That really adds depth to howshe found what she found it, you
(42:43):
know, that thing.
It's so easy to think she's justfluked into these things.
But she had to understand inorder to keep going and, and,
and sweat and bleed and, falland tumble.
And, and I bet her knees weresore as.
Can you imagine?
I struggle with a bit ofgardening mate.
(43:03):
She, like, her knees would'vebeen rock hard.
Oh, you know when you're at thebeach and your like, feet get
wet and the sand stick to them.
It's so icky.
And the idea of being out therein long trailing skirts, day
after day, damp and sandy, ugh.
But she, she cared.
She wanted to do the work.
(43:23):
Here we are talking about herhundreds of years later.
Yay.
So I love it.
Thank you very much for bringingthat
audio2663295054 (43:36):
Thank you for listening to this episode of She
Changed History.
If you enjoyed it, please like,subscribe and comment below.
Find us on our socials,Facebook, Instagram, and
YouTube.
If you've got any ideas of womenyou'd like us to cover in a
future episode, please commenton the socials or email us at
She Changed history@gmail.com.
This is what, this is what'sbeen keeping me going, so, so I
just gotta get through to eight.
Just gotta get through to eight.
Aw, that's nice.
That's so lovely.
Uh, should we try again and seehow we go?
Yeah, yeah.
Hi Kara.
Hi Vicki.
How's it going?
I'm good.
How are you?
Yes, very well, thank you.
(00:28):
We seem to have worked out anylittle glitchy gremlins in the.
In the connection here so far?
Yeah, I think we're doing good.
Yeah, let's see how we go.
Um, I was just saying to you howmuch, um, I've been looking
forward to this recording, um,because it's um, such a, like,
such a cool, like all our agesare cool, but I dunno, I just
feel so invigorated about thisstory, so I'm really excited.
(00:51):
Love it.
To share that with you.
And the other exciting bit ofnews that we've got is we've got
some proper, proper, she changehistory news, haven't we?
We have, um, so wonderful Simon.
Another, she Chase history host.
He, and his lovely wife, cathave welcomed their new baby
into the world, which iswonderful.
(01:13):
Um, everyone's doing well.
Mum, baby dad we think is doingwell, and, her name is Adeline.
And, um, yes, we, it is just,just a really happy, there's
lots of photo spam isn't thereof like, baby Oh yeah.
Spam.
And it's just full of love andit's just the most adorable
thing.
It's such a nice, lovely thingto have a gorgeous bit of news
(01:36):
like that to share.
We're all so happy.
Yes.
It's just happy, happy news.
The quiet chat is blowing up.
It's just all these, little oldladies swooning over Adeline,
It's the cutest thread.
So when she finally gets,introduced properly to the choir
in person, it's going to have tobe like, they're they'll have to
be a security perimeter.
Yeah.
(01:56):
'cause it will be a full onstampede.
It's gonna be an event.
Like they're gonna need to planthat.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Maybe they should be on stage sothat people can't, you know, get
too close because it's, it'sgonna be intense.
That feels a bit jesusy.
That feels like you would withJesus Lion.
Don't you think we Lion Kingwant to Ego Booster Lion.
Oh my God, she's a baby.
She won't remember.
It'll be fine.
(02:18):
Lion King.
That baby up show every day.
I like that.
And then we can all singCorrelate to her.
That'll be cool.
Yeah.
Um, but between now and then,would you like to hear a story?
Does that sound good?
Yes, please.
Wonderful.
Um, so.
Imagine a glint in the stone, ashape emerging.
Unlike anything the world hasever seen, the thrill of unearth
(02:42):
in a creature from a forgottenage.
A true pioneer, Mary Ningbrought, never seen before,
dinosaurs to light, yet picturethe sting, the injustice.
When your monumental discoveriesborn of your own grit and
genius, accredited to others,simply because you are a working
class woman in a man's world.
(03:04):
This is her story.
So sources today are, um, lotsof national history Museum
articles.
'cause of course, um, A BBCarticle.
The Times did a really good, um,kind of, not so much about Mary,
but about beach, British beachesin general.
(03:24):
Strange science.
Berkeley, university have anarticle and a really good blog.
I just wanted to check this oneout called Fossil Bias Blog,
which is all about sexism inpaleontology, which is just such
a cool blog.
Wow.
I know.
So let me introduce you to Mary.
So Mary was born in thesouthwest, um, English county of
(03:46):
Dset, which I'm going to thisweekend.
So it's all meant to be now.
It's just all coming together.
I didn't know that.
And this is in 1799.
So this is, a period whereGeorge II was on the throne.
Napoleon, was being Napoleonlots there.
And also it was around the timethat Jane Austen, was writing,
(04:08):
her work so Sense sensibility.
So the town that Mary was bornin was called Lime s um, and
it's a small coastal town.
Endorse it and what we call theJurassic Coastline.
And the reason we call itJurassic will become very, very
clear shortly.
I've got a little quote aboutMary in her upbringing, if you'd
like to read it for me.
(04:29):
Yeah, you bet.
Mary Ning was three things.
You did not want to be in 19thcentury Britain.
She was female working class andpoor, says campaigner, Anya
Pearson.
Um, so Anya Pearson will come uplater, but yes, she was those
three things.
So she was female, working classand poor.
I think that just shows thehardship.
She was up against whatever Marywanted to do.
(04:51):
On top of that, her family werevery religious, but they were
Protestant, who.
Separated from the Church ofEngland.
So there was a lot of prejudicearound that community in general
at that time.
Yeah.
Every direction.
Gosh.
Like shes getting, oh my gosh,just give the girl a break.
Mary's father, Richard, um, wasa cabinet maker, but he was also
(05:13):
an, an mature fossil collector,very telling.
And by the time, um, Mary was,primary school age, like five or
six, she was out helping him.
Like, because what else are yougonna do with his child when
you've got to go and do things?
Her dad took her on these littleadventures, which was very
unusual at the time for theseGeorgian girls growing up in
(05:34):
this quite oppressive society.
So it was her dad who taughtMary how to look for how to
clean fossils, how to, displaythem in the right way and all
this kind of stuff.
And he actually sold some in hisshop.
So that was a very importantincome for the family because
these fossils were very, um,very new at the time.
(05:56):
Right.
And, um, this kind of time inBritain is.
It's very interesting forscience in general in the
educated spheres.
But it's also a really importanttime for gothic literature is
coming up and all these kind ofinterests in different, spaces.
So, um, it was kind of a bit ofa novelty feature, but if you
(06:17):
are on the coastal town inBritain and there will be people
to, to sell that to.
The, um, the resourcefulness ofit that they are living in a
seaside town.
They've got these fossils, sothey make the most of what
they've got and perhaps ifthey'd been living someplace
else, it would've been someplaceelse, something else.
But yeah, just as much asteaching her how to find and
(06:40):
look after fossils, he'steaching her how to survive and
make the most of what the worldgives you.
Oh my gosh, absolutely.
It's harvesting off the land,isn't it?
It's the same as if you were afarmer.
It same if you had a bunch ofapple trees in your garden, of
course you're gonna, and it wasa lifeline for this family in
terms of financial income.
Absolutely hit the nail on thehead.
(07:02):
So Mary had little, littleeducation, which wasn't unusual
for working class girls at thetime.
She was able to read, which waslike tick one up.
Brilliant.
But on top of that, she taughtherself geology and anatomy.
So she studied in her own timeof her own back.
No one was asking her to dothis.
(07:22):
She was just fascinated andwanted to learn, which I'm there
for it absolutely.
Her dad, suddenly died in 1810from tb and Joseph, her brother,
took up a poster as anapprentice in, upholstering,
which kind of leans into thatcabinet, building that her
father did.
And it was Molly, actually hermother, who really encouraged
(07:46):
Mary to keep finding thesefossils because they needed the
money and they needed to pay offsome debt.
So it was Molly who was like,you know, it's on you now.
Like off you go, go hunting kindof thing.
As I alluded to earlier, you'dthink, well, who are, who's
buying these fossils?
You know, who's interested inthem?
And it's a really interestingtime in, British history is that
(08:08):
it's the first time the Britishseaside holiday really came to
light.
So British cytologies are quitea cultural kind of phenomenon
now, aren't they?
Absolute.
You know, you think duck chairson the beach, you think,,
handkerchiefs on the head, youthink, um, what else do you
think?
Hooker duck, candy, Flos donut,all that kind of stuff.
(08:29):
It's a lifeline, like you say,for those small coastal towns up
and down the country is such a,such a British staple of culture
for me.
Absolutely.
And the.
That was the type of thing thatcompanies would organize.
The, um, the company Bino wherethey would hire a little, a
little bus and um, kind of geteverybody loaded in with their
(08:50):
family and off they'd all go tothe seaside.
I wonder if that's about theperiod where that sort of thing
is starting to, to take off.
Yeah.
And there's reasons for that.
So one of the reasons is,because Napoleon was out, you
know, raging on, um, civilianswere instead encouraged of going
abroad, like taking a shipsomewhere or doing something.
(09:12):
It was encouraged for them tostay home so they would flock to
towns like Lime, Regis.
Um, lime res was very superioras well in terms of that.
It had a bathing machine, which,um, is like, so you could public
bath.
So it is just like a.
A public bath.
I think that's kind of how Iread it.
(09:32):
And there was one in Brighton,great Yarmouth Margate as well.
And what really kind of put thecherry on the cake of the great
British holiday was King Georgeiii, in 1789, chose, he could
have gone anywhere in the world.
He's the king of the England,the British Empire.
He, he chose to go to Waymouthfor his summer holiday.
(09:52):
Wow.
And he wanted to be on Britishsoil.
And that because of that,everyone wanted to do it too.
I mean, it's, he's aninfluencer.
He's getting out there settingthe trends.
Damn right.
Damn right.
He might've, might've been mad,but, you know, he was also mad
for it on the, on the part ofthe party train.
And what you gonna do whenyou're on the beach can, I don't
(10:14):
think candy floss has preventedyet, so you're gonna go fossil
hunting.
Basically, it became like a bitof a pastime.
Um, it was very fashionable forJordan, so you can imagine in
the attire going out and,inspecting and things like that.
So it turns out Mary was bang ontrend whether she wanted to be
or not.
Like I said, Mary started whenshe was five or six.
(10:34):
So over time she got morerefined at finding these
fossils, because I'm not beingfunny.
Fossils aren't lying about, weare not collecting seashells
right now.
We are digging, we are hunting.
We are diving into layers ofrock.
Okay.
We're not just, you know, goingabout with our little, little
bucket.
Um, and actually the work offossil hunting is really hard
(10:55):
work.
Like it's effort.
It's, you have to carry heavytools with you, you have to
almost hike as well.
Like the Jurassic coastline isnot flat, like it is hilly.
It's dangerous.
The erosion of cliffs and stuff.
It's even now there are signseverywhere.
Just saying how dangerous it isto be near.
Don't die.
Those surfaces don't die.
Yeah.
Like, and um, also you've gotthe English channel thriving at
(11:18):
you, you have to be skilled atthis.
You can't just bob along.
Like it's all right, the touristlike doing it for a day.
And I'm not really funny, maybefinding the odd rock, but like
actually to do proper fossilhunting is really quite, a huge
undertaking.
And for that to be yourlivelihood, you are relying on
your skill of finding andhunting.
(11:39):
Like you dunno what's coming.
It's not, constant flow is itof, income that's gonna come
your way.
Um, but.
Her hard work did pay off.
So I'm gonna talk you through afew of her fines, three in
detail, and they'll kind of takeus through her life.
Does that sound good?
Yeah.
so around 1811, Mary was 12 andit was actually Joseph who
(12:03):
actually did the fine.
So he found this strange lookingcreepy skull and he didn't know
what the skull was of, right?
So it was quite narrow, quitelong.
And he was like, Mary, look atthis.
And she was like, well, what isit?
And it was Mary then whosearched and.
Painstakingly dug the outline ofthis skeleton, right.
(12:25):
And this skeleton just keptgoing and going and going.
And by the time she was donethis skeleton that she had
uncovered it deep in rock,right?
Dirty, and on her own, in herlittle bonnet, she managed to
find a 5.2 meter long skeleton.
Oh my God.
That's like, I can't imagine 15feet long.
(12:48):
So a car, a modern car, twocars, car, oh, maybe.
Yeah, I think two cars, probablytwo compact cars.
That's crazy.
And that act of taking it out ofthe rock without damaging it and
the anxiety it took months.
Oh yeah.
Somebody could come and find itand steal it away.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's so true.
(13:09):
Actually.
High drama.
And this took months as well.
So by, by the time shediscovered it, everyone in town
kind of knew what she was doing.
How you actually.
Fossil hunt is that you have bigtools and you have little tools.
So you have,, hammers andchisels that remove the top
layer of the rock and the soil.
And that layer is called theoverburden.
(13:30):
So that's quite big hacking kindof ability.
And then, after you've got thattop player off, you go further
in and you go with like moredelicate tools.
You go dental picks, you goknives, brushes, that kind of
thing, um, to remove thesurrounding material.
But what you do is follow the,um, natural plane of the rock
(13:52):
and the bone.
So you find weaknesses in therock.
So that's how you kind of chiparound the bone is like just
chipping out the weakest part.
So that's how you preserve thebone.
So that is a skill, right?
You can't just be bashing inthere right where you are.
With your chisel.
And also, like you said, today,these are so fragile.
These are not wanting to breakthem and not wanting, they've
(14:15):
been preserved for millions ofyears.
And here's you with this hammercoming in as well.
Like if, if you were handed arock and you were told there is
a, you know, a bird's skullinside this rock, you've got a
mental image of what that skullmight look like because you have
textbooks and you went toscience class and you have the
(14:36):
internet.
But this is a 12-year-old kid inGeorgian times who maybe might
have seen a picture in a book ifshe was very, very lucky.
So working on her intuition andlooking really, really
carefully, if she's not todamage this thing, that's an
incredible thing to need to dowithout any mental image of what
(14:58):
you're actually going to try toget out of that rock.
Yeah.
And on top of all that, she's12.
12.
Just the idea of a little12-year-old kid wailing away
with a pick, trying to break upa rock.
That's craziness.
Absolutely.
So she very carefully and veryaccurately with that skill we
(15:18):
just spoke about, uncovered thismassive skeleton.
And obviously scientists gotwind of this right in, in London
and they initially thought itmust have been some kind of
crocodile and they also assumedat that time because it was
completely unrecognizable, itmust be migrated of some, far
off land.
Like they saw it as like, um,foreign in a mysterious way, the
(15:42):
term far off land makes me thinkof like Arabian knights and kind
of things like that.
Just completely ununrecognizable territory.
Napoleon Spy Crocodiles.
That's the but no, that youpicked up on three words.
I've said I'm, that's, that'sthe headline for me.
There we go.
(16:03):
But no, that I understand.
They kind of looked at it andwent, well, dunno what that is.
Must have come here from faraway.
It's something exotic like,yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
That's it.
You've got the vibe.
And this was debated about whatthe skeleton was for years,
right?
It was this kind of perplexingcreature that they'd uncovered
and in the end they actuallynamed it themselves.
(16:26):
They were like, well, it must benew.
It must be something we haven'thad before.
So they named it the, um, I,I'll probably butcher this, but
we'll give it a Go Iru, whichmeans fish lizard.
Literally what it means.
Um, because they couldn't maketheir mind up if it was a fish
short lizard.
(16:47):
So they were like, why not?
We'll call it, just call it bothFish lizard, you know.
Covers all your bases.
And they eventually determinedthat it lived 201 to 194 million
years ago.
And Mary just took that up.
Pretty cool.
Fun fact, these fish lizards arestill being discovered two
today.
(17:08):
as recently as 2021, um, one wasuncovered in Rutland Water
Nature Reserve, after a LagoonIsland was drained out for
landscaping and that it took twomonths to excavate that one as
well.
And that is with moderntechnology doing that.
So that's, that just shows youpresumably not, not 12 year olds
(17:28):
either.
Like that's, that's soimpressive.
I know.
I've got little quote therefrom, a paleontologist who
worked on that Rutland discoveryshe wants.
Dr.
Dean Lomax, a paleontologist whospecializes in ik.
Theos says Britain is thebirthplace of Ik.
Theos, their fossils have beenunearthed here for over 200
(17:50):
years with the first scientificfindings dating back to Mary
Ning and her discoveries alongthe Jurassic Coast.
And it all, it's all because ofMary.
It is incredible.
I have a fondness for Ithe OSAsbecause when I was really small,
I had a book that mom boughtthat had dinosaurs and that was
the, like the facing inside thebook.
(18:10):
I think the first picture insidethe cover was this Ithe
skeleton.
And now I know that that waslike a shout out to our girl.
That's, that's incredible.
Woohoo.
Love it.
So Mary keeps on ticking, youknow, this is her livelihood,
remember?
So she's letting the scientistshash it out and she carries on.
And in 1823, Mary was again thefirst person.
(18:34):
This is twice now.
She's the first person todiscover a complete skeleton of
a au, um, which translates?
It's less exciting.
It just means near to a reptile.
Something near reptile, right.
Ish.
Um.
Yeah.
This is another,, quote justabout this one for me, if that's
(18:54):
okay.
It is distinguishable by itssmall head, long and slender
neck, broad turtle, like body, ashort tail, and two pairs of
large elongated paddles.
It lends its name to the orderple, Soria of which is, it is an
early but fairly typical member.
(19:17):
This is probably my favorite oneout of the three because it just
looks like a diplo, so it's likeunderwater.
So I've, if you scroll down alittle bit.
Oh, um, that's the, that guy,that's what they think it's
gonna like.
Yeah, but doesn't he look justfab?
Just what I, what?
He's having a great time.
He's just, yeah.
With his paddle, like with hisfins, it is pretty amazing.
(19:39):
Just supremely adapted to hisenvironment, isn't he?
And like the size of that, evenin that image just there, you're
like, that is a beast.
That is.
So those things he's chasing inthat photo.
Photo.
Yes.
That photo that, let's try thatagain.
The things he's chasing in thatwhat is clearly an illustration,
(19:59):
are they supposed to befull-sized squid because he is a
unit?
If that's true.
I think so.
I agree.
I think that's true.
Holy cow.
Okay.
Yeah, that's a big old skeletonfor now.
What?
13, 14-year-old girl.
Yeah.
Excavated.
So it's about three meters long,so that kind of makes sense,
doesn't it?
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Um, so.
(20:19):
I just think it's so cool.
So Mary, to make up thisskeleton again, digging and
chiseling and all weathers.
This is an all year round job.
In her big skirt.
She's not even in like mountinggear or anything.
She's like this big floppy skirtand bonnet.
So she uncovered 600 pieces ofbone that made up the skeleton.
(20:41):
That it's 600 pieces of bone, soit is not like the pleso is made
up of 600 bones.
It's just that both break,right?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
I'm with you.
But she uncovered them all andshe worked out, um, it was all
together.
She understood that it was, onebeast., Again, this is not a
(21:02):
small job.
This is humongous what sheuncovering and that she's doing
it piece by piece by hand.
I would not have the patience.
I don't have the attention span.
It must have been physicallyquite strong as well, because
the just.
Getting like individual bits ofa nine meter long, like
(21:22):
presumably the skull, the, thevertebrae, they're all gonna be
super, super heavy.
So yeah, 100%.
Yeah., So it was a strangespecimens one cover, and again,
news spreads'cause it's like,what on earth is this?
It's the excitement, it's thecraziness of it.
And to be honest, in thebeginning they thought it was a
girl just making it up forattention, for media, for money,
(21:45):
and this just shows the sexismin all, in all of this.
It just shows again, how Mary isnot being properly welcomed into
the world of paleontologybecause simply because she's, a
female.
That's it.
Because she's doing the work.
She's taught herself.
She's uncovered the work.
She's sharing the work, which isso important in science, isn't
(22:05):
it?
There's no point in coveringsomething if you just keep it to
yourself.
And again, she's just notallowed in at all.
It's that, um, same thing with,Betsy Cadwalader that, um, you
know, she had these tales of heradventures.
And rather than people going,oh, that's so interesting.
It was like, yeah, no, thatdidn't happen.
And I, at least Mary Ning wasable to go, here it is.
(22:28):
Like, here's, here's the, theskeleton.
I didn't make it a completeskeleton.
Not even like, I've made a bitup.
This is the whole freakinganimal I've given you.
I've given you, oh, JesusChrist.
Yes, you're right.
It was completely disputed.
And it was even disputed byGeorge Kvi, who is a very
important man in paleontologyhistory.
(22:49):
He's like considered thegrandfather of paleontology.
He's the guy who made the field,started the field, um, and under
and how it relates to modernday.
He was a French, um, ologist,but also a stateman, so a
statesman.
So he's also very high in termsof ranking.
Um, he's described as one of thefinest minds in history it's
(23:12):
also important, um, just toreference that, Kir is also
remembered as a racist, anegomaniac and had a reputation
that intimidated others.
So just a bit of a dick.
He just Okay.
Just one of those kind of guysthat might account for him
despite having this obviousinterest and passion in his
(23:32):
field, being willing towholesale discount a discovery
for no good reason other than hewasn't that keen on who happened
to a gal.
Found it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And having been on social mediafar too much this week, reading,
some of the comments under theS'S wins.
It's the same.
It's exactly the same.
(23:53):
Yeah.
You know.
No, thank you.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
The.
Plessi sous caused finding,caused so much uproar and media
frenzy, if you like, um, that aspecial meeting was held because
no one could, believe Mary orcould work out it, if Mary was
telling the truth or not.
(24:14):
So a special meeting wasscheduled at the Geological
Society of London.
Because it was a big thinghappening in the industry in
quite a,, infantile industry,,and this is like a potentially a
life changing discovery.
What's happened?
And to be honest, these meetingsare quite common in medicine.
You know, people need to gettogether and they need to talk
(24:34):
about it.
But guess what?
Mary was not invited to thismeeting.
Heaven's a burp, even thoughshe's the only fricking person
who found it and was near it andwas actually looking at it in
like that much detail.
The, geological Society ofLondon refused to admit her for
this meeting, but also didn'tadmit any women into the society
(24:55):
until 1904.
It's such a, it's such a missedopportunity.
It's such a.
A shame because yeah, just thinkhow much more could have been
achieved if we had all, yeah,all the people had been welcome
to the table.
And also Mary found this and it,a woman found this and it also
(25:16):
took them 80 years to then belike, maybe we should invite
them in.
Then there was an 80 year gapbetween Mary and 1904.
Anyway, so at this meeting afterlengthy debate, er admitted to
his mistake and declared thatthe skeleton was a genuine
skeleton.
Um, please note he did notapologize to Mary well, we know
(25:38):
he is a bit of a turd, so thatisn't entirely surprising.
Still annoying, but stilldisappointing.
Just be polite.
Be polite.
Yeah.
Yet, despite Mary's growingreputation for finding and
identifying fossils, thescientific community was
hesitant to recognize her work.
What did they do?
Instead of recognizing her work,Cara not gonna like it.
(25:59):
They claim credit for her workinstead.
That is outrageous.
It's just theft.
Yes, absolutely.
It's just, and it's like we sawin the paintings, like we saw of
Judith.
They miss and they, what youwould say today is
misattributed, which is not trueeither.
(26:19):
It's stolen, stolen, stolen.
Um, so male s scientists whofrequently bought the fossils
from Mary.
You know, it would pop to hershop and buy some, Mary was the
one who uncovered these fossils,cleaned them, prepared them,
identified them.
I'm not being funny.
She even did like detailedillustrations of them to like
(26:41):
map them because recording it issuch an important part of
paleontology.
It's not just the finding, theidentifying the digging.
It is then recording this forfuture generations.
So she was a very talented,illustrator on top of everything
else.
They buy all this of Mary andthen would not credit her in
scientific papers.
(27:03):
Even when, um.
Talking about the, um, I sawthat we spoke about earlier.
So even that one where, youknow, it was even then, that's
quite a cool story, isn't it, atthese two 12 and a 10-year-old,
like finding this, like theydidn't even spin it that way,
you know?
I mean they just took credit,took credit.
(27:24):
I guess they were thinking like,who's gonna know?
Well, jokes on you chump becausewe know, we know now and, um,
she changed history 2025.
No.
Yes.
Right?
That's, who knows, does they notthink about this?
We're very disappointed in you.
Um, but that didn't stop Mary.
Of course it didn't because likeall our women in all our
(27:46):
podcasts, she carried on.
She was resilient, she neededfood on the table and nothing
was gonna stop her.
So she carried on searchingacross the dangerous, Jurassic
Coastline.
But she was, um, just a littleside note, she always had the
company of her trusted and loyalcompanion.
Trey, the dog.
So, um, Trey we think is kind oflike a spaniel type dog.
(28:10):
He's depicted in the onlyillustration we have of Mary.
He's like curled up, next to herin.
In the painting of Mary, thePortrait of Mary.
And we don't know much aboutTrey, but you just know, can you
see them just bobbing along thiscoastline together?
Oh, he's having a great time andgoing on ous.
Oh my God.
And she's having a great time,you know, just fabulous.
(28:32):
We don't have to imagine howsudden she was by his death in
1833 when a landslide, thatnearly killed Mary as well.
Caught Trey.
And again, just showing howdangerous this work that she's
doing is'cause it is a dangerouscoastline.
We know a bit about Trey becauseshe then wrote a heartfelt
(28:53):
letter to her friend, CharlotteMerchant, telling her about Trey
and how it made her feel.
Oh, that's so sad.
Oh, it's so sad.
But, so it's such an importantpart of who Mary is and also I
imagine he was so good atnavigating for her, like
spaniels are and you know,protecting and you can just
(29:14):
imagine it can't you So sweet.
Um, today there is a book outthere, about Mary's life told
from Trey's, the dog'sperspective.
Oh, how cute is that?
Oh my God.
I know.
Because dogs are the best andsuch lonely work and just have a
(29:35):
little buddy with you and, youknow, helping you along
rollicking about Yeah.
Keeping the vibe up.
Love it.
Companion.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Um, so yeah, it's very, um.
Five went on a picnic orsomething, isn't it?
You can totally kind of get thatvibe around it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So now we move on to the thirddiscovery I want to talk about
(29:56):
today.
So in 1828, Mary Again andcovered a strange jumble of
bones, it says in this article,which is a great line, because
it also just, it also shows thatshe's just finding these odd
things and then piecing themtogether, like it's really,
really quite fascinating.
But this time, um, she uncoveredsome bones, but in a formation
(30:18):
that she hadn't seen before.
And she worked out, they wereactually wings.
Oh.
So we are moving away fromlizards and things into winged
beings.
Once again, news traveled fast.
So scientists from London toParis, found out about her,
winged discovery.
And then they began to theorize.
(30:38):
And what this was, I would saythis about Mary, she knows how
to create a buzz.
Like people, she's like, here wego.
Ro always found another thingoff we go.
And I, not even, it does soundgenuinely exciting.
Awe inspiring, I think to be thefirst person to lay eyes on
something in millions of years.
Absolutely.
(30:59):
So casually, she found the firstever pterodactyl just as she
did, just casually.
At the time it wasn't calledpterodactyl, so they called it a
Dior, Fordom, which was thefirst type of, ter saw, to be
discovered outside of Germany.
(31:21):
And then the idea of the, theyrecoined it Axo, which is what
we know, later.
Um, I dunno, why, don't ask mewhy.
I dunno.
Um, the, again, she wasn'tallowed to publish this finding
at all.
Instead William Bookland, whowas Oxford's first geology
professor, presented this fossilto the Society of paleontology
(31:45):
and then casually took creditfor it, feeling like there's
some classism, uh, coming uphere.
Like in your intro you said.
About the things that she wasbeing, being working class as
part of this, because it's like,oh, you know, you are just an
(32:07):
ignorant laborer who's dug somerocks up.
Yeah, we'll take it from here.
And her, it's, you know, almostusing that lack of status to
sort of like, write her out ofthe picture and just ignore her
contribution.
He wasn't out there working andlooking and, you know, using his
(32:29):
skills.
Has it?
Can you imagine?
No, no, sorry.
Oh, it's very Downton Abbey,isn't it?
So upstairs, downstairs, it'spretty gross.
Mary also discovered like a, a,a ray like fish Squalor.
Raya.
Again, she, found it, produced areally high quality sketch of
(32:50):
the fossil.
So that illustration piececoming in again.
Oh.
But she was still not allowed tobe part of the academic
community around this.
And again, people are debatingwhat this, squid very like
fossil thing was without her inthe room.
It's insane.
I think includes an illustrationjust to show you what she was
producing, like the quality thatis incredibly detailed, really
(33:13):
beautiful.
I illustrative work.
Yeah, that's, I really took thatfrom it as well.
Like, these are beautiful.
Like imagine that and we wallIt's pretty exciting, isn't it?
It's pretty cool.
Even, even the penmanship isquite exciting, to be honest.
Oh yeah.
The whole thing.
Jesus.
For them to see that quality of,you know, self-taught work and
(33:36):
not think this is somebody whoseopinion we really need to get
in, just goes to show howfragile and petty these men
were.
Mm-hmm.
That, that's tragic.
What a loss.
What's a loss?
And I think also her passion forit wasn't just the big, exciting
stuff she was interested in,like her passion for this as a
field really comes throughbecause she was even and finding
(33:59):
these like cone shaped rocks onthe beach and she found them
every so often.
They were getting washed up whenshe was out there with tray.
And um, they were clearly notpebbles.
They were clearly not the kindof limestone pebbles that you
get on the, on the coastline.
Um, and she kept finding themand she kept cracking them open
with her hammer.
Because she's interested, right?
(34:21):
Mm.
She's actually wanting tocontribute to this society that
is cutting her out.
And um, what she found when sheopened them with a hammer is
that they tended to be full offishbones.
Right?
And she also noticed that theywould congregate in the middle
sections of her findings, of herskeletons.
And what she put together wasthe fact that, um, it's
(34:43):
basically dinosaur poop.
That's what she was puttingtogether, right?
So what she's known then isactually what they're eating.
Um, that's something we didn'tknow because we've only just
found these fossils.
So she even worked that out aswell.
And, um, it was her whosuggested that to William
Bookland'cause she contacted him'cause she knows him, that she
(35:04):
found these stones and that sheactually thinks they're feces.
And, and now that is a wholesection of paleontology.
Like there's a whole dedicatedarm of paleontology, to, they
call it coprolite now.
Um, but she fat basically foundthat arm of paleontology.
She was the one who made thatconnection.
Like, come on.
She's making waves in all thesedifferent realms.
(35:25):
Even if it is dinosaur pooh.
Well it's, it's what happenswhen a suitably curious mind
comes to the fore that somebodysays.
What else?
What else is going on?
What can I find out?
Yes.
What's go, what's that thing?
That passion and drive?
Yes.
And curiosity.
And I think it can be the casethat, that leads a person to
(35:49):
formal education or when thoseopportunities aren't there.
It can be the case that she'sout there with a hammer
discovering po.
And despite this discovery,Butland still receives more
credit a day than she ever doesin this, coprolite kind of arm
of paleontology.
And that is due to the bias,which, the blog I mentioned
earlier really focuses on, Marycontinues on a seriously fossil,
(36:12):
after fossil, after fossil,because she's selling these, but
also she's discovering them.
The other contribution, um,outstanding contribution that
she has made to this field isfueling public interest in
geology, in paleontology.
People were interested becauseof what she was finding and that
it was exciting and you had thistourist piece that I spoke about
(36:34):
earlier, and then suddenly,fossil museums started to become
a thing and, there was a pointwhere she was struggling to keep
up with the band of the museumsbecause so many people were
interested in it.
And there's.
A little quote there, which kindof touches a little bit on this,
um, this tussle we've gotbetween her wanting to survive
(36:56):
and eat, and this is herlivelihood, but also against
the, I want to be part of thisrealm that I'm not allowed in
and I'm banging on the door.
So if you could read that forus, that'd be cool.
But she was a commercial fossilhunter.
She had to sell what she found.
Therefore, the fossils tended tobe credited to museums in the
(37:17):
name of the rich man that paidfor them rather than the poor
woman who found them.
This isn't just about gender.
The history of science islittered with the neglected
contributions of working classscientists, which just shows how
on the money you were with yourinsights earlier that you were
spot on.
This is just such a tussle of,um, science.
(37:40):
So it's really important tonote, which I found in one of
the articles that everything weknow about Mary is basically
based on really poorly cited andpoorly referenced material
written decades after her death,because, very importantly,'cause
she wasn't allowed in.
So no one was making notes, noone was documenting her
contributions.
No one was diarizing it.
(38:01):
Mary never got to publish herown material, but she did write
many letters and journals, whichwe kind of referenced earlier
with Trey.
But these letters and journalswere often mishandled and lost
by museums because they weren'tdeemed important enough.
For example, a personal letter,of Mary's was marked by the
British Museum as quote unquotelacking importance.
(38:26):
I know.
And you just know that theyweren't doing this with the
men's discoveries and the men'spersonal letters and everything
like that, that you just knowthey're not, so frustrating.
And what else have we lost?
Because of people being sexist,like with post heaven sake.
And some of the.
The fossils that she's found hasalso been lost because they were
founded by a woman and they werejust not deemed as important.
(38:49):
So they just got either tossedout or archived, never found.
There's a really, strong quotehere that just shows what I'm
trying to get at.
In the world of, museums, weoften assume that any portrayal
of a woman scientist isrepresentation.
Is it really representation ifwe rely on Heavily mythologized
(39:11):
versions of women that are notbased in fact.
Yeah.
So what this is kind of gettingat, is this idea of, um.
They saw Mary as playing,playing with sandcastles almost,
and just like a little girltoting along the beach and oh,
(39:32):
oh, she's just stumbled across.
And she just got lucky and itkind of makes her sound really
childish and because of what weknow of her, that's how
sometimes she comes across.
They're presented as a fairytalein a way.
Um, but I'm not being funny.
That's how I found Maryoriginally, was that there was a
book in a charity shop, and Iwas looking through it, it was
(39:52):
what it was called, but it wasvery much one of those books
where each page had it, uh, eachpage had a woman on it.
And, um, it was beautifulillustrations and it was like,
and it's presented in childlikelanguage because it is a
children's book.
But that's how I found Mary.
And it's like, oh, come on.
You know what I mean?
Like, I should have found Maryin a different way and I should
(40:13):
have found, or there should havebeen like a next level where
when you were a teen and youwere in school, you were told
more about.
In more detail that sort of likecircular curriculum where you
get age appropriatesupplementary.
Yes.
So this is my dream.
My dream is to mess up thehistory curriculum and like,
(40:35):
this is what I want this to be.
I don't wanna spend six weeks onWorld War I.
Yes, it's important, but there'sso much other, more history out
there.
And it's taken me until like,what?
I'm 30, whatever now to reallydig into this part of me that
loves these stories.
Right.
Because I wasn't allowed to atschool.
So you're totally right.
There should have been a nextlevel of a hundred percent.
Um, anyway, I've totally goneoff a tangent because I'm angry.
(40:56):
I'm just an angry.
I love your rage.
No, it's driving so much anger.
Keep being angry.
It's good.
Good.
Um.
So Mary, died in 1847.
She was only 47 years old.
She tragically died of breastcancer.
Imagine what more she could havedone.
She didn't.
And she did unfortunately sufferfinancial strain throughout her
(41:19):
lifetime, the Natural HistoryMuseum actually does showcase
now several of Mary's finesincluding, um, the skeletons
that we spoke about today, andher legacy does live on,
throughout the Jurassic Coast,which I'm going to this weekend.
So I cannot wait to find outabout that.
It's gonna be amazing.
The Jurassic Coast is now, aUNESCO site of World Heritage
(41:39):
and it's where scientists,amateurs and, adventurous
children alike gather around allyear round to hunt for the next
big find.
We've ended with the Statue ofMary that is there.
Maybe I can go see it thisweekend.
That would be cool.
Oh, that'd be amazing.
And you can see, can you seeTrey in the statue?
I he made it to the statue.
(42:01):
So this is the statue that thatlady you quoted at the
beginning, Anya Pearson,campaigned for, so she managed
to get this bronze statue.
I'm so glad she, it's pretty'swonderful and I love the little
detail of the fossils on herhemline.
Can you see that?
That's pretty special.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
(42:21):
It's pretty cool.
Um, and we've just got a littlequote to end, she was not a
simple minded country womanselling seashells by the
seashore.
Yay.
And that is the story ofMaryanne.
Thank you so much.
That really adds depth to howshe found what she found it, you
(42:43):
know, that thing.
It's so easy to think she's justfluked into these things.
But she had to understand inorder to keep going and, and,
and sweat and bleed and, falland tumble.
And, and I bet her knees weresore as.
Can you imagine?
I struggle with a bit ofgardening mate.
(43:03):
She, like, her knees would'vebeen rock hard.
Oh, you know when you're at thebeach and your like, feet get
wet and the sand stick to them.
It's so icky.
And the idea of being out therein long trailing skirts, day
after day, damp and sandy, ugh.
But she, she cared.
She wanted to do the work.
(43:23):
Here we are talking about herhundreds of years later.
Yay.
So I love it.
Thank you very much for bringingthat
audio2663295054 (43:36):
Thank you for listening to this episode of She
Changed History.
If you enjoyed it, please like,subscribe and comment below.
Find us on our socials,Facebook, Instagram, and
YouTube.
If you've got any ideas of womenyou'd like us to cover in a
future episode, please commenton the socials or email us at
She Changed history@gmail.com.
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