Mary Anning grew up poor in Lyme Regis on the English coast. Her father, a cabinetmaker, taught her to hunt and clean fossils on the beach, and when he died in 1810 the family sold her finds to pay debts. She had little schooling, but she taught herself geology and anatomy. In 1811 her brother found a strange skull, and in 1812 Mary dug out its five-meter skeleton. Scientists later named it Ichthyosaurus. In 1823 she found the first complete Plesiosaurus, and the famous scientist Georges Cuvier at first disputed it as a fake. Male scientists often bought her fossils and left her name out of their papers. She died in 1847, still short of money. God sees the hidden worker even when others take the credit.
