#FossilFriday : the Lias crinoid #Pentacrinites from #MaryAnning 's presentation copy of JS Miller's 1821 'A Natural History of the Crinoidea' which was returned this week to Lyme Regis Museum, having been missing for perhaps 60 years.

Lovely #MaryAnning timeline launched today by MaryAnningRocks & designed by Hettie Fry, along with a wonderful map of places Mary knew in Lyme Regis, with great graphics by Charlotte Read. Find them here:
maryanningrocks.co.uk/free-stuff
Handy if you're visiting Lyme Regis Fossil Festival next month.

Happy 225th birthday to 'Miss Mary Anning The celebrated Geologist of Lyme Regis', commemorated on this hand-coloured postcard of about 1905. The fifth of the nine children of Richard & Mary Anning, #MaryAnning was named after a sister who had died, aged 4, five months earlier.

In 1819 fossil collector Col Thomas Birch found #MaryAnning & her family about to sell their furniture to pay their rent so he decided to auction his fossil collection & give them the proceeds. The sale was #OTD in 1820 & included many specimens he'd bought from the Annings.

#OTD in 1819, day 9 of the auction of William Bullock's museum, Charles Konig of the British Museum paid £47 5s for Lot 100* 'A large Fossil Fish or Crocodile...from Charmouth' – the #ichthyosaur found by #MaryAnning & her brother in 1811-12. It can be seen today Natural History Museum

For the next few weeks, leading up to her birthday Learning Volunteers will be celebrating the achievements of Mary Anning. Fancy being a palaeontologist? ⚒️ Come along to one of our #MaryAnning birthday celebration tours. eventbrite.co.uk/e/mary-annings…

In 1824 geologist Charles Lyell visited #MaryAnning in Lyme Regis. Read more about their meeting and later interactions in the latest issue of History Of Geology GeoHistories magazine.
researchgate.net/publication/38…

Latest charity bookshop find: Memoirs of Mary Somerville (1780–1872). As she & #MaryAnning had several mutual acquaintances, like William & Mary Buckland, Charlotte & Roderick Murchison, Adam Sedgwick & Charles Lyell, Somerville must have heard about Anning and her discoveries.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this new temporary exhibition during the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival when I'll be speaking about #MaryAnning 's discovery of #Plesiosaurus .

In 1826 #MaryAnning took on GB Sowerby as her agent to sell her fossils in London, but the arrangement was not a success. #OTD in 1827 she had to write to him asking for £13.2.5 owed to her 'as she really wants the Money'. She closed the letter with an ammonite-like seal stamp.

Anatomist Everard Home was born in Hull #OTD in 1756. His 1814–20 papers on the fossil 'crocodile' found by Joseph & #MaryAnning were considered 'abstruse, incomprehensible' & Home ‘vain, overbearing'. He named it 'Proteosaurus' and resented that others preferred 'Ichthyosaurus'.

Music-hall entertainer Wilkie Bard (William A. Smith) died #OTD in 1944. He used tongue-twisting songs in his act & recorded 'She sells sea shells' in 1908. Contrary to popular belief, it's not about #MaryAnning , & derives from a simple 4 word exercise in an 1855 elocution book.

A lovely example of Dapedium from the Lias of Lyme Regis, found in the 1990s. #MaryAnning sold a few of these in her time, one of the best of which is now Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution

#FossilFriday : male (no.4) and female (no.5) of the early Jurassic #ostracod Cytherelloidea anningi from Down Cliff at Seatown in Dorset, named after #MaryAnning by Alan Lord in 1974 and published in Palaeontology by The PalAss.

#MaryAnning 's mother ran the fossil shop at the family home in Lyme Regis from about 1811 to 1820. #OTD in 1813 geologists #WilliamBuckland and George Greenough visited 'Mrs Anning's Curiosity Shop' and each bought a specimen of a fossil 'crocodile' – later named Ichthyosaurus.

#FossilFriday : the carapace of Venipagurus mariae, a hermit crab from the Lower #Lias at Black Ven, Lyme Regis, described and named by the late Joe Collins in 2011, genus name derived from Black Ven and species name honouring #MaryAnning . Holotype and paratype Natural History Museum.

Like many women of her time #MaryAnning was partial to a bit of #Byron , who died #OTD in 1824. She copied two poems, including his last, into her commonplace book, her notebook no.4, the only one known to have survived. It can be seen Dorset Museum & Art Gallery.
#LordByron #byron200 #poetry

Browsing HB Woodward's classic 'The Geology of England and Wales' (1876 & 1887) found this image of the Triassic Otter Sandstone near Taunton in Somerset. A familiar-looking female figure with bonnet and basket provides scale. It can't be, can it? #MaryAnning [Spoiler Alert: No].

The 8-day sale of Bristol merchant James Johnson's fossil collection began #OTD in 1845. Lot 360 was part of a huge ichthyosaur head he had purchased in 1813 at Mrs #MaryAnning 's fossil shop in Lyme Regis. At the sale it was bought for Bristol Museum & Art Gallery where it's now on display.

#MaryAnning was always seen with her little dog and had several during her life. She sketched one in her notes in the 1820s. Its death in a rockfall in 1833 was local news in Dorset. Its replacement, which she called 'Tray', appears in her famous portrait of 1842. #NationalPetDay