Mary Anning · Science

Extinction and Deep Time: What the Fossils Meant

Anning’s discoveries were not just strange animals; they were evidence about the age and history of the Earth. Whole vanished faunas implied an Earth immeasurably older than the traditional few thousand years, and her fossils became primary data in the transformation of geology that prepared the ground for Darwin.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Anning’s specimens were primary evidence in the early-1800s transformation of geology: proof of extinction, and of an Earth far older than Archbishop Ussher’s roughly 6,000 years, populated across ‘deep time’ by vanished life - a vision De la Beche painted, from her fossils, in…

Leads to Charles Lyell.

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