Mary Anning · Science

The First Ichthyosaur: How to Read a Skeleton

The Lyme Regis find of 1811 to 1812 - how a self-taught girl and her brother recovered from the cliffs a creature that matched no living thing, and how reading a whole articulated skeleton, bone by bone, became the founding method of a new science.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that the 1811 to 1812 Lyme Regis specimen (Joseph found the skull, Mary the body) was an ichthyosaur - a ‘fish-lizard,’ an extinct marine reptile unlike anything alive - and that recognizing it required reading a skeleton by comparative anatomy. Explain how anatomy served as evidence, and why a…

Leads to Gideon Mantell.

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.