Hammer

Hammer…

Such a primitive tool, but it’s perfect for getting the job done. 

Sometimes simple is just better!

When our kids were younger, we bought them some dinosaur eggs. You know, the ones that come with a little excavating kit?

They were such a hit that I ended up buying some in bulk so that we could have fun activities to keep at the ready. Who cares that they would inevitably leave a huge soggy mess behind.

The excitement captured on their faces as they slowly chipped away at the clay with tiny plastic tools to find the Jurassic treasures hidden inside was so fun to witness.

Tinkering and tapping, they slowly reveal a wing… an arm… a skull.

I can’t imagine how exhilarating it must be for real paleontologists to uncover ACTUAL dinosaur bones!

Knowing that the remains you’re uncovering belonged to living and breathing behemoths somewhere between 65-230 million years before humans appeared on earth would be such a humbling experience!

I’m always speechless when I see the fossils of these awesome creatures and imagine the sheer power they possessed.

The famed Mary Anning (1799-1847) was taken by this fascination with the prehistoric as well. Born and raised in England, she took after her parents and their love of fossils. In fact, she learned to collect fossils from her father, Richard, a cabinet maker by trade with a hobby of fossil collecting. Unfortunately, he died at 44 in 1810, leaving his family destitute.

Anning’s personal qualities of dedication, her continual pursuit of knowledge, and her years of experience were the reason she’s received any recognition at all since she was a woman, of a lower social class, and from a provincial area at a time when upper-class London men were the only ones receiving the credit for geological discoveries

In other words, she was a real badass.

She gave the bird to those crusty, old, patriarchal misogynists.

Fossil collecting was a dangerous business in the seaside town where she grew up. As a child, fascinated with dinosaurs, she walked and waded under unstable cliffs at low tide, looking for specimens dislodged from the rocks. And during her teenage years, their family built both a reputation and a business as fossil hunters.

She followed her passion and devoted herself to its mastery. Her efforts helped develop the field of paleontology and her discoveries pushed the boundaries of our understanding of geologic history.

Scientists even go as far as to say that fossils recovered by Anning may have also contributed, in part, to the theory of evolution put forth by Charles Darwin.

You never know how your dreams and passions will inspire someone else down the road! 

And it’s never a bad idea to humbly acknowledge that someone’s blood, sweat, and tears have laid the groundwork for what we build.

I’ll leave you with the diary passage of Lady Harriet Silvester (a noblewoman, fossil collector, and wife of the Recorder of the City of London) which documented Anning’s intellectual mastery of her craft:

“The extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she had made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. . . . by reading and application she has arrived to that greater degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom.”

Again… Mary Anning was a badass.