Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, on England's Jurassic Coast, where her father sold fossils gathered from the crumbling cliffs to supplement the family's income. After his death left the family in debt, Mary continued the work full time, walking the tide-exposed cliffs at real risk to her life -- a 1833 landslide killed the dog that usually accompanied her and nearly killed her too.[1][2]
At just twelve years old she uncovered the first ichthyosaur skeleton to be correctly identified as such, a find that helped establish that extinct species -- and deep geological time itself -- were real. In 1823 she found the first complete plesiosaur skeleton, so unusual that Georges Cuvier, the era's leading anatomist, initially suspected fraud before retracting the accusation. A find in 1828 became the first pterosaur specimen recovered outside Germany.[1][2]
As a woman and a tradeswoman, Anning was barred from the Geological Society of London and rarely credited by the gentleman scientists who bought her fossils and published on them under their own names. She died of breast cancer in 1847, largely unrecognized in her lifetime; the Society only formally acknowledged her contributions in an obituary written after her death. Modern paleontology now regards her as one of the field's foundational figures.[1]