The Fossil Hunter, Shelley Emling
The Fossil Hunter, Shelley Emling
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The Fossil Hunter
Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World

Author: Shelley Emling

Narrator: Rachael Beresford

Unabridged: 9 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/10/2020


Synopsis

Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton—of an ichthyosaur—while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. The child of a poor family, Mary became a fossil hunter, inspiring the tongue-twister, "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore." She attracted the attention of fossil collectors and eventually the scientific world. Once news of the fossils reached the halls of academia, it became impossible to ignore the truth. Mary's peculiar finds helped lay the groundwork for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, laid out in his On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary's fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present.

A story worthy of Dickens, The Fossil Hunter chronicles the life of this young girl, who became a world-renowned paleontologist. Dickens himself said of Mary: "The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and deserved to win it."

Here at last, Shelley Emling returns Mary Anning, of whom Stephen J. Gould remarked, is "probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology," to her deserved place in history.

About Shelley Emling

Shelley Emling is a senior editor at AARP.org and editor-in-chief of The Girlfriend from AARP. Previously she was a senior editor at the Huffington Post for five years. She has worked as a foreign correspondent for the Cox Media Group both in Europe and in Latin America for more than twelve years, based in London for eight years. Shelley lives in New Jersey and works in Washington DC. She is the author of several books, including Marie Curie and Her Daughters, Setting the World on Fire, Your Guide to Retiring in Mexico, and The Fossil Hunter.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Caroline on May 20, 2015

Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni - dug up by Mary Anning. The Natural History Museum, London. This is an extremely readable biography of a little known fossil-collector called Mary Anning. She lived in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the seaside town of Lyme Regis, on the south coast of Engl......more

A not particularly well-written biography of an interesting but little-known historical figure. Mary Anning was a working-class woman living on England’s southern coast in the early 19th century, who made a name for herself as an expert at locating and extracting fossils from the cliffs. Several of......more

Goodreads review by Rosemary on December 07, 2019

An excellent biography for people like myself, who have spent too long with literature and ideas and not armed themselves with enough scientific knowledge to actively engage in debates on natural history and evolution. For many, Shelley Emling’s ‘The Fossil Hunter,’ will lack weight and there were ti......more