Mary Anning Survived Deadly Landslide

In 1833, fossil hunter Mary Anning was out searching the cliffs in England when a landslide crashed down around her and nearly killed her. She survived, but her dog was killed, and the accident became one more danger in a life spent hunting fossils on unstable coastal cliffs. Anning had already made some of the most important fossil discoveries of the age, including a famous ichthyosaur and the first complete plesiosaur skeleton. Even with those achievements, the Geological Society of London excluded her because she was a woman, and her working-class background only made that barrier worse.

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