Geologist, writes on the history of geology and palaeontology, especially in the late 18th–early 19th C, and on the history of geology in Antarctica. Patron Lyme Regis Museum. Author of THE FOSSIL WOMAN A LIFE OF MARY ANNING (Dovecote Press 2020).
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#FossilFriday: The 'Oolite and Lias Systems' from 'The Antediluvian World', drawn & engraved by John Emslie (1813–75), published by James Reynolds in 1849. An ichthyosaur & plesiosaur (much influenced by the famous 1840 John Martin plate) try to out-stare a magic-dragonoid pterosaur & Iguanodon.
Something exciting is coming 🎉 Join us creating the Deep Time Trail at Siccar Point! Launching September 15th 2025.
#MolluscMonday: Aptyxiella portlandica gastropods in the Upper Jurassic Portland Roach blocks used in the construction of the Cobb breakwater, Lyme Regis.
Similar dispiriting installation at St Michael's Church, Lyme Regis beneath the 1850 memorial stained glass window for local palaeontologist #MaryAnning.
Sneak peek at new exhibition at Hugh Miller’s Birthplace Museum for the #ScotGeolFest25 Pop by and see if you’re up in the highlands! Running until October 12th @scottishgeology.bsky.social #ScottishGeologyFestival
#InternationalDogDay: #MaryAnning and her dog 'Tray' in the famous portrait of 1842. Tray was probably the replacement for the dog killed by a cliff fall in 1833. Its name is not recorded, but Mary sketched it in about 1826.
The crag-and-tail of the Carboniferous volcanic plug of North Berwick Law in East Lothian looking good in this morning's sunshine. Viewed from the north east.
Lyme Regis, 19 August 1800: lightning struck a tree during a horse show, killing 2 girls & a woman holding 15 month old #MaryAnning. She was unconscious but was revived. The event was reported widely in the press. Her survival became a local legend & was a story Mary liked to tell to her visitors.
Pre-dawn moon over Traprain Law, East Lothian.
www.locarnofestival.ch/news/2025/pa...
12 August 1837: Prussian naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt arrived in Lyme Regis and met #MaryAnning. Writing to a friend, he referred to her as 'die Herrin der Palaeontologie' which was translated as 'Princess of Palaeontology' by Marcel Aurousseau in his 1968 volumes of Leichhardt's letters.
Some nice geology featuring in the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition @nationalgalleries.bsky.social. ‘Gravestones’, a gallery full of boulders from graveyards in SW Scotland and ‘Red Wall’, a gallery wall coated in red clay showing some cracking[!] mudcracks.
I see Arthur’s Seat volcano in Edinburgh is erupting again.
Even saw some birds, @pbo61.bsky.social. Mostly ?moulting male eider?
#PostboxSaturday: George VI pillar box, East Dean, East Sussex.
Some photos from today’s breezy walk on Carboniferous rocks along the south shore of the Firth of Forth.
A couple of scenic photographs from a recent trip to Sussex.
#PostboxSaturday: a GR wallbox at Lewes station, East Sussex. Local palaeontologist Gideon Mantell would have posted his letters here if he hadn’t moved away in 1833 and died in London in 1852.
#FossilFriday: a small ichthyosaur from Lyme Regis in an 1827 lithograph by Oxford engraver Nathaniel Whittock (1791–1860). The specimen was probably in the collection of Lord Cole (1807–1886), then a student at Oxford, who may have purchased it from #MaryAnning. It is now @nhm-london.bsky.social.
Meet Mary. She's 12, fearless, and endlessly curious. Watch the trailer for #MaryAnning, the new animated film by Ticinese director @marcelbarelli.bsky.social — in Swiss cinemas on November 26, 2025! www.helvetiamotionarts.com/mary-anning-...
#BenchmarkMonday: a much-weathered benchmark cut in oolitic limestone, Market Tower, Lewes, East Sussex.
As it’s Jane Austen’s 250th year, here she is on a Wedgwood ceramic plate from the Famous Women dinner service of 48 blank plates decorated by artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in 1931. The plates portrayed 12 writers, 12 queens, 12 performers & 12 women famed for their beauty.
Beach scene.
Correction: It’s on The Street in Rodmell, not Mill Lane!
#PostboxSaturday: George VI wall box, Mill Lane, Rodmell, East Sussex.
25 July 1829: Bristol artist & fossil collector George Cumberland publishes an article about fossil marine reptiles, highlighting the important contributions of 'three female pioneers' at Lyme Regis: #MaryAnning, Anne Congreve and Elizabeth Philpot, and of Etheldred Benett in Wiltshire.
25 July 1810: birth of the eccentric Thomas Hawkins, collector of Lias marine reptiles from Street and Lyme Regis. His fossils, including a large ichthyosaur found by #MaryAnning in 1832, can be seen @nhm-london.bsky.social. Others are @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social & @morethanadodo.bsky.social.
2025 sees the 250th anniversary of the birth not only of Jane Austen & JMW Turner, but also of Wiltshire geologist Etheldred Benett, born 22 July 1775. A woman of independent means, she built up a significant collection of fossils & corresponded with many of the leading geologists of the day.
Tipperary? That’s a long way.
Storm brewing.
If you like the 'Irish Elk', you might like this wonderful illustration and description of lunar scenery in 'The Progress of Creation'.
#PostboxSaturday: Edward VII pillar box, Summertown, Oxford.
#FossilFriday: the 'Irish Elk', Megaloceros, in Dublin, as figured in 'The Progress of Creation', 1837, by Mary Roberts (1788–1864).
Local field looking particularly fine this morning with an abundance of poppies.
Indeed it is. I’m hoping that slow attrition might gradually consign it to the bin. But this is just one of many ingrained Mary myths that are hard to shift.
From what I see online, it's time for a reminder that the tongue-twister 'she sells sea shells' has *nothing* to do with #MaryAnning. It's an 1850s elocution exercise, elaborated into a music hall song by 1908. The earliest reference linking it with Anning is 1975. blogs.loc.gov/folklife/201...
Indeed. One of several by Elizabeth Philpot of a specimen in her collection.
A good year for fossil sepia. In Lyme Regis in October 2009 Tracy Chevalier was signing copies of her new novel Remarkable Creatures with Lias sepia ink procured by Lyme Regis Museum's geologist Paddy Howe. Tracy, Paddy and I shared a platform at the Marine Theatre talking about #MaryAnning.
#BenchmarkMonday: an unusual siting for a benchmark – indoors, on a pillar inside St Mary's Church, Haddington. Prior to restoration of the church in the early 1970s, this part of the building was still in ruins (thanks to Henry VIII in 1548), so the pillar was external when the benchmark was cut.
#PostboxSaturday: EIIR wall box, Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Interesting! Not seen this one before, but it has many elements clearly derived from Henry De la Beche's 1829-31 Duria Antiquior (or from another of its derivatives).
11 July 1829: with her host, Charlotte Murchison, #MaryAnning visited the Baker Street Bazaar in London where she saw a panorama of Rome (and perhaps had a little retail therapy) before calling at the Regent Street shop of natural history dealer GB Sowerby, her somewhat ineffectual London agent.
#FossilFriday: cave hyaena fossils from Kirkdale Cavern, Yorkshire, used by William Buckland in his 1822 study of cave faunas, Reliquiae Diluvianae, and currently on display @morethanadodo.bsky.social's Breaking Ground exhibition.
Lammermuir moonrise.
Belatedly sorting through some of my acquisitions from the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival last month, one of which is the wonderfully illustrated Prehistoric Worlds by @ladynaturalist.bsky.social & Claire McElfatrick. It was great to meet Ashley at Lyme Regis Museum & have her sign my copy of her book.
Beautifully clear view this evening in East Lothian across a landscape underlain by early Carboniferous sedimentary and volcanic rocks towards the Lammermuir Fault scarp and the Silurian turbidites of the Lammermuir Hills.
9 July 1829: #MaryAnning visits @britishmuseum.bsky.social. She is impressed by the King's Library, royal prayer books, the 'Gigantic Egyptian heads' and 'saw the Elgin Marbles thought them remarkably fine'. Curiously, she makes no mention of the fossil galleries which she must surely have visited.
7 July 1829: #MaryAnning visits the Geological Society's rooms at Somerset House and is shown round its museum by the curator, William Lonsdale. Amongst the specimens she saw were casts of the 1824 Megalosaurus jaw and a cast of a plesiosaur, the original of which she had sold to Paris in 1824.
A couple of acquisitions from a visit to @mainstreethare.bsky.social yesterday: David Attenborough and Colin Butfield’s Ocean which panders to my polar interests and @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social’s Vanished which mentions #MaryAnning. Interested to see how her work is described. Sources look good!
5 July 1779: birth of Elizabeth Philpot at Red Lion Square, London. She and two of her sisters settled in Lyme Regis, collected fossils and befriended #MaryAnning. Their collection is now @morethanadodo.bsky.social. Contrary to what’s online, there are no known portraits of Elizabeth Philpot.
#PostboxSaturday: Victorian wallbox, South Parks Road, Oxford and its Elizabeth II counterpart on Broad Street.
One plesiosaur bone is rare enough, but a section of a plesiosaur neck is something else to find! Found by Cameron Tyne, only a few edges were exposed originally but after 50 hours prep by Paul Davis this stunning chunk of plesiosaur neck is revealed! #FossilFriday
#FossilFriday: productid brachiopod sections in the Carboniferous Carlow Blue limestone from County Kilkenny, Ireland, flooring the V&A Dundee.
3 July 1824: Charles Lyell and French geologist Constant Prévost visit Lyme Regis seeking specimens for Cuvier in Paris. They were among the many visitors who descended on #MaryAnning after the @geolsoc.bsky.social Plesiosaurus meeting earlier that year. www.researchgate.net/publication/...
Nowhere better for Mary musings than in her home town! Looking forward to seeing how A Curious Thing develops!
Meanwhile... From today's Facebook memories... this image! The day I started reading Tom's book, and working on the writing of the first iteration of what was to become thew show "A Curious Thing!" 😍
On 2 July 1808 Richard Anning signed a lease on a plot of land in Lyme Regis, perhaps intending to build a house. The Annings were not as poor as we've previously thought, and Richard was doing well as a fossil dealer and cabinet-maker, assisted by his son Joseph and his daughter #MaryAnning.
1 July 1844: Having seen fossil marine reptiles in London museums, Carl Gustav Carus & Frederick Augustus II, King of Saxony, went to Lyme Regis and met #MaryAnning in her shop. Writing her name in Carus's notebook, she told him 'I am well known throughout the whole of Europe.' And indeed she was.
#MolluscMonday: the wonderful ammonite lampposts of Lyme Regis.
Really?! Well, well. Every day is a school day!
A beautiful but breezy day today for the Haddington Show.
#FossilFriday Merde! Eocene coprolite from Dorset looking very much the part. About 15 cm long.
#FossilFriday: the tail of Squaloraja polyspondyla. Found by #MaryAnning in 1829, the rest of the skeleton was sold to Bristol Museum, but the tail went to Elizabeth Philpot and is now @morethanadodo.bsky.social. It's the only surviving part as the skeleton was lost when Bristol was bombed in WW2.
27 June 1832: Gideon Mantell visits #MaryAnning, 'the geological Lioness'. 'We found her in a little dirty shop with hundreds of specimens piled ... in the greatest disorder. She, the presiding Deity, a prim, pedantic vinegar looking, thin female, shrewd, and rather satirical in her conversation.’
The sepia of the ink sac was preserved a solid but could be ground and reconstituted as drawing ink. Of very fine quality, in fact, according to artist/sculptor Francis Chantrey.
Of many amazing specimens in the Breaking Ground exhibition @morethanadodo.bsky.social, one of the smallest stands out, a sepia ink sac collected by #MaryAnning and figured by William Buckland in 1836. It’s not from Lyme Regis, but from Watchet in Somerset which was visited by Mary in 1832.
Wonderful to be back at the magnificent @morethanadodo.bsky.social, home to much #MaryAnning material, both archives and fossils. Looking forward to an afternoon in the collections and speaking about Mary Anning tonight.
Of course it was this I particularly wanted to see again: the Anning’s 1811-12 ichthyosaur, first described in a paper read 211 years ago today at a meeting of the Royal Society. It changed hands several times before it was acquired by the British Museum at auction in 1819.
First time I’ve seen the new gardens @nhm-london.bsky.social. Impressive; and a huge improvement on what was there before.
Not quite what I’ve come to see, but it’s alright.
23 June 1814: Sir Everard Home reads a paper on a new fossil animal from Lyme Regis. Found by #MaryAnning and her brother, this was the first ichthyosaur to come to scientific attention and Home struggled to classify it and subsequent specimens, eventually deciding it was related to the salamander.
In Lancashire?
Impressive sky to the northwest this evening.
#PostboxSaturday: EIIR pillar box, Crickhowell, Powys, with a wonderful and elaborate emergency services topper.
Midsummer morning and the haar is set in, East Lothian.
Chimney gull silhouettes at sunset.
Some of the spoils from the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival at the weekend - additions to the growing collection of Anningiana. Another #MaryAnning teatowel (think that's the 3rd), a fridge magnet, and pins of Mary and Tray all based on an illustration by Bridport designer Delphine Jones, and a sticker.
Photos from this morning’s walk at Dunbar, East Lothian. Dunbar harbour and castle, nesting kittiwakes and Bass Rock in a calm North Sea.
Early morning light on Traprain Law, a Carboniferous phonolitic trachyte laccolith intruding Carboniferous sediments, East Lothian.
Valley fog at dawn, Marshwood Vale, Dorset.
Popped into the wonderful @charmouthhcc.bsky.social. Great displays of amazing recent finds. Well worth a visit.
As our time at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival came to an end, last night Micheal Mills @heapsgood.bsky.social and I went to say farewell to #MaryAnning.
Fantastic talk about Mary Anning and her discoveries from @tomsharperocks.bsky.social at #LymeRegisFossilFestival Anning was a fascinating person.
A quiet Sunday night on Broad Street in Lyme Regis after the Fossil Festival.
#MaryAnning has come to life!
Just had fun talking about #MaryAnning and her Sea-Dragons to a full house at Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. Third talk in three days. Off now to the beach in Mary’s footsteps.
The site of #MaryAnning’s house and shop 1826-47, Broad Street, Lyme Regis. It was a small, 2 storey thatched house, demolished in the 1930s. Now, appropriately, a cancer charity shop. The buildings either side would have been familiar to Mary.
More Lyme Regis morning wanderings: the wonderfully idiosyncratic building of Lyme Regis Museum.
Good morning, #MaryAnning.
Lovely light in #MaryAnning this morning. Looking good for the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival.
#PostboxSaturday 2012 paralympic gold George VI pillar box, Hay on Wye, with Gavin and Stacey topper.
Alan Charig and Brenda Horsfield’s 1975 BBC book ‘Before the Ark’. Perhaps the earliest reference linking (erroneously) the tongue-twister ‘she sells sea shells’ with #MaryAnning. Is there anything earlier?
Eve of the Fossil Festival, Lyme Regis.
Thanks, James. A few did show up. About 70.
All set up for my talk to the Friends of Lyme Regis Museum on Mary Anning - the fashionable fossilist this afternoon. Just need an audience.
Getting my Lyme Regis Fossil Festival off to a proper start.
Inevitable detour en route to Lyme Regis Fossil Festival.
Two weeks tonight, 24th June, I'll be @morethanadodo.bsky.social to talk about the remarkable #MaryAnning and her links with Oxford. Eliza Howlett, Head of Earth Collections, will show us some of Mary's fossils and there will be some great archives to see too! oumnh.ox.ac.uk/event/mary-a...
Very much looking forward to seeing your work at the Fossil Festival next weekend.
