The Fossil Hunter
Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
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, with dirt under her fingernails and not a shilling to buy dinner, 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.
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There are some non fiction books that flow like a story. This isn't one.
I have two main grips with this book. The first one is that a lot of the information in this book only very indirectly relates to Mary Anning. A lot of time is given to discussions of paleontology, some of which is warrented to show how Mary's findings influenced the world. But Mary wasn't a part of those discussions, being a woman. Almost half the book is about various men and their differing opinions of fossils. It's not inherently uninteresting but It wasn't what I wanted from this book. A good portion of the book was also related to events surrounding Lyme Regis, again some of it is warrented as that's where Anning lived and made her discoveries. But did there need to be a whole chapter about a landslide that the book admits didn't really affect Mary? What about a random fire? Or taht the queen was there at some point? I understand there isn't much information about Mary Annings life, but rather than reading all that superfluous stuff I'd rather the book was just shorter.
The second point is the writing is really dull. One thing that was very distracting was how the author kept describing what Mary “must have felt” or “no doubt” has done. I know you can't read inside the mind of a long dead woman, there is no need to remind me that it is the authors assumption every second, alternatively the author could have just refrained from commenting on what Mary “no doubt must have felt, probably”. I just don't think Shelley Emling is a very good writer, a lot of sentences just sound awkward and she always sounds unsure of what she's saying even when she isn't “supposing” what is going on in Mary's mind.
Despite my problems I enjoyed learning what little there is to learn about Mary Anning and if you are interested in her life I'd recommend this, juts be prepared to do some skimming.
