As an expert on paleontology, I think this is a brilliant idea.
Mary Anning was born in 1799.
Her family was poor and somewhat tragic.
She was named after an older sister who had died in a fire.
Fossils became the family business and Mary was the sharpest fossil spotter.
Many of the great geological luminaries of the day bought her fossils and went fossil hunting with her.
Landslip near Lyme Regis.
Ballista/wikipedia,CC BY-SA
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So why is Anning only now getting a statue?
Why did she not have a more prominent place in the history of science?
There are a number of explanations.
Sexism and classism
The most obvious answer is Annings gender.
In Annings time, science was very much a male domain.
Another factor was class.
Science wasnt simply the domain of men, but gentlemen.
Annings research was intimately tied to how she made a living.
To the Victorian mind, such reliance was rather distasteful and sullied the pure search for knowledge.
Her class and gender denied membership (or even attendance) to the Geological Society.
Anning was rarely thanked in academic publications or even credited for her discoveries.
Considering the prominent role of amateurs as citizen scientists in paleontology today, Annings example is telling.
Cast of Plesiosaurus macrocephalus found by Mary Anning in 1830.
Anning was a remarkably skilled, knowledgeable field worker and fossil preparator.
The science of field work, fossil preparation and so forth often invisible is necessary and important in itself.
Anning died of breast cancer in 1847 after a rough decade.
She was not forgotten by the geological community who had so benefited from her discoveries though.
They helped grant her a 25 annuity in 1838.
And how might our popular images of the fossil hunter have developed differently?
Would we think differently about commercial fossil collecting?
Would women be better represented and more visible in palaeontology today?
