The first publication of any of Mary Anning's fossils, with spectacular plates showing two ichthyosaur specimens.
These two papers, by the anatomist Everard Home, comprise the first scientific description of ichthyosaurs. In the first paper (1814, four plates; two folding) Home describes Mary Anning's landmark discovery, remaining unsure if it is a fish or some other kind of creature; in the second (1819, three plates; one folding - the huge Proteosaurus image) Home concludes that what he calls 'Proteosaurus' is an extinct aquatic lizard. These are the two most important early publications relating to Anning's finds – papers that helped launch one of the great 19th century scientific careers.
Mary Anning (1799–1847) is perhaps the most famous of all early fossil-hunters. She achieved international renown in her own lifetime for a series of stunning discoveries, made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis.
Anning’s career began shortly after her father's death in 1810, when she was offered a small sum by a passerby for a fossil she had just found. The following year her brother Joseph unearthed the skull of what was thought to be a crocodile, with Mary herself – then aged only 13 – locating further bones and assembling the whole as a single specimen, which the family sold for £23 to local landowner Henry Hoste Henley.
The fossils were then brought to London an exhibited at William Bullock's 'Egyptian Hall' on Piccadilly, where they attracted enormous attention. They were soon analysed and described in print by the anatomist Everard Home in the Philosophical Transactions for 1814 (offered here), illustrated with a series of plates engraved by James Basire II after drawings by William Clift, himself an accomplished anatomist. Although Mary Anning was not named in the paper, this was the first publication of any of her finds, and also the first scientific description of what was later to be named ichthyosaur. Home was confused by the fossils, saying in his 1814 paper that the creature was a fish, but not 'wholly a fish'.
Anning, meanwhile, continued to make discoveries on the Dorset coast, and debate raged in scientific circles over the nature of these long-dead animals. By about 1818 a new specimen had come to light, almost certainly discovered by Anning, and far more complete than the earlier find. Now Home was able to state with confidence that this was an extinct lizard-like aquatic animal, which he named Proteosaurus, in his Philosophical Transactions papers of 1819, again illustrated with huge folding plates giving exquisite detail of the fossil. Writing to Anning's collaborator Henry De La Beche, Home stated that the specimen was 'one of the most extraordinary animals that inhabited the Antediluvian world.'
By the time of Home's 1819 paper, Mary Anning was established as a fossil dealer in Lyme Regis, and was well known to the scientific community. However, the family's financial situation was so bad that Anning's customer Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch (owner of the full ichthyosaur specimen) organised a sale of his collection in her benefit. This put Anning on a sound financial footing, and over the subsequent decades she made numerous discoveries and was visited by luminaries from across Europe. Although she made herself an expert in both geology and palaeontology, and contributed to the discovery and accurate description of plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, coprolites, belemnites and others, Anning never published any accounts of her finds.
DESCRIPTION: Two extracts from the Philosophical Transactions, bound in antique marbled paper
1 Some Account of the Fossil Remains of an Animal more nearly allied to fishes than any of the other classes of animals, Sir Everard Home: Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 104 (1814), pp. 571–577, 4 plates
Quarto bound in marbled wrappers - early 19th century marbled paper, recently bound thus. Offsetting from the plates which are near fine condition with minor spotting only.
WITH:
An Account of the Fossil Skeleton of the Proteo-saurus [and:] Reasons for giving the name Proteo-Saurus to the fossil skeleton which has been described. Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 109 (1819), pp. 219–216. Similarly bound to above, 3 plates with offsetting, similarly near fine condition and minor spotting - the fold-out Proteosaurus is the last of the plates.
