A 12-year-old fossil hunter found a sea monster no one had a name for

In 1811, Mary Anning and her brother uncovered the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton on England's Jurassic Coast, a reptile unlike anything then known to science. She went on to find plesiosaurs and pterosaurs, reshaping ideas about extinction — while barred from the scientific societies her finds fed.

— Shelley Emling, The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World — Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
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