---
title: "Mary Anning"
chunk: 9/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In 2009, Tracy Chevalier wrote a historical novel entitled Remarkable Creatures, in which Anning and Elizabeth Philpot were the main characters. Another historical novel about Anning, Curiosity by Joan Thomas, was published in March 2010.
In 2010, 163 years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.
In 1902, the Lyme Regis Museum was built on the site of her former home. It was commissioned by Thomas Philpot, a relative of the Philpot sisters. The area where she collected fossils is now part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.
In 2021, the Royal Mint issued sets of commemorative fifty pence coins called The Mary Anning Collection, designed by the palaeoartist Bob Nicholls and minted in acknowledgement of her lack of recognition as "one of Britain's greatest fossil hunters". The coins have images of Temnodontosaurus, Plesiosaurus and Dimorphodon, which she discovered, and her discoveries were "often overlooked at a time when the scientific world was dominated by men", and as "a working-class woman".
In March 2024, the Royal Mail issued a set of four stamps celebrating Mary Anning and her discoveries.
In May 2024, a book that once belonged to Anning was returned to the museum in Lyme Regis from Australia on her 225th birthday. It is thought that the copy of J. S. Miller's Natural History of the Crinoidea was stolen between 1946 and 1979, before Museums Victoria bought the book for £300 from Blackwell's booksellers of Oxford in 1985.

=== Eponyms ===

The only person who named a species after Anning during her lifetime was the Swiss-American naturalist, Louis Agassiz. In the early 1840s he named two fossil fish species after Anning—Acrodus anningiae and "Belonostomus" anningiae (now Saurorhynchus anningae)—and another after her friend Elizabeth Philpot. Agassiz was grateful for the help the women had given him in examining fossil fish specimens during his visit to Lyme Regis in 1834. After Anning's death, other species, including the ostracod Cytherelloidea anningi, and two genera, the therapsid reptile genus Anningia, and the bivalve mollusc genus Anningella, were named in her honour. In 2012, the plesiosaur genus Anningasaura was named after Anning and the species Ichthyosaurus anningae was named after her in 2015. In 2025 the fossil coelacanth Whiteia anniae was named in honour of both Anning and Anni Dai, a Chinese fan of Anning whose family contributed to the collection of Whiteia anniae fossils.
In 1991 Anning Paterae, a cluster of shallow volcanoes in the northern hemisphere of Venus and in 1999, (3919) Maryanning, an asteroid were named after her. A location on Mars investigated by the Curiosity rover was named Mary Anning. It was analysed by drilling for samples in October 2020 and in April 2026 it was announced that one of the drill holes, Mary Anning 3, had produced the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars. Seven of the 21 carbon-containing molecules identified in the sample were detected for the first time on the planet.
In 2018, a new research and survey vessel was launched as Mary Anning for Swansea University.

=== Statue ===

In August 2018, a campaign called "Mary Anning Rocks" was formed by an 11-year-old schoolgirl from Dorset, Evie Swire, supported by her mother Anya Pearson. The campaign was set up to remember Anning in her hometown of Lyme Regis by erecting a statue and creating a learning legacy in her name. A crowdfunding campaign began but was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom; it resumed in November 2020. By January 2021, the sculptor Denise Dutton had been commissioned to produce the work. The statue was granted planning permission by Dorset Council for a space overlooking Black Ven, where Anning made many of her finds. Professor Alice Roberts and Swire unveiled the statue on 21 May 2022, the 223rd anniversary of Anning's birth.

=== In the arts ===
Mary Anning appears in the web manga Learn Even More with Manga!, derived from the 2015 video game Fate/Grand Order. Her depiction in that manga brings several features from Anning's life into play, such as fossil-collecting gear, fossils, and live versions of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. In 2022, Anning was added to the video game Fate/Grand Order as a gacha character for a limited time.
The 2020 film Ammonite, directed by Francis Lee, and based on segments of Anning's life and legacy, premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. Kate Winslet portrays Anning and Saoirse Ronan portrays Charlotte Murchison, with the two engaged in an imagined lesbian relationship.

== See also ==

Geology of Dorset
Timeline of women in science
Women in geology

== References ==

== Sources ==

== Further reading ==

=== Books and journals ===

=== Other ===

== External links ==

 Media related to Mary Anning at Wikimedia Commons
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Anning, Mary" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.