Laura is a writer, illustrator, and artist living in New York City.

Can you say “She sells seashells by the seashore” five times fast? It’s tricky!

And if you’re like most people, you’ve been twisting your tongue over that one for years.


In fact, people have been trying to say it without stumbling for 108 years.

But did you know it actually goes back even further than that? Almost a century farther, in fact, and the mysterious seashell-selling woman on the shore? She was a real person, and she changed how we understand our planet’s very history.

Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis in Dorset, England. She was the eldest daughter of a cabinetmaker, and the family supplemented their income by digging up fossils to sell to tourists on the shore.


The family was poor, and Anning never really had much of a formal education other than learning to read and write. But she’d end up changing the face of science.

In the early 19th century, there weren’t many options for scientifically minded women, especially poor ones.

But as women throughout history have always proved, if you have the will, you can do anything, even if society says you can’t. We’ve seen it time and again, from ancient history through the wartime women who constructed planes, and right up through today.

Read on to learn about Anning’s strange and often overlooked life, and the next time you check out some fossils or come across that famous tongue twister, remember her!

[H/T: Atlas Obscura]