The Science Museum of the University of Navarra launches a new video of the series "Women in science", in order to make visible the professional work of women who have contributed in a way B to science but are unknown to the general public. This new video shows the life of Mary Anning, the first paleontologist of the Jurassic.

Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis (England) in a humble family. Her father was a cabinetmaker and supplemented his salary by selling fossils to tourists. Mary and her brother Joseph accompanied him to collect fossils along the Jurassic Coast. On one of these conference their father slipped and died. From then on the siblings had to devote themselves full-time to collecting and selling fossils for a living.    

Among Mary's main discoveries are the following: in 1811, together with her brother, she located the skeleton of an ichthyosaur -half fish, half reptile- that lived in the Mesozoic Era; in 1824 Mary discovered the skeleton of a plesiosaur -a creature with a body similar to a modern crocodile-; in 1827 the dried ink inner shell of a belemnite -similar to a squid or cuttlefish-.

Mary not only collected fossils, but also drew, classified and documented them, which allowed her to make hypotheses and draw conclusions. Many geologists visited her to work with her, such as George W. Featherstonhaugh, William Buckland and Henry De la Breche. She died in 1847 in Lyme, in whose church a stained glass window was built in her honor with a registration highlighting her work in the field of geology. The Royal Society of London ranks Mary Anning among the ten most important British women in science. 

Your findings: ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterosaurs
In the Jurassic period the Earth was dominated, in addition to dinosaurs, by species such as ichthyosaurs (large marine reptiles resembling fish and dolphins), plesiosaurs (marine reptiles with a turtle-like appearance), and pterosaurs (flying saurians). It was Mary Anning the scientist who first discovered the fossils of these animals.

His findings supported the theory that in the past there had been an "Age of Reptiles" and were also key to the development of Paleontology. Although her work did not receive initial recognition, her merits were eventually recognized by the community: from 1838 she received an annual salary from the British association for the Advancement of Science; and the Geological Society of London made her the first Honorary Member of the Dorset County Museum.

The project of videos "Women in Science" is supported by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) / Ministry of Science and Innovation and is part of the Science Museum's STEM strategy to make the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics more attractive, especially among girls and young women.

The video can be seen in the following link.