Who loves dinosaurs?
I know you do, Squeaks, and I do, too!
Dinosaurs were just one kind of awesome reptile
that lived on Earth a long time ago.
There were also reptiles that flew, called
pterosaurs, and all kinds of giant creatures
of the sea, like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs!
And we wouldn’t know nearly as much as we
do about these amazing animals today, if it
weren’t for a person by the name of Mary
Anning.
Mary Anning was born in England over 250 years
ago.
She never went to school, but she learned
how to write and read.
And she spent a lot of her life reading books
-- books about our favorite topic here at
the Fort — science!
Some of her favorite science books were about
rocks.
Others were about animals — ones that she
saw in her own backyard, and ones that lived
a long time ago.
When Mary was a young girl, her family lived
near the ocean.
So, when she wasn’t busy reading, she would
take walks along the cliffs near the sea and
collect shells to sell to visitors.
And she also was always on the hunt ... for
fossils!
Fossils are the left-over parts of plants
and animals that lived a long time ago.
And when I say a long time ago...I mean a
long time ago!
Millions of years ago, the Earth looked pretty
different from how we know it today.
If you look at a picture of what scientists
think the Earth looked like then, you can
see that a lot of the world was covered with
water.
And millions of years ago, the ocean was full
of lots of different kinds of plants and animals
than you see today.
When these things died, parts of them fell
to the bottom of the ocean and were buried
under sand and rock.
Over a long time, these parts left behind
fossils.
Fast forward to today!
Most of the animals and plants that were alive
then are now extinct, which means there aren’t
any of them alive anymore.
And the Earth has changed since then, too!
Some of the parts of the world that used to
be under the ocean aren’t anymore...
...including where Mary lived, in England!
So when she took her walks along the beach,
she was able to find lots of fossils left
behind by things that lived in the ocean millions
of years ago.
And that’s why, when Mary Anning was only
twelve years old, she discovered the fossil
of a big, extinct animal that lived in the
ocean.
She and her eleven year old brother found
the entire skeleton of an extinct reptile
called an ichthyosaur.
Do you think an ichthyosaur looks like another
animal?
I agree, Squeaks!
Like fish and dolphins, this animal had fins
and flippers to help it swim in the ocean.
Don’t be fooled, though — the ichthyosaur
wasn’t a fish, and it wasn’t a mammal,
like dolphins are.
Ichthyosaurs were reptiles, like snakes and
lizards.
Now, the ichthyosaur wasn’t Mary Anning’s
only excellent discovery!
She was also the first to discover a whole
skeleton of another extinct reptile—the
plesiosaur.
Like the ichthyosaur, the plesiosaur lived
in the ocean.
And check it out!
When people first saw the skeleton that Anning
had found, some people didn’t believe it
was real!
Because Anning didn’t study science in school,
many scientists at the time didn’t think
that her work should be taken seriously.
But that didn’t stop her.
She kept looking...and learning...and making
drawings of the fossils that she found.
All of these things helped get other people
interested and excited about her discoveries.
And there’s one more mystery about ancient
animals that Mary Anning solved.
While she was studying fossils of ichthyosaurs
and plesiosaurs, she found some small, strange
stones among the animals’ bones.
Other scientists had found them, too, and
they didn’t know what they were, either.
But Anning was curious about them, and decided
to break them open to see what was inside.
And what she found inside was — even smaller
bones of other kinds of animals, like fish
and other sea creatures.
She realized that the small stones were a
whole new kind of fossil...fossilized poop!
Those weird little rocks contained the bits
of animals that those old ocean reptiles had
eaten!
Mary Anning’s work taught us a lot about
what life was like millions of years ago -- even
though that life often looked strange compared
to the living things we know today.
She spent her life looking at the world around
her...reading...asking questions...and learning
everything she could about science.
Hey, it sounds like she’d fit right in here
at the Fort!
Thanks for joining me on SciShow Kids.
If you have a question for us, ask a grownup
to help you to leave us a comment on this
video, or to send an email to Kids@SciShow.com!
