Mary Anning. Portrait of the British palaeontologist and geologist Mary Anning (1799- 1847) holding a geological hammer and a sample bag. Her father was a carpenter who supplemented his income by selling fossils to summer tourists. He died when she was 11, forcing her to make money in the same way. Anning found the first complete skeleton of a plesiosaurus in 1825 and the first ever flying reptile (pterodactyl) fossil, Dimorphodon, in 1828. While she did not study her fossils nor write any scientific papers, she is important for the care she took in extracting fossils and her role in popularizing palaeontology. This portrait is by D.J.M. Donne.