Happy birthday to Mary Anning (1799 – 1847)! She was the wrong class, sex & religious denomination to gain the education, opportunity to work & communicate her results or garner any respect as a pioneering paleontologist. 🐡🧪👩🏼‍🔬⚒️ #histsci Further, during her lifetime most people thought the Earth 🧵1/n

Here's an honest question: most people were and are not Christians and the popular history of science exclusively focuses on Western conceptions of the age of the Earth; what did non-Christians/non-Westerners believe about this in the 19th century and before?

Woo! I never knew her birthday was today, May 21. Mary Anning Day!

was a mere few thousand years old, based on a very literal interpretation of the Bible & found the idea of extinction did not fit in with the story of creation. During her lifetime she was barred from even attending meetings of the Geological Society of London (let alone applying for membership) 🧵2/

What a cool lady