Talk:Mary Anning/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

add the references for this

Can somebody add the references for this, please Apwoolrich 18:50, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Religion?

On the BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour webpages there is this comment
Mary Anning was the wrong sex, the wrong class, and the wrong religion, but she became what one scientist called "the most eminent female fossilist” the world ever knew.
I can see the logic of wrong sex and class but what was the problem with her religion? --jmb 09:08, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
She was a dissenting protestant (so sort of an evangelical?), and did not worship at the Church of England church in her village for most of her early life (she did convert to the parish church towards the end of her life) - Thomas Goodhue wrote quite a bit on this subject (maybe too much) and some of his works can be found through web searches --Tomdjrichardson 14:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
If my understanding is correct, pretty much anything not in line with the Church of England would have qualified one as the a religious dissenter (in her time and society).68.97.21.75 (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Blue Lias or the Fish Lizard Whore

Anning was the subject of a play called Blue Lias or the Fish Lizard Whore written and performed by Claudia Stevens [1]. I am not sure if this is considered significant enough for the article, but it can be mentioned in talk page. 68.97.21.75 (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Inappropriate formulation

The third sentence of this article is the sort of thing that is perfectly OK on a popular biography but hardly right for a modern encyclopedia. "Mary Anning was marked out for an unusual life at the age of 15 months when in 1800 a lightning strike in the village caught four people in the open. Three died but Mary survived" implies a role for providence (divine or otherwise) in her life which cannot possibly be supported by historical evidence! It's a POV formulation. The lightning strike may have affected how she was perceived by contemporaries, but that is a quite different (and NPOV) matter and would need to be expressed quite differently. Could those who know the sources correct this? --Pfold (talk) 12:24, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I think I have addressed this concern.Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:36, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni

That pic of Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni looks very like the one from the Natural History Museum in London. If so, that specimen came from Kettleness (as the plaque at the far ed states) in North Yorkshire and was not found by Mary Anning. There is a plaque about Mary Anning mounted alongside the specimen which describes her work on the first Pliosaur specimens discovered, but I am certain that specimen is not an Anning specimen. I have close up pics of this specimen including the name and provenance. Skipperjeru (talk) 16:27, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it is misleading. I am currently in the process of revamping that section, and I plan to replace the picture with a drawing of the skeleton she found in 1823 that was published in the 1824 transactions of the Geological Society. I also plan to make it clearer that the cast of Plesiosaurus macrocephalus at the Paris Museum was made from a skeleton she found in 1830, not the one she found in 1823 as I think the current text is confusing on that point. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:54, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
It is fixed now. Thank you for your comment.Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

FAC issues

Sketch depicting Mary Anning

I have seen the sketch used here[2] reproduced several places, but I'm unable to find any copyright info about it beyond "reproduced with permission of Roderick Gordon & Diana Harman". These two seem to be archivists, and are credited for the use of pictures that are certainly in the public domain here[3][4], so doe sanyone know if the same is true for the Anning sketch? The alt text here says "A sketch of Mary Anning, possibly by geologist Henry De la Beche"[5].FunkMonk (talk) 21:52, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Found a helpful source: http://whc.unesco.org/download.cfm?filename=1029&filetype=pdf&category=nominations FunkMonk (talk) 22:24, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I can't find that material in that article and I'm having trouble loading it. Also bare URLs aren't allowed as refs. Do you have a page number? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, found it, page 78. This is just the opinion of the person who wrote this article for the local council. Is it worth including in the cutline? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I didn't see your comments until now. As for accuracy, since Beche actually knew Mary Anning, I see no reason to doubt the claim that the sketch he made of her is more accurate than the one by an unknown artist. FunkMonk (talk) 20:34, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
If it was Beche saying that, then sure, but it's someone who wrote this for the council saying it. I don't see the point of adding it myself, at least not in Wikipedia's voice. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
What do you mean, that Beche should had said his sketch was more accurate? What would be nice is to find out who made the infobox painting and when, but I for one have never seen any such info. Would be nice if anyone could dig it up, since that image has come to be the prime representation of Mary Anning. If the painter never actually saw her, which is quite possible, it should be mentioned. FunkMonk (talk) 21:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
If anyone could find this paper, it seems it could be cleared up: Thackray, J. C. A. (1995) A catalogue of portraits, paintings and sculpture at the Natural History Museum London. Mansell: London. xii, 70pp.[6] FunkMonk (talk) 21:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Found this, scroll down to lesson two: [7] The confusions stems from the fact that there are two very similar paintings of Anning floating around, one made in 1842, and another from after her death. Added both widely known versions to the article. FunkMonk (talk) 21:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I just saw that and added it to the image page on the Commons. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
There's a sketch of the fossil shop from 1895 before the building was demolished on page six in this PDF: http://www.geocurator.org/arch/Curator/Vol4No6.pdf Should the image be added t the article? FunkMonk (talk) 23:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Self-published website

I removed the strangescience site, but I see it's been returned. I can't see the benefit of including it. It's self-published, it doesn't say anything special, and it seems it's been added to a lot of WP articles as an external link. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 17:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

As I said at FAC, I restored it as an external link, because the web site itself is an excellent (and well respected) educational resource and the article on Anning is good, well researched, and in particular contains a very useful further reading section. I understand there are issues with using it as a RS (especially for a FA candidate) because it is self published but that same standard should NOT apply to the external links section. If it were more important as a source for this article I would fight the RS point harder. It is silly that a published book, even rubbish from pseudo scientist like Immanuel Velikovsky, or a conspiracy theorist like Michael Ruppert, is presumed to be a RS until proven otherwise, but it is so incredibly difficult to get well researched and widely respected self published web sites like talk origins, The Alfred Russel Wallace Page, and Strange Science recognized as reliable sources. Yet I have had this sort of fight FAC after FAC. As I said it is not important for this article so I will end my rant now. Rusty Cashman (talk) 20:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
We really shouldn't use self-published websites unless the person is an expert of some kind. Does his article about Anning say anything that all the other pages don't say? I did notice that one of the references it gave does not actually mention Anning that I can find. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Sigh, at the risk of sounding contentious and like a wiki-layer I am going to suggest that you are confusing two distinct and different wiki policies. WP:RS governs sources and it indeed strongly discourages the use of self published websites unless the publisher is an expert with published (not self published) works in the subject area. Although even it allows for common sense exceptions, which is how some of the stuff at talkOrigins has been argued in. External links are governed by a very different guideline, WP:EL, which most definitely does not prohibit self published commercial sites. In fact it explicitly lists under "Links to be considered" the following criteria "Sites that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources.", which I think exactly covers this particular case. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
There is nothing in this page that we don't already have elsewhere. It's a tertiary source, parasitic on the sources we already use, and at least one of the sources mentioned does not mention Anning at all. In addition it seems to have been spammed into a number of WP articles as an external link, so it's best avoided. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

It is not a source. It is an external link. I don't know about it being "spammed" but I have added some of its pages as external links to a couple of articles I work on such as history of paleontology because it is such a useful and interesting cite. It is true that some of the further reading list for its Anning article like "Bridgewater Treatise VI: Geology and Minerology by William Buckland" don't concern Anning directly but they do directly concern the development of paleontology and geology during this period. I am going to review the external links. I think there are a couple of not very good ones, but Strange Science would be one of the last ones that would want to cut. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

It's a personal website, and they are listed under links to be avoided in the EL guideline (point 11). In addition it doesn't say anything about Mary Anning that the other sources don't say, so it adds nothing to our knowledge or understanding. And finally it lists as a source for the image of Anning Lindberg's The Beginning of Western Science (without a page number), but I can't find any mention of Anning by name in that book, nor can I find the image in the list of illustrations.
The only thing we're achieving by including the link is promotion of the website, which is something else the guideline warns against (point 4 under links to be avoided). SlimVirgin talk|contribs 17:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, let me address a couple of your points. It is clearly NOT a personal web site. It probably is self published but that by no means is the same as being a personal website. You can see this if you explore the site and see how vast it is with content like this [8], and this [9], and [10], and [11], and this [12] and much more. Also personal web sites don't usually get reviews like this [13], or this [14], or this [15]. It DOES have content that is not in the article itself or the other external sites listed. For one thing, as I have said, it has an excellent further reading section that is far broader than the one in this article, or in any of the other sources or external linked sites. It also has links to the rest of the Strange Science site, which has a wealth of content on the development of paleontology. It also has a better more concise summary of the significant parts of Anning's career than any of the other external link sites we list. You probably do have a point about a mistake about the source of the Anning image. That book by Lindberg stops at 1450 AD so it is unlikely to cover Anning. I will use the Email feedback mechanism on the website to request a clarification. Strange Science seems more appropriate to me as an external link than many sites like find a grave and IMDB.com that are routinely listed as external links.Rusty Cashman (talk) 20:12, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
It's the personal website of Michon Scott. I can't find any publications under his name at Amazon or Google Books. The "review" you linked to from USA Today is just a passing mention in a list of websites. The BBC link is the opinion of one person, a BBC click online webscaper, who finds it an easy read. Most importantly, it doesn't tell us anything about Anning that we can't easily source elsewhere. It adds nothing to the article. You say it does, but can you give an example? We can add its reading list to our own FR section. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we have incompatible definitions of what a personal website is. Your definition seems to be identical with "self published" ie any website that is maintained by a single person. My definition of a personal website is something like a facebook page or a personal blog. Not a commercial site providing extensive reference material even if the site is maintained by a single person. I have a feeling that we are not going to come to an agreement on this without going through some form of conflict resolution, but I will make one more try at persuasion. Yes we could bring in the further reading list from the Strange Science page into our article, but that would mean adding a bunch of stuff only peripherally connected to Anning (like the Bridgewater treatise). One of the major purposes of external links (probably the primary purpose) is to point people to interesting and useful sources of further information, and the entire Strange Science site is a goldmine of information to anyone interested in the historical development of biology and the earth sciences, which presumably includes at least some of the likely readers of this article. Here is another interesting reference discussing the Strange Science site [16], and here is a publication by Scott, though it is about climatology not paleontology or history of science [17]. If this does not persuade you we may be at an impasse, as you have certainly not persuaded me. Rusty Cashman (talk) 08:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It's your FAC, so if you really want to keep those links, I won't argue any further, although did you not say earlier that the Dorset Page had introduced the honorary membership confusion? Or maybe I'm misrembering. But if you really feel they add value, I'll keep quiet. :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but as some of our discussion for this FAC has shown, if we eliminated every site from the external links section that has at least one factual error in it, we would end up with an empty section. I just sent an email to the Strange Science site with the following body:

Hello, I am one of the editors who works on the Mary Anning article at Wikipedia. Your article on Anning claims that the image of Anning’s portrait that you use is from The Beginnings of Western Science by David C. Lindberg. Based on this, another of the editors here at Wikipedia obtained access to a copy of the book but did not find the image or any mention of Anning in it. I find this easy to believe because all information I have found on the book suggests that the period it covers ends in 1450, centuries before Anning’s time. You may want to look into this and clarify the attribution of the image.

This contributed to a lively discussion on the article talk page of the suitability of linking to your website from our article. However, I very much admire Strange Science as a site and I realize how easy it is for this sort of error to happen, especially given the amount of material your site makes available. I hope you will find this input helpful.

It will be interesting to see how quickly there is a response. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Poem removal

SlimVirgin, could you please explain why you removed the full text of the "she sells seashells" poem? Thanks, NW (Talk) 05:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Because it doesn't really say anything, and I felt it looked a bit silly, but you're welcome to return it if you disagree. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I put it back. I understand the rationale for removing it, but if we are going to mention it in the lead we should provide the full text. Otherwise readers are likely to be irritated if they have to go look it up some place else, and it is not that long. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Do any of the sources who say this was inspired by Anning cite their sources, as a matter of interest? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
The source we use for this is Shelly Emling, who cites the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Does anyone have access to that so we can check what it says? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 00:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't mention Anning that I can see, so I'm going to remove it until we can pin it down. If all else fails and we want to include it, we may have to attribute it, but it would be good to be fairly certain that it's correct. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 01:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear that the poem refers to Anning. I'm sure print journals and books would be more in depth on this, but here are a few quotes that I gathered from just online material:

Anning is reputed to have inspired the alliterative tongue-twister, 'She sells seashells by the sea shore."

— Ludvigsen, Rolf (1996). Life in stone: a natural history of British Columbia's fossils. UBC Press. p. 158. ISBN 9780774805780.

IHV Script: ...Has anyone heard of Mary Anning? (Check for student response.) You have probably been exposed to Mary Anning even if you do not remember her. Do you remember learning, “She sells sea shells by the seashore?” (Check for student response.) Well, that tongue twister refers to Mary Anning!

— Clary, R. M.; Wandersee, J. H. (2006). "Mary Anning: She's More Than "Seller of Sea Shells at the Seashore"". The American Biology Teacher. 68 (3): 153–157. doi:10.1662/0002-7685(2006)68[153:MASMTS]2.0.CO;2.

It is also said that from [Anning's] remarkable business came the wellknown tongue-twister, "She sells sea shells by the sea shore".

— Larson, N.L. (2001). "Fossils for sale: is it good for science?" (PDF). The Geological Curator. 7 (6): 219–222.

I also don't think it is our place to challenge the reliable sources on this. If that is what they have reported, and there is nothing contracting that, then there is no need to remove it, per Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. NW (Talk) 04:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It has the flavour of an urban myth, in part because all the sources are recent, and none are heavyweight that I've found so far, so it looks as though they're just echoing each other. And in part because it doesn't have the ring of truth. Why would a tongue twister that's just a play on words have to be based on anyone, and how would anyone know that it had been based on someone? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
This 1979 New Scientist article attributes the origin of the "sea shells" story to Paul J. McCartney in his Henry de la Beche, 1977. Not available on Google books unfortunately, but at least that gives us reliable attribution if we want to use it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:36, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Source discrepancy

We have a discrepancy between two good sources: Hugh Torrens 1995, and in his 2008 article in the ODNB (OUP); and Dennis R. Dean in Gideon Mantell and the discovery of dinosaurs (CUP).

Torrens and our article say that the lord of the manor of Lyme bought the ichthyosaur skeleton for £27 in 1812, then sold it to William Bullock.

Dean says it was Thomas James Birch who bought this skeleton, and that it was in the collection that was auctioned on the family's behalf, though it failed to attract a sufficient bid. It was eventually purchased by the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and survived there until an air raid of May 1941. See here, pp. 58–59.

Do we know which is correct, or will we have to say X says this but Y says that? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Torrens is the leading academic expert on Anning so I think he should be given precedence over a more general source. Also the account currently in our article was actually taken from Emling (2009). So that is 2 sources that support the story as told in the article. Furthermore the story is supported by a contemporary source as Everard Homes wrote in his 1814 paper for the Royal Society that the fossil had been meticulously cleaned and prepared by Bullock's staff. Now Home was wrong about that (Anning had done the work), but he would hardly have written that if the fossil had not been in Bullock's possession at the time. Finally McGowan and other sources(Rudwick 2008) say that Konig named it Ichthyosaurus and purchased it for the British Museum in 1819. Finally Emling explicitly states that the skull that Joseph found in 1811 is still on display at the Natural History Museum in London though the Museum has lost the rest of the skeleton Mary found. So I think all we have here is one source that accidentally conflated stories about two different specimens. Rusty Cashman (talk) 04:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Emling is a tertiary source that this article relies too heavily on, so we shouldn't take that into account unless there's reason to believe she developed her material separately. Do you have a link/citation for the Homes paper so I can check it? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
You are correct that Emling is probably derivative of Torrens and McGowan on this point. (Home 1814) is already cited as source by this article and there is a link to it in the references section. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Home 1814 is subscription only so I can't see it. Can you post here what it says about the fossil having been cleaned by Bullock's staff? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Well there goes $7.50 that I will never see again. Though this time I saved a permanent copy for myself. Here is a direct quote from Home (1814):

The fossil remains of animals are too frequently brought under our observation in a very mutilated state; or are so intimately connected with the substances in which they are deposited, that it is difficult to make out the figure of the bones. In the present instance, the pains that have been taken, and the skill that has been exerted in removing the surrounding stone, under the superintendance of Mr. Bullock, in whose Museum of Natural History the specimen is preserved, have brought the parts distinctly into view.

By the by I also have a permanent saved copy of Torrens (1995) if anyone needs access. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I'm sorry, I wouldn't have asked about Home if I'd known you had to do that. Interesting though, that the other source (Dean) seems to have that wrong. I wonder if there's a version of what happened that would make both the sources right, Torrens and Dean. Might be worth an email to them.
I would love to see the Torrens article if it's no trouble. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

BBC article

Here's an odd thing. This BBC article of 8 February 2010 has almost word for word part of our lead, and indeed puts some of it in the mouth of its source, Daphne Baker from the Lyme Regis Museum:

Although Mary became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, her sex and social class, in a society dominated by wealthy Anglican gentlemen, prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of early 19th century Britain.

As a result, Daphne says: "She didn't always receive full credit for her contributions and struggled financially for much of her life."

But those words were in our article before that date; see here on 6 February 2010, for example:

Anning's sex and social class—her parents were poor and were religious dissenters (non-Anglican protestants)—prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of early 19th century Britain, which was dominated by wealthy Anglican gentlemen. As a result of this, she did not always receive full credit for her contributions. Despite this she became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, but she struggled financially for much of her life.

I wonder how those precise words ended up not only in the BBC article, but also as a quote from a source. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh that sort of thing happens all the time, especially with this article, If you look at the Royal Society press release on the 10 British women who most influenced the history of science closely you can see that the blurb on Anning was taken almost word for word from the version of the lead of this article that was up in late December/early January. I noticed it right away because I happen to have written most of that particular version of the lead. I considered sending the society a nasty gram because Wikipedia was not credited, but in the end I didn't because I found it kind of amusing to be plagiarised by the Royal Society. I also considered notifying the folks at Sign Post, but I haven't yet. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
What's interesting here, though, is that the BBC reporter, Sue Paz, and her source, Daphne Baker, have used the article's words. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
To be fair, she may have well taken that wording from the Royal Society announcement. I certainly would treat an announcement from the Royal Society as a reliable source if I didn't happen to know that it had derived directly from this article. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:42, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
But both women used our words (or used the Royal Society's version of our article), that's what so odd. The BBC reporter used them, and then the woman she interviewed used them in quotation marks as though she had said them. :) I don't think I've ever seen that before. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Joining the Geological Society

Rusty, you removed that she joined this just before her death, and left the lead in a bit of a mess. Could you say what your objection is? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes this (that Anning joined the Geological Society right before her death or alternately that she was made a member after her death) is an error that appeared in some online sources (and an earlier version of this article). You won't find it any of the more reliable printed sources (Emling, Torrens, McGowan, Rudwick etc.). They all agree that NO women were made members prior to 1904. The error seems to be a conflation of the fact that her eulogy was printed in the transactions of the society and the fact that right before her death she was made a member of the board of the Dorset Museum. Shortly after I corrected this article some of the online sources (such as, if I recall correctly the article Anning at the Natural History Museum) removed the claim. I am sorry if I edited the lead sloppily, but I was in a hurry to kill this urban legend before it started spreading again. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, fair enough. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Might the other sources you mention (Torrens, McGowan, Rudwick) not be thinking there were no full members prior to 1904? Where did the honorary membership story first appear? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:42, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
The first place I recall reading it is here [18] and that is the only source I know that still says it. As I said I recall it being in [19] as well, but it is not there now. I know that particular source (the Natural History Musuem article on Anning) has been changed recently, because it used to have another mistake in it that said that the tongue twister had been created by the local people of Lyme because of the fact that her fossil shop was a local fixture, and it cited to that effect in an earlier version of this article (back in 2009). I find it VERY difficult to believe that Torrens, Emling, and McGowan, all of whom researched Anning (and the Geologic Society of that time) extensively, would have missed anything as obviously interesting as an honorary membership. If you look at the first erroneous source I mentioned, you can see that it talks about the fact that Henry De la Beche was president of the society when this supposedly happened makes me all the more suspicious that it was a result of confusion caused by the Eulogy. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
You're right about the Geological Society and the honorary membership thing. Here's a book published by them in which they give details of their early relationships with women, making much of the fact that women were writing to the early geologists and therefore weren't excluded entirely. If there had been an honorary membership for Anning they'd have mentioned it, but they don't. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, I just added some stuff about Anning's interaction with the geological community at the end of her life to the illness and death section. Namely, that when she was diagnosed with Cancer in 1846 the geological society started a subscription of its members to help her with her expenses, and that also in 1846 the council of the Dorset County Musuem (which opened that year) made her an honorary member. I suspect that it was a misreading of these facts that has contributed to this urban legend about the honorary membership in the Geological society. Hopefully having what really happened described in this article will help prevent future confusion. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Sources

One of the concerns I have on reading this article closely is that it's conflating good secondary sources with tertiary ones, and barely using primary sources. It's important for each claim to find where it originated, so that we know which secondary source has it right. While source X may be very useful as a guide to the better sources, it may not be wise to rely on source X for citation in the article itself.

I was wondering who the key secondary academic sources are for the story. I see Hugh Torrens, Dennis R. Dean, and Martin Rudwick. Are there others? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I would consider Christopher McGowan a good secondary source as well as he examined a lot of primary material directly (he is the historian who so vividly described the hand copy she made of Conybeare's paper). Though if you look at any of the tertiary sources you find that they all cite Torrens extensively, as he is perhaps the only academic to have really focused on Anning in recent years (McGowan and especially Rudwick are more interested in the history of paleontology and geology in general rather than Anning in particular). Mary Anning is not like Charles Darwin or Alfred Russel Wallace. There is not really an "Annning Industry" in academia so the choice of good secondary sources is far more limited. That is just a fact we have to live with. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, thanks, that's good. Three or four academic sources is a lot to be going on with. I suggest we try to source as much as possible directly to them, or to primary sources, rather than citing people who are citing them (or who ought to be citing them even if they don't mention them). SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't disagree in principle, but in practice it will be hard to dispense with Emling (2009). It is practically the only book length biography published on Anning at least the only one that wasn't written as a children's book. So it has details not present in other sources (Emling is not purely a tertiary source she did her own research of primary sources as well). Also tertiary sources can be very useful for providing synthesis and especially context that academic secondary sources often lack (because they assume the reader is already familiar with it). Rusty Cashman (talk) 07:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Good point, yes. I can stop looking for other sources if you prefer. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll give you an example of my concerns. When I first looked at the article it said that when she met Carl Gustav Carus, he asked her to write her name down for him, which she did, and after her name she wrote: "I am well known throughout the whole of Europe." It was sourced to Emling, who does indeed write this.

That made Anning sound like a half-wit, that she would actually write this in someone's pocket book when he only wanted her name, so I looked for the primary source, Carus himself. And in fact that is not what happened. She wrote her name down for him, and as she was handing the notebook back to him, she said: "I am well known throughout the whole of Europe." [20] That's very different, much more the kind of thing a person might remark rather than write down.

Emling also cited the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for the "she sells seashell" issue, but so far as I can tell Anning's name does not appear in the latter.

I'm seeing quite a few other details like that, issues that a secondary source has misdescribed, so I think as far as possible we should check the primary sources—or at least sources closer to the time—just to make sure. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

To be fare I think Emling is citing the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for the text of the poem, which is there, as the footnote in question is attached directly to the end of the poem. However, I absolutely agree with you about consulting and citing primary sources as well as the secondary sources. For example, whenever I have discussed the contents of one of the 19th century scientific papers I have tried to cite both the paper itself as a primary source plus a secondary or tertiary source that supports my interpretation of the primary source, and I have caught several errors in secondary sources as well. For example, this article used to say that De la Beche and Conybeare had identified 4 different species of ichthyosaur based on differences in tooth structure based on a secondary source, but when I finally found the text of the paper, which I had planned just to cite in order to provide a primary source for reference, I realized that the actual number was 3, not 4. I think every single secondary/tertiary source I have consulted on this project, even authoritative ones like Torrens and Rudwick, has had some kind of error of fact (see our discussions about Anning and Geologic Society, and the confusion between the first ichthyosaur skeleton and the one sold to Birch for other examples). All we can do is check and compare as many different secondary/tertiary sources as possible against one another and against the primary sources to catch as many errors a possible. I very much appreciate your efforts in this regard. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:43, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Source request

This needs a more appropriate source:

At a time when most people in England still believed the the Biblical account of creation, which told them the earth was only a few thousand years old and that species did not change or go extinct,[1] the find raised questions in scientific and religious circles about what the new science of geology was revealing about ancient life and the history of the earth.[2]

  1. ^ Emling 2009, p. xi-xii
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Emling33-41 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

An academic source would be better for this (we cite Emling for both points), particularly for the point that most people in 19th-century England believed species did not change (what does that mean?) or become extinct. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Done. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
That is a good source. McGowan (2001) pp. 2-3. would have worked as well. Rusty Cashman (talk) 07:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

"Luckily"

Pais has changed a sentence, citing POV, [21] that I would like to change back: "Her education was extremely limited. She learned to read at a Sunday school run by the Congregational church, though luckily the school emphasized reading and writing rather than religion."

"Luckily" is the point of the sentence, and as I recall it's in the source. I don't see it as POV. It's just a fact that it was a good thing by any standard that the school placed the emphasis where it did, because at least that way she had a good grasp of reading and writing. Had it been the other way round her life might have been very different. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I think "fortunately for Anning" might be better than "Luckily" in this case. There was no luck involved, part of the Congregationalist doctrine emphasised the importance of education for the poor, and, before the Church of England decided to support universal literacy in the 1830s, this was one of the things that drew working class people to Congregationalism despite the legal discrimination. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, good suggestion. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
It's non-NPOV to suggest that it was lucky for her to get an education that did not emphasize religion (and the text should use the British spelling emphasise), as opposed (say) to one that emphasized reading and writing in addition to religion. And in fact, are we sure that the Congregationalist Sunday school did de-emphasize religion, as the text implies? Or did it in fact emphasize reading and writing in addition to religion? There's nothing wrong with saying "fortunately for her the school emphasised reading and writing", it's the "rather than religion" part that makes it non-NPOV, as if we're saying "Thank goodness she wasn't taught any of that ridiculous religion nonsense". Pais (talk) 14:49, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I changed the wording to avoid the problem, and yes the Congregationalists ran Sunday schools as part of their commitment to education for the poor rather than for indoctrination. At the time neither the Church of England or the British government made any provision for the education of working class children. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

This is just a suggestion, which you should feel free to ignore, but I was wondering whether a brief summary-style section would be interesting about what most people believed at that time, namely the Great Chain of Being, no evolution, no extinct species. It would provide an interesting backdrop to just why her discoveries were so important. We do touch on it, but I was thinking a section specifically on those beliefs would be interesting. It might be difficult to write accurately and succinctly, though. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that is a particularly good idea for this article. We don't want to wander too far away from Anning. I also think we should slow down on edits to the Ichthyosaur section. We are loosing some information and we are getting too much detail about the discovery up into the bio section when it belongs in the discovery section. I very much want to maintain the distinction between the biographical section and the section on scientific discover. Rusty Cashman (talk) 04:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't agree with this edit of yours, Rusty. By trying to describe her life without giving details of her work, you're failing to explain her importance. We need those details right up front in the life section -- here is what she did, here is why it mattered. You can elaborate on it in the work section, but you have to give the important details earlier on or you risk losing the reader. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

≤

We are having terrible edit conflicts please let me try and produce a consistent version and then you can go back and tweak it or we can argue it through. Right now we are just screwing each other up and loosing information. I don't agree that you want to dump all the work stuff into her bio section. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Please stop editing for a little while. I am trying to create a compromise version but I am getting constant edit conflits!!!!!!!Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
I haven't made an edit since 04:58. [22] SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep, the last conflict was caused by some kind of bot not you. Sorry if I sounded a little aggravated, but it is frustrating to loose a complex edit because of a conflict. I am done for a while it is your turn. I understand your point and I have tried for somewhat of a compromise that gives the reader some idea of the importance of the find, but avoids cluttering the bio section with too much detail, and also keeps much of the good detail you added. I will stop now and let you take a turn. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

In future if you're copyediting in a way that might disturb refs, you can temporarily place {{nobots}} at the top of the page, to stop the ref bot fixing them, which avoids edit conflicts. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Three Marys?

I'm now reading Torren's 1995 article, thanks to Rusty. He says there were three children called Mary? That can't be right. One died in a fire, the other is our Mary. So who is he saying the third is? It is this third one (that he says was born first) that he is calling Molly to avoid confusion, not the mother. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, now I see what he means! "This union immediately created a first Mary Anning." He does mean the mother. Crikey! :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 00:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes that is it. Be careful with Torrens (1995) while it is considered one of the most important sources on Anning some of it has been superseded by more recent research. In particular at the time Torrens was concerned that Mary might be getting credit for fossils found by her mother (who like him I will call by her nickname Molly to avoid confusion). More recent sources are of the opinion that Molly handled much of the management side (hounding museums and collectors for payment for example and negotiating prices for the more valuable finds) of the fossil business after Richard died, but that almost all of the actual fossil collection was done by the children Mary and Joseph. In this regard I would actually trust Emling (2009) because she has reviewed the more recent secondary sources. Rusty Cashman (talk) 02:07, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
I have concerns about the Emling book, in part because she has no obvious background in science or history, or anything related. Her other book is Your Guide to Retiring in Mexico, not a problem in itself, because general writers do often produce good serious work, but there is also that I've found some errors. And I'm really not keen on the speculative approach I mentioned earlier ("Anning would have felt the biting wind, would have pulled her coat around her"), and there's a lot of it in that book.
Can you give an example of something where Emling has it right and the others not, or where Emling is more comprehensive or up-to-date? And can you give examples of the sources who have superseded Torrens 1995? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:45, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd appreciate a response so that I know which sources superseded Torrens, and which parts of Emling I should be focusing on. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Some concerns

I have three concerns about this, which I thought could be dealt with quickly, but now I think it's going to take longer.

  • The more I read about this, the more I wonder whether material is missing. When I first read the article, the thing that jumped out at me was how little we knew about Mary Anning herself, what kind of woman she was, and I assumed that meant there was nothing out there about her. But the more I read, the more I'm finding personal remarks about her, but they're inconsistent. There are comments about her being a thin, quiet dour woman; other comments about her being charming, funny, and delightful; others again about her being simple and pious. Some of the sources began to make me feel uncomfortable, as though they were writing about a child, not an adult woman and a scientist. I've now found one article from an academic, Judith Pascoe in The hummingbird cabinet: a rare and curious history of romantic collectors, 2006, offering more of a feminist perspective, which includes details from the commonplace book that Anning kept, which our article doesn't mention. So I think we need to add more about that perspective, and more about her as a person, what kind of person she was, how people saw her.
  • I also think we need to include a historiography section, probably as part of the legacy section: who is responsible for digging out what is known about her, what has the reception been, why do some of the sources still appear not to take her seriously?
  • Related to the above, I have increasing concerns about the way our article uses the sources. Good secondary sources and the tertiary sources that are parasitic on them are mixed up, and handled equally. The danger of this is that we continue to promote the mistakes the latter have made. But we also don't check the secondary sources thoroughly either. They make several basic mistakes, which are based on simple misinterpretations of the primary sources, some of which are luckily available on Google, so we can check them ourselves. But it's a fair bit of work to do that.

I'm therefore thinking the article needs more time before it's promoted, so that everything is nailed down. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 01:59, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

See my comments above. Some of what is needed is just to evaluate the conflicting sources carefully. However, I agree that it might be a good idea to withdraw the FAC nomination so that we can slow down and discuss carefully how to resolve the conflicts between sources. I really didn't expect this article to pass FAC the first time (most of my nominations take two attempts to pass), and this first try has already resulted in significant improvement to the article.Rusty Cashman (talk) 02:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
I think the article as you presented it is very good, and I was happy to support it, and to some extent I still am. The problem is that you were forced to rely on sources who are inconsistent, and some of whom have been careless, which isn't your fault. It makes things awkward, because it's then left to us to work out who is most reliable, and that involves a lot of work reading the primary sources ourselves. The other issue is that people are still discovering material about her, or different ways of looking at her, so she is in a work-in-progress, as it were, which makes it harder for us to write a definitive account.
I've opened a subpage at User:SlimVirgin/MA, where I've started writing up some of the source material I'd like to include. I did that because I felt I'd edited this article too much while it was at FAC. If you want to keep an eye on that, you could let me know whether there's anything I add there that we should include here, or not. I want to defer to your judgment because it's your FAC, and because you know the science background. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:28, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
I have added it to my watch list so I can easily watch what you do. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:57, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Image

Does anyone know when the specimen in this image was found? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:19, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

That image of a Plesiosaur at the British museum was removed from this article some months ago. Although the plaque next to it talks about Anning it is NOT one of her finds. You can see the discussion of that on this talk page. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:01, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry that discussion has now been archived to Talk:Mary Anning/Archive 1 the discussion of the picture is under the heading Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni'.Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I was wondering why we hadn't included it. I wonder how we can get hold of a free photograph of the first Ichthyosaurus skeleton she and Joseph found. I believe it's in the British Museum, is that right?
Also, I wanted to ask you about italics, because I notice that sometimes the names of the specimens are italicized and sometimes not, and that it seems to differ depending on whether it's a noun or adjective. Do you know what the convention is? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:10, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
If it's above the genus level, it is not to be italised. Ichthyosaur refers to the order, whereas Ichthyosaurus refers to the genus, liekwise with plesiosaur and Plesiosaurus. FunkMonk (talk) 21:19, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, FM. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
As for their first found ichthyosaur, the reason we don't have real photos of the specimens is probably that they are quite inaccessible for photography at the British Museum, stacked on top of each other several metres up in the air, as evident in these photos.[23][24] Many of those are Anning finds, but which is hard to say. FunkMonk (talk) 21:24, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps we should write to them and ask for a free photo of the first one. There is a later skull shown here. I heard they wanted a greater collaboration with WP, so now's the chance to put that to the test. :) I'll drop a note to the coordinator of that recent Wikipedia/British Museum editing project. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:07, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, my understanding is that the museum lost the skeleton and only has the skull (I believe both McGowan and Emling say so). This is not as surprising as it sounds. At the time Museums did not appreciate that their natural history specimens might have historical significance and they sometimes mislaid or even threw out specimens if they got in more impressive specimens of the same type that replaced the older specimens on display. There are drawings of the skeleton in Home (1814) that are of course in the public domain. I will upload one sometime today. Though I will warn you it is not as visually impressive as you might expect I prefer when possible to use period drawings anyway as I believe they give the article a better historical feel. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Do you have a reference for McGowan saying that? Also have you read the first Goodhue book (2002)? So far as I can tell it contains the Emling material. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:08, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Her shop

Was this her fossil shop (the small three-story building in the middle of the image with the single attic window)? And if so, was it the old one Richard owned, or the new one purchased in 1826?

I'm trying to find an old photograph of her fossil shop, even if it's one taken after she died and it was owned by someone else. Do we know whether this is it? It's on Bridge Street, so I assume it's the same one. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I've set out some of the confusion (perhaps only my confusion) on the image page here. If anyone can enlighten me it would be much appreciated. :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I responded there. An image of her shop would be very nice. I would also very much like to find an image of a coprolite for the interactions with the scientific community section. The coprolite discovery is actually almost as important as the Plesiosaur finds were, because of what Buckland did with it and its influence on De la Beche's painting. I think there is a drawing from Buckland's 1829 paper reproduced in Rudwick (1829). When I am done with work I will see what I can find. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:58, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Here's something I posted a few threads up: There's a sketch of the fossil shop from 1895 before the building was demolished on page six in this PDF: http://www.geocurator.org/arch/Curator/Vol4No6.pdf Should the image be added t the article? FunkMonk (talk) 19:23, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
That's an interesting article, FM, thanks for finding it. The only problem with that image is (a) it says it wasn't her shop, (b) we can hardly see it, and (c) the date it gives contradicts the dates on the images at the Dorset Digital Archive, if it's the same building. Are you thinking it's the same house as in the image above or a different one?
Here are the images I've found of the Fossil Depot on Bridge Street or Broad Street depending on which page you look at (click to enlarge them):
I'm wondering whether Bridge Street became part of Broad Street after it was widened; there was a road widening that took place at some point, which is why the fossil depot was knocked down. I've written to the museum to ask them, but I'm not hopeful they'll know where the shop was.
That article FM posted also makes clear that it's not actually known whether the museum is built on her old home. Our article gives the impression that it was, and that it was built there because of her.
I'm starting to think that no one really knows much about Mary Anning and that a huge amount of it is guesswork. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I have updated the caption of the blue plaque image with appropriate qualifiers to be more accurate. I don't see the document posted by FunkMonk as contradicting the blue plaque, but rather as suggesting that qualification is appropriate. After all it can't be easy to locate the exact location of the house where a working class girl was born in 1799. Streets in working class neighbourhoods tend to shift as old buildings are torn down and new ones built. It would be nice to have an image showing her 2nd shop on Broad Street (where Emling insists it was located), but it is not essential. There has been quite a bit of research on Anning, but there are quite a few holes in the story especially the early years. Rusty Cashman (talk) 08:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

We're in danger of making some fundamental research errors by not distinguishing between types and quality of sources, and who came first. When the article came to FAC, it was relying on self-published websites like science.net and the dorset page; then popular books like Emling's, parts of which are written almost like a novel, which is fine for the genre but not so good as a source for Wikipedia; it also seems to rely heavily on Goodhue, so we should be using him instead. Then there were more serious papers from people like Torrens. In addition it was mixing up primary and secondary. The result is that we have no idea who said what first, where what came from, how firm anything is; which sources have made a mistake in interpretation, or exaggerated.
We need to go back and identity the primary sources, the early secondary sources, and the later secondary sources who are careful to cite their sources (such as Torrens), and be careful not to express things more firmly that the best-quality source has expressed it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 09:05, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
We have gotten rid of almost all the online sources. I think we want to continue, as we have bee doing, to check info from secondary and tertiary sources against primary sources, citing both, whenever possible. I don't see any problem with using both Emling and Goodhue as tertiary sources, but with care. Ideally tertiary sources are used for context and synthesis rather than for providing fact, but there will be exceptions to that. If anybody has a problem with a particular use of a source, or with a conflict between two sources, please bring it up here on the talk page. Often such discrepancies can be reasoned through with a little common sense. It is no longer an active FAC nomination so we have time. Speaking of Goodhue, I deleted the following text from the Gordon entry (where it clearly did not belong) of references: "This book is referred to in some sources by the title Mary Anning, the Heroine of Lyme Regis". I suspect it belongs with Goodhue, but without being certain I didn't want to just move it. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

BBC audio slideshow and museum exhibition

Nice article. I'm sure those who are working on this article are already aware of it, but the BBC News website currently has a link to an audio slideshow featuring Mary Anning. See here. Thought it would be worth mentioning on the talk page at least. I'm not sure exactly what 200th anniversary is being celebrated by the museum over this coming weekend, but possibly something about that could be mentioned in the article. Carcharoth (talk) 02:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

No I wasn't aware of it. It is a very nice slide show indeed and I think it will make a good external link for the article. Thanks. Rusty Cashman (talk) 05:10, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

A suggestion

You might want to contact Jo Draper, c/o Dorset County Museum or c/o Lyme Regis Museum (she used to be the Curator there), with enquiries pertaining to Mary Anning. Jo is hugely knowledgeable about all things Dorset and Lyme Regis in particular and has written about Mary. She's been really helpful when I have made enquries of her before so it's got to be worth a try. She knows a lot about the history of Lyme so should be able to identify the street in the drawing above for you.

On another note - you used to be able to buy 'Mary Anning baskets' at Lyme Regis Museum, made by a local willow-weaver. They were pricy but I wish I had bought one now.81.147.150.25 (talk) 14:32, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

A link to an article about Mary by Jo [25].81.147.150.25 (talk) 14:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Published writing

"The only writing of hers published in her lifetime was an extract from a letter she wrote in 1839 to the Magazine of Natural History questioning one of its claims" would seem to be contradicted by Jo Draper's article ([26]) which says "She wrote of the great storm of 1824 [quote follows] ... That letter was published in her lifetime, which is why the spelling has been cleaned up." The letter was written to a Fanny: would that letter of 15 years previous have been published in the Magazine of Natural History? It doesn't seem very likely.81.147.150.25 (talk) 15:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, good catch. We indeed have a problem. The claim that the extract printed in The Magazine of Natural History was the only thing she ever wrote, comes directly from Torrens (1995), but the source you site seems to contradict that. I will investigate further, but I suspect we may have to change the claim to "The only thing she wrote about her work to be published in her life time was an extract of a letter she wrote to The Magazine of Natural History..." or "The only thing she wrote to be published by a scientific journal was..." I suspect this may have been what Torrens meant anyway. I shall check all my sources after work tonight. Thanks for spotting this. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
OK I see what has happened. In 1827 a biography of Frances Augusta Bell (the Fanny mentioned in the quotation) was published and it included some of her personal correspondence, including some letters from Anning like the one about the storm of 1824. I think Torrens's main point, that the letter to The Magazine of Natural History was the only thing she ever submitted for publication is valid, and still worth noting even if we have to add a caveat that some of her private correspondence was printed during her life time. Rusty Cashman (talk) 09:04, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Picture of her house and shop

Nice find.Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I just realized there is a possible copy right issue with this image. The sketch of the house itself is old enough to be in the public domain, but the hand written notes on the right side of the image appear to be modern, which might make them subject to copyright. Perhaps we could crop the image so that it contained only the sketch of the house and not the modern commentary? Rusty Cashman (talk) 03:52, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
The handwritten detail looks like it is contemporaneous (I spend part of my work in county record offices poring over old documents) - see the use of the long s (the 'f'-like letter for the first s of the double s in the second occurence of the word 'fossils'), the formation of the 8, and the capitalisation of the 'h' in house. Copyvio not a problem! (The reference to 'the famous Mary Anning') shouldn't alarm - she was famous during her lifetime).81.157.193.152 (talk) 08:47, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

some thoughts

  • Is it worth mentioning the annual Mary Anning Day celebrations held in Lyme from 2004 onwards, converted to a Mary Anning Weekend in 2010 (with Sir David Attenborough as one of the speakers, no less)?
  • How about a section on the fiction - both adult and children's - inspired by Mary? Also the folk songs? 86.152.23.246 (talk) 09:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Enough material has been written about Anning that I don't think mentioning every work (especially all the fictional works) would not be appropriate. However, particularly important works can be mentioned in either the "legacy", "further reading" or external link sections (several already are), and a brief mention of Mary Anning day/weekend would be OK for the legacy section. Do you have a source (news article, civic website, etc.) that could be cited as a source? Rusty Cashman (talk) 03:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
The good old Bournemouth Daily Echo comes up with the goods:

Also

Hope this is enough...!81.157.193.152 (talk) 08:36, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

A misinterpretation

The last sentence of the article is "A panel of experts invited by the Royal Society in 2010 to produce a list of the ten British women who most influenced the history of science ranked Anning third on the list." While it is true that she is third on the list, the list is not organized by "rank"; it is organized by birthdate. The sentence, as it stands, implies she is the third most important woman--a reading not supported by anything in the online article.

As a newbe to editing Wikipedia, I will let someone else decide how best to rephrase the sentence so it is not misleading.

Der Riesen (talk) 19:03, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi DR, thanks for pointing that out. It's corrected in both the places it's mentioned. Cheers, SlimVirgin talk|contribs 00:37, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes thanks, it was rather dense of me not to realize that the list was ordered chronologically not ranked by importance, especially since I did wonder how Rosalind Franklin could possibly appear near the bottom rather than at the top. Rusty Cashman (talk) 23:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank everyone who helped get Mary Anning to FA

The bot hasn't been through to update the article history yet, but it is official—this article has been promoted to FA. I want to thank everyone who contributed to this with reviews, edits, and some very valuable suggestions on this talk page. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations, Rusty, it's well-deserved. Thank you for your hard work and perseverance. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 23:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Stable version

Hi all, there is a new stable template that I have placed on this talk page. The purpose of this template, as explained in the documentation and in a short discussion at the village pump, is to help against article rot (the deterioration of quality that can occur in articles), and to keep a link to a stable version, which will be reliable, and not so prone to those errors, vandalism, and erroneous information that can crop up at any moment. It has no effect on the actual article, and can be upgraded/changed at any time - ideally to reflect a newer, improved stable version. This being said, if you are against using it on this talk page (some have found it intrusive), feel free to discuss or remove it - I believe that it will benefit some articles more than others, and I accept that not all will see a need for it on each article. Falconusp t c 22:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see much point for this for an article like this which is actively patrolled and has never been subject to edit warring or any but the most trivial vandalism so I have removed the template. If a significant number of other people feel that it is appropriate then I won't oppose it. Rusty Cashman (talk) 00:32, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

How many sons?

I'm sorry if I enter without a signature (and for my bad english), I am italian and I work on our Wp, now I am trying to create a page for Mary Anning, using this one as main source, and I can't understand the birth line of the family. I read about ten sons, but I can find only nine mentioned: first Mary 1794, Martha, Joseph 1796, Henry 1798, our Mary 1799, and then I read "At least four more children were born after her—Henry, 1801; Percival, 1803; Elizabeth, 1804; and Richard, 1809". One is missing. Maybe He/She died too early to have a name? Anyway, Mary was fifth in line? Thank you for your attention.--151.49.251.234 (talk) 11:58, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

This issue has come up before. I did a quick check of my sources and I can't come up with a name. I will keep looking, but it is entirely possible that the child was either not named (as you suggest) or that the name was never recorded. A couple of the sources I have aren't even sure about how many children there were, Torrens (1995) just says there "may" have been as many as 10 children. It is possible the "10 children" statement is too strong given what the sources actually say. I will continue to research this. Thanks for your input. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Well I have consulted my sources, and Emling (the sighted source for that section of the article) clearly states that there were 10 children, and that 8 of them died in childhood, but she only names 5 of them, as does Cadbury. Torrens says that there might have been as many as 10 children but, only names the 2 Marys and Joseph. Several on-line sources (NDB, and the New World Encyclopedia) use the same names this article does. I will keep looking for a source with the missing name but until I (or someone else) finds something I think we should leave the text in the article as it is.Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Okay, this looks strange. The article makes a definitive statement that there were ten children, it then goes on to list nine names. These names are given in a group of four that preceded Mary, Mary herself, and a group of "at least four" that followed Mary. Basically the article is saying that there were exactly 10 children in one sentence and at least 9 in another. These two sentences are contradictory. We should state somehow that while some sources say that there were 10 children only 9 names have been found. --Khajidha (talk) 18:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I understand your concern. I have tweaked the paragraph to cite an explicit source for the 10 children (and to add some context about childhood mortality in early 19th century Lyme). As it stands we have one relatively early source (1995) that says "as many as 10 children", a later source (2002) that says "at least 10 children", and a later still source (2009) that says "10 children" (all reliable sources). None of these sources lists all of the children by name. In fact I am still trying to track down the source of a couple of the names (Percival, and Elizabeth) we list in the article. I will keep looking to verify those names, and find the name of the 10th child, but at this point I am pretty comfortable with the 10 children figure. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:44, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
While sourcing the claim of 10 children is good, it still leaves the paragraph reading odd. If you state that there are 10 of something and then only list 9, the reader will quite rightly ask "What about the tenth?" We need to put something in explicitly stating that the tenth name is unknown or move the statement about ten children to after the enumeration of names and rephrase it to something like "while the preceding nine children are known by name, sources indicate that the Annings had ten children." --Khajidha (talk) 11:40, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I have taken a different tack, in part because I wasn't comfortable having at least 2 names in the list for which I could find no source and in part because the reason that magazine articles and book length biographies on Anning don't list all the names is because they are not relevant to Mary's life. So I have rewritten the section so that the only names and birth dates that are specifically called out are Anning's, the dead sister she was named after, and the brother who survived and played an important part in her life. The other names were not relevant anyway. The relevant facts being that she was named after a dead sister who died in a tragic accident, and that she was one of only 2 children out of 10 who survived to adulthood. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:11, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

That works. --Khajidha (talk) 04:22, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

FA on main page

It's absolutely wonderful to see this fantastic article on the main page - well done to everyone involved! 86.133.208.48 (talk) 06:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Missing title in reference section

Howe, S. R.; Sharp, T.; Torrens, H. S. (1981), National Museum Wales, ISBN 978-0-7200-0232-4. No title given! 86.133.51.253 (talk) 09:56, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I've now added the title. Aa77zz (talk) 13:29, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Picture

What's up with that picture? Did no one notice that it strongly resembles a portrait of a saint? (With a bonnet that looks more like a halo than headgear, no less.) Is this some sort of secular hagiography? GrimmC (talk) 13:17, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

No, that's how bonnets of the period looked. If you want to see them used with a halo-like effect, try this pic. Johnbod (talk) 13:33, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
What does this have to do with the article? FunkMonk (talk) 12:24, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Archive?

Am I being blind? I can't see the talk page archive anywhere, and I wanted to read again a comment someone left on the talk page before it got changed/cut/archived. Stronach (talk)

You are right. Back in March somebody archived the talk page manually, which left no link to the archive on the page. I will fix this so that there is a permanent link to the archive on this page, when I find an archive template I like, but in the meantime here is a link to the archive. -- Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:03, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Have added the bare bones link above for anyone else wanting the archives in the meantime. Happy hunting for your template! Stronach (talk) 13:48, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
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