Mary Anning

A twelve-year-old working-class girl, Mary Anning (with her brother), discovered near Lyme in Dorset the earliest known complete ichthyosaurus skeleton—or else her brother found part of it this year and she the rest in 1812.

Self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning , a friend of Elizabeth Philpot , discovered a skeleton of the Plesiosaurus dinosaur and sold it to the Duke of Buckingham for £200.