Who discovered the first complete dinosaur fossil?

Mary Anning was a self-taught paleontologist and commercial fossil hunter who gained world-wide acclaim for finds she made in the Jurassic marine fossil beds located in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis, in Southwest England. Some of her most notable discoveries were made during the winter months, when landslides exposed new fossils, which had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea.

In 1811, at the age of 12, she discovered a 17-foot (5.2 m) skeleton which was later confirmed to be an ichthyosaur. At age 24, Anning made the first ever discovery of a complete Plesiosaurus skeleton. The specimen was so strange that many scientists initially refused to believe such a creature had ever existed. In 1828 Mary uncovered another strange jumble of bones; the U.K.’s first known remains of a pterosaur.

Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. However, because she was a female from a low-income family, she was generally excluded from scientific discussion at the time. Unfortunately, also due to her gender, she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions.

After her death in 1847, Anning's unusual life story attracted increasing interest. An anonymous article about the paleontologist’s life was published in February 1865 in Charles Dickens' literary magazine ‘All the Year Round’. The 2020 film ‘Ammonite’, starring Kate Winslet, is inspired by her story.