At the same time, news of Mary’s work and the mysterious crea- ture she was unearthing spread throughout Lyme Regis. Fascinated by what might be found, friends and family helped her complete the task. By the time they were done, twelve months after her first shovelful, they had uncovered what had been hidden away for per- haps 180 million years, a complete seventeen-foot long skeleton of what we call today an ichthyosaurus (ik-thee-uh-sawr-us), Greek for “fish lizard.” This was when the legend of eleven-year-old Mary Anning began. For the next few years, she continued searching for and digging up extraordinary things, finding several other ichthyosaur fossils of different species, including one that was an incredible 20-feet
long. Then, on the chilly winter day of December 10, 1823, Mary made her second major find. Again her discovery began with the finding of a skull. But this skull, unlike the skull of the ichthyosaur, was connected to a very long neck. She worked patiently through the night in freezing conditions, freeing first the neck bones, then the ribs, then the pelvis bones. She took great care to see that every bone was carefully freed from the cliffside one by one. Her job was complete once she removed the final bits of dirt from the four paddles on the beast’s sides.
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