Note: This was originally a school assignment I did for my foreign language course. It is written and formatted to my instructor's expectations. :)
Mary Anning and Tilly Edinger are two amazing paleontologists. Although their histories and backgrounds do differ, it can be told for certain that language and culture made them the people we know today.
Born in 1799, Mary Anning resided in Lyme Regis, near cliffs that were rich in fossil deposits. She and her brother Joseph had learned how to hunt fossils from their father Richard Anning, who was an occasional fossil hunter himself (Torrens 1). Anning already enjoyed searching for fossils at the cliffs near Lyme Regis with her father, even before being formally recognized as a paleontologist. However, when her father died in 1810, her family had little means of income. A mourning 12-year-old Mary later walked the cliffs she and her father once traversed, only to find an ammonite shell that she was able to sell for a pound (Goodhue 1). Beginning from this incident, Mary and her brother began a family fossil collecting business as a means to provide their fatherless family income (Torres 1). While running this business, Mary skillfully excavated specimens of Ichthyosaurus and Dimorphdon just before she turned thirty, and, most notably, she was able to discover the first Plesiosaur fossil (Goodhue 1) (Torres 1). Because of her paleontological contributions, Anning received an annuity from the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and after her death from breast cancer, her obituary was published in the Quarterly Journal of the National Geographic Society (“Mary Anning”).
Tilly Edinger, born in 1867 in Germany, was another woman in paleontology, and like Anning, she was influenced by her father, who was a neurologist, to pursue the sciences (Bucholtz, Seyfarth 1). However, unlike Mary Anning, who excavated a variety of different parts of dinosaurs, Edinger founded and specialized in a more specific branch of paleontology: paleoneurology, or the study of fossilized brains. More precisely, she wanted to learn how accurately endocasts reflect the skulls of extinct organisms, what comparative anatomy reveals about brain evolution, whether or not fossil brains can tell how extinct animals lived, and whether or not the brain size of organisms has increased over time (“Tilly Edinger”). In addition, while Mary Anning discovered her passion for paleontology without formal education, Tilly Edinger’s contributions to paleoneurology began with the doctorate she did in university; this doctorate was about an endocast of a Mesozoic marine reptile called the Nothosaurus (Bucholtz, Seyfarth 1). In her teens, Edinger became deaf due to health complications and needed hearing aids to communicate with peers, although she did intentionally remove them while writing and researching (Bucholtz, Seyfarth 8). Nonetheless, she still contributed profusely to her field of study. Volunteering at the Geological-Paleontological Institute of the University of Frankfurt and later working at Senckenberg Museum, Edinger wrote to a student of her father’s that she would like to collect and edit material about paleoneurology in a book, which she ended up publishing in 1921. She died in 1967 due to a traffic accident but was still recognized by Wellesley College, University of Giessen, and University of Frankfurt for her contributions in paleontology, and her colleagues completed the rest of her magnum opus after her death (Bucholtz, Seyfarth 1).
Both paleontologists had to overcome obstacles influenced by a variety of different cultural factors during their time, including prejudices and expectations specific to their time. For example, both had to subvert expectations about individuals in their financial situations. Mary Anning and her family, for instance, had struggled financially after the death of her father, who primarily provided income for the family. Her socioeconomic status did in part contribute to the lack of credit she was generally given for the fossils that were sold to private collectors and institutions as time passed (Torrens 1). In fact, people who did know about the business were astonished at Mary’s expertise. For example, a widowed noblewoman called Lady Harriet Sylvester expressed this astonishment in her diary. As she wrote about Mary, “It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favor - that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed” (Torrens 1)
Tilly Edinger, on the other hand, was born to a wealthy family, but during her time, it was generally surprising for a woman of her wealth to study to work in a remunerated professional position. Nonetheless, she still completed her doctorate and researched and studied at the Universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Munich to get this position (Buchholtz, Seyfarth 2).
Both also had to overcome prejudices in their cultures as women in science. For instance, due to her gender, Edinger was not expected to pursue education in the sciences, and she ended up being the only female who attended the first meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the first woman to be elected president of that society (Buchholtz, Seyfarth 2) (“Tilly Edinger”). Meanwhile, many people struggled to believe that Mary Anning, a poor young woman at the time, could make so many fossil discoveries. Hence, many of her fossil discoveries were credited to those who purchased and donated her fossils to private collectors and institutions (Torrens 1).
In addition, Tilly Edinger, as a Jew in Nazi Germany, had to flee from the area she worked and was prohibited from entering the Senckenberg Museum, which resided in Germany (Buchholtz, Seyfarth 1). She had to overcome cultural prejudices for being a Jew in Nazi Germany before resuming her studies.
Language has also proven itself important to both paleontologists. Deaf since her teens, Tilly Edinger was able to communicate with others with the help of hearing aids. Hence, she never needed to learn any sign language. However, she did purposely remove her hearing aids when she was not talking with colleagues, so she was limited from the exchange of new techniques. For instance, younger scientists used the technique of mapping the surface of a mammal’s cortex to analyze the brains of extinct mammals. This technique could have possibly been used by Edinger to analyze sulcation patterns on endocasts if she had been able to learn about this technique via verbal communication. She hence limited her analysis instead to comparing the sizes of different regions of the brain (Buchholtz, Seyfarth 2). Nonetheless, she still had a strong enough grasp of technical terminology to research and write about the comparative sizes of different regions of an animal’s brain, so technical language still played a major role in her works. For instance, in her paper Evolution of the Horse Brain, she was able to observe “the predominance of the cerebrum” and the “expansion particularly of the neo-cortext” as horses evolved (Edinger 1). The fact that she was able to describe these sections of the brain does show that although she was limited to some verbal communication, she was still able to effectively use written language to describe technical aspects of a horse’s neurology.
Mary Anning, as a hearing individual, was not as limited in verbal conversations as Tilly Edinger was, but unlike Edinger, she did lack formal education. It is highly likely that her knowledge of technical jargon in the field of paleontology was limited because of this. Nonetheless, she was still able to teach herself paleontology and anatomy. She even manifested familiarity with dinosaur taxonomy, haven written to Charlotte Murchinson, another fossil collector, that she had “a very good head of an Ichthyo vulgaris about two feet in length which she valued at five £ - and this day she had found a beautiful Ammonites Obtusus about a foot across which she valued at one pound” (Anning 1). In addition, Lady Harriet Sylvester did write about Anning’s skill and studiousness in paleontology, writing that “she had made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong… by reading and application she has arrived to that greater degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom” (“Mary Anning”). The fact that Anning had still read and learned so much that she was able to communicate with other specialists in paleontology shows just how much the understanding of language impacted her in fossil collecting.
In conclusion, Mary Anning and Tilly Edinger, two paleontologists, were heavily influenced by language and the culture of their times. They both had to overcome cultural expectations as women in science in their particular financial situations to become the people they were, and Tilly Edinger had to avoid persecution as a Jew in Nazi Germany to continue her studies. Additionally, both needed a grasp of language and technical terminology to facilitate their studies and discoveries, regardless of the fact that just one of them was deaf while the other was hearing. Although there were some differences between both of their experiences and livelihoods, language and culture were proven to be important factors in shaping them as the people we know today.
Sources Cited
Anning, Mary, “Letter to Charlotte Murchinson from Mary Anning,” The Geological Society, 2012, https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Library-and-Information-Services/Collection-Highlights/Mary-Anning-and-the-Geological-Society/geologising-with-mary-anning/letter-from-mary-anning
Buchholtz, Emily A., Seyfarth, Ernst-August, “The Gospel of the Fossil Brain: Tilly Edinger and the Science of Paleoneurology,” Elsevier, 1998, http://academics.wellesley.edu/Biology/Faculty/Emily/BRB48(4).pdf
Buchholtz, Emily A., Seyfart, Ernst-August, “The Study of ‘Fossil Brains:’ Tilly Edinger and the Beginnings of Paleoneurology,” American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2001, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/51/8/674/220658
Edinger, Tilly, “Evolution of the Horse Brain,” Geological Society of America, 1948, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KXhH_mLYyNEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=EVOLUTION+OF+THE+HORSE+BRAIN+source:Geological+source:Society+source:of+source:America&ots=GHrfbYAXUZ&sig=q9YsFxVqY1OsEMKi6Sw2o4xR-fo#v=onepage&q=EVOLUTION%20OF%20THE%20HORSE%20BRAIN%20source%3AGeological%20source%3ASociety%20source%3Aof%20source%3AAmerica&f=false
Goodhue, Thomas, “Mary Anning: The Fossilist as Exegete,” pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2005, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15749150/
“Mary Anning,” sdsc.edu,
“Tilly Edinger,” Harvard Library, 2022,
Torrens, Hughes, “Mary Anning,” University of Berkeley, https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/anning.html
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