Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita, Mr. Tornado

Tetsuya Theodore “Ted” Fujita, photo by Roger Tully, PBS.org

Tornadoes are incredibly powerful weather events. They can appear as just one funnel or multiples. Studying how they work can be dangerous research. Japan is known for its violent phenomena such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, but not tornadoes. Tetsuya Fujita's curiosity put him on the map as an expert in  such weather, but most of his work took place in the United States. He developed a ranking system (the Fujita Scale) for the intensity of tornadoes which was put in use in the early 1970s.

Tornado forecasting in the U.S. had begun around the 1800s. In 1884, John Park Finley worked for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and used 1,000 people to spot weather conditions that might precede a tornado. In 1887, the Corps banned the use of the word tornado from any forecasting in order to prevent panic, and that ban lasted until 1950. After the Corps was taken over by the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1890, Finley left. Although much data had been collected when tornadoes started, no one had put together a sound theory for how they were created. Ideas ranged from the Earth's distance from the sun, to sunspot activity, various electrical hypotheses, and the unclear notion of air currents with different temperatures colliding. To quote meteorologist Edward M. Brooks: "a  major problem in explaining the formation of a tornado is to find the source of the potential energy and the manner in which it is converted to kinetic energy".

John Park Finley (1917, Wikimedia) and his 1887 map of known locations of tornadoes in the U.S. (The Weather Doctor)

Tetsuya Fujita was born on October 23, 1920 in a small town of Sone-machi (a suburb of Kitakyushu city) in the northern part of the island of Kyushu. His childhood interests varied around science topics such as asronomy (especially the tidal effects of the moon), catching clams on the beach, topographic mapping of the seacoast cliffs, and tracking sunspots with a homemade telescope. He graduated from Kokura Middle School in 1939 and won the Science Award for all of his efforts.

Family picture with Tetsuya at 14 on the right; (right) aged 19 ready to enter college

(images from Fujita's memoirs)

He then entered Meiji College of Technology, even though he was also accepted at the Hiroshima College of High School Teachers, on the basis of his father. Tetsuya majored in mechanical engineering (ME) and was a part-time assistant to Professor Tadaichi Matsumoto, who was in the Geology Department. A research project Matsumoto directed him to do was mapping aerial views of four volcanic calderas in the area, which was accomplished easily due to his earlier interest in topography. His own thesis was under Professor Hajime Nakagawa in the ME department. Tetsuya measured the impact force of steel balls hitting the ground, and his thesis was published in English and German. He learned both languages by dictionary translation of reference books from Prof. Matsumoto.

He graduated 6 months early in 1943 when the university changed its policy so that graduating students could enter military service during World War II. He became a full-time assistant in the Physics Department, and he was promoted to assistant professor in just one month.

Fujita's interest in meteorology came about in odd ways.

• In 1944, the Navy contracted him to determine location of enemy planes using 3D triangulation with searchlights. He learned about bending of the beams in certain weather conditions. 
• Assigned to research on coal mines in 1945, he measured flucturating temperature and barometric pressure at points in mine shafts. These events caused him to become more interested in meteorology. 
• He even used his knowledge to estimate the altitude of the fireball from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fujita studying Nagasaki damage: his triangulation method for the Nagasaki fireball altitude calculation

(Images from Fujita's memoirs)

Fujita got a grant in 1946 to reeducate elementary school teachers, and he chose weather science as the topic because, as he wrote in his memoirs: "it could be studied rather cheaply with pencil and paper". After collecting data from a weather station, he created 200-300 booklets per month for the teachers. The weather maps created from temperature and pressure readings fascinated him, but the direction and speed of winds during certain storms didn't fit basic laws of motion that he had learned. 

In 1947, despite taking measurements from the base and top of a mountaintop at a weather station and writing a research paper about micro-gusts of wind every 10 minutes (micro-analysis), he determined that the wind sometimes gusted strongly downward. As he wrote in his autobiography, "nobody in Japan in 1948 thought about a downard current...in a thunderstorm". He presented his data in a paper titled "Thunder-Nose", but his work received no recognition.

Graph from his paper "Thunder-Nose". Note the red downdraft created in the bigger storm updraft.

This shows a cross-section of the moving storm at altitudes above ground, and the storm moves from right to left.  So, the strongest winds occur in the downdraft ahead of the storm.

On September 26, 1948 he surveyed 9.8 km-long damage from a tornado for his first time, walking the length of the path of destruction and observing how it affected buildings and rice fields. He spent a year collecting data from weather stations in the area (more micro-analysis), too, and published it in 1951 in English in Geophysical Magazine. He'd had to borrow money to buy a typewriter, and he translated it himself and typed it all with one finger.

After a presentation to the Fukuoka District Weather Service on the Thunder-Nose data in 1949, one of the meeting participants said he had found a 1942 paper on a similar topic in the garbage can of a U.S. Air Force installation at the top of the mountain where Fujita had collected his own data! During his doctoral studies at Tokyo University on typhoon damage in Kyushu, he sent his earlier journal articles to the author of that paper, Dr. Horacy Byers, at the University of Chicago. Byers was amazed at how detailed Fujita's data were despite much less sophisticated equipment at hand, and responded, "This problem is attracting a great deal of attention in the United States at the present time, and the U.S. Weather Bureau has a special project to investigate these smaller disturbances". He continued, "I have looked over your paper, Micro-analytical Study of Thunder-Nose, and note that in view of the fact that you were not familiar with the work of the U.S. Thunderstorm Project on this subject your conclusions are highly valuable and really represent an independent discovery of some of the factors derived from our work. In particular you deserve credit for noting the importance of the thunderstorm downdraft and outflowing cold air".

Seburi-yama weather station of the USAF, where Dr. Byers' 1942 paper was found.

Fujita finished his doctoral program in 1953 with a thesis titled "Analytical Study of Typhoons". (Typhoons are hurricanes in the west Pacific.) Byers invited him to Chicago to study severe storm phenomena in the U.S. with him. 

Fujita in 1950 at age 30 while attending the Kyushi Institute of Technology (From his memoirs)

For the next few years, Fujita (who had now adopted the name Theodore, or "Ted) worked with Byers in Chicago and Dr. Morris Tepper who was doing research at the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. Following a tornado outbreak in Kansas and Oklahoma in June 1953, he applied his style of analysis on many aspects of the weather records before and during the storms. Sharp dips in the barometric pressure data were termed "mesocyclones". The prefix "meso" refers to Fujita's "mesoscale" analysis (mesoanalysis) of the weather data including

• the area within a storm
• areas around or ahead of storms

Contrast that to a huge scale (100s to 1,000s of km wide) and a microscale (just a few kilometers). A mesoanalysis takes in data between the size of those areas. Fujita felt they were the most important.

Byers asked Fujita to study the photographic evidence from a June 1957 tornado in Fargo, North Dakota that had damaged 1,300 homes. Over 2 years, he pieced together 150 photos from 53 ground sites to plot the path of the tornado and cloud features at one-minute intervals, and from them he was able to identify the storm wall cloud (from which tornadoes often descend) and tail cloud. 

Fargo tornado, June 1957 (Wikipedia)

In 1965, he studied aerial photos of 36 tornadoes in the Midwest and noticed that the tornado tracks paralleled each other in "families". That is, where one tornado damage path ended, another one began a few miles east-northeast of it. He also noticed patterns of damage in corn fields which led him to believe that a tornado had multiple smaller ones inside it rotating around the center.

Fujita's model of multiple mini-tornado gusts inside a single one (uchicago.edu)

These smaller cyclones would swirl around the center in seconds adding 100 mph to the main tornado's winds and cause specific damage patterns, which Fujita recognized. They were confirmed by aerial photos like the one below. He said this pattern (which Fujita named cycloidal marks) might explain why one house could avoid damage while others nearby would be hit.

(Left) Notice the two curls on the right in this Magnet, Nebraska tornado path from 1975 (PBS).

(Right) Fujita's photo from 1970 indicating the cycloidal marks (Monthly Weather Review). 

A multi-vortex tornado which generates cycloidal marks. (weather.com)

Moreover, Fujita's keen eye for detail also noted different levels of destruction of houses. At that time, hurricanes followed a 12-point ranking of wind speeds and sea conditions called the Beaufort Scale, but the maxium for that was 73 miles per hour (64 knots).  

Beaufort Scale (Wikipedia)

Since tornado winds are much stronger, Fujita created his own scale in 1971, which he called the Fujita Scale or F-scale. Here it is compared to the Beaufort Scale and the Mach scale for speed of sound. The original F-scale was later modified in 2007.

Comparison of Fujta Scale (tornadoes), Beaufort Scale (hurricanes), and Mach scale (speed of sound) (Wikipedia)

Original Fujita Scale and the 2007 Enhanced Fujita Scale

Keep in mind that Fujita's analysis was done at a time when there were no weather satellites and no radar stations to monitor weather. His work was done all by gathering empirical evidence from ground and aerial photos, weather records, and descriptions of damage. Fujita visited 300 sites himself and took ground and aerial photos, plus conducted interviews with survivors and emergency teams.

(Top left & right) Fujita inspecting tornado damage (KPBS video)

(Bottom) Fujita taking photos from a plane (KPBS)

He also built a tornado simulator using dry ice for laboratory analysis at the University of Chicago.  

Fujita's tornado simulator (YouTube)

Fujita with his tornado machine up close (WOUB Public Media)

With his accumulated knowledge growing, he was able to identify patterns called downbursts, which were sudden strong (62 km/hr, 39 mph) downdraft winds from thunderstorms, such as the one he suspected caused the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 66 at John F. Kennedy Airport in 1975. He later refined them in 1981 as macrobursts and microbursts. 

• Macroburst: winds up to 188 km/h (117 mph) spreading in a path >4 km (2.5 miles) wide and lasting from 5 to 30 minutes
• Microburst: winds ~270 km/hr (170 mph) <4 km (2.5 miles) in diameter and lasting <5 minutes

Result of a microburst, leaving a focused pattern of tree damage (Fujita, 1978)

Although Fujita had tried to distuinguish these types of air movement with specific terms, they still fell under a collective title of wind shear. Many meteorologists did not believe in his concept of downbursts, but eventually he collected enough data from around the country to show them that they were real phenomena. His work led to better pre-flight checks on commercial aircraft.

From 1976 to 1978, he received funding for project NIMROD (Northern Illinois Research on Downburst), and then joined a team called JAWS (Joint Airport Wind Shear) in Colorado. It wasn't until June 12, 1982 while working on JAWS that he actually saw his first tornado!  It is said that after he discovered downbursts, he almost never flew without being invited to the cockpit to meet with the flight crew. After this, special Doppler radars were installed at karge commercial airports to improve safety.

Fujita's study of storms also produced the term bow echo, which describes the bow-like shape of a storm. Parts of it may produce very high horizontal winds, and other parts might generate downbursts. These data helped weather forecasters to warn the public.

A real bow echo in Kansas City, 2008, and a diagram showing how such things form. 

Note how the diagram shows the storm front moving left to right, but the ends are curling around. (Wikipedia)

Despite retiring in 1990, Fujita continued investigating things like hurricanes and El Niño. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1968, and he got the nickname Mr. Tornado from a National Geographic article in 1972. He was the recipient of many awards in his lifetime ever since his middle school science award. Here is a partial list:

• Okada Award, 1957 (Meteorological Society of Japan)
• Kamura Award, 1965 (Kyushu Institute of Technology)
• Meisinger Award, 1967 (American Meteorological Society)
• Admiral Luis de Florez Flight Safety Award, 1977 (Ottawa, Canada)
• Aviation Week and Space Technology Distinguished Service Award, 1977 
• Applied Meteorology Award, 1978 (National Weather Association)
• Distinguished Public Service Medal, 1979 (NASA)
• Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award, 1982 (American Institute of Aeronautics
• and Astronautics)
• Fujiwara Award, 1990 (Meteorological Society of Japan)

Fujiwara Award, with cyclonic pattern on the front side

The Kyushu Institute of Technology Library created the Tetsuya Fujita Memorial Collection with 406 books and articles.

Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita died in his sleep on November 19, 1998 at age 78.

A peek inside human brain shows a way it cleans out waste

Link to article

Why do we sleep? Science has not answered that yet, but several reasons have been proposed. It gives time for physical rest, of course. It might allow the brain to reorganize thoughts and memories. Sleep also helps us to remain alert and capable of clear reasoning. Many more ideas abound. But new research also says it allows the brain to physically clean itself. How is that done?

The circulatory system in the body is the collection of veins and arteries that carries red blood cells (for oxygen), white blood cells (for defense against bacteria and viruses), and platelets (which clot wounds to stop bleeding). Arteries carry blood away from the heart; veins carry it back. Part of the job of this system is to send blood for cleaning, too, as explained below:

• In the lungs, fresh air is exchanged to remove carbon dioxide and fill blood with oxygen.
• In the kidney, waste products (like urea) are removed, and so are extra water, and some toxins.
• In the liver, blood is detoxified of harmful substances (like drugs or alcohol)

Left, whole body circulation; right, brain circulation (red: arteries, blue: veins)

Another system in the body is called the lymphatic system, which is made of several organs (like the thymus, tonsils, and spleen) and lymph nodes. They are all connected with a different system of tubes that run near the circulatory system and sometimes intersect with it. The lymphatic system has three basic functions: 

• deliver white blood cells to the body to fight infection, 
• carry nutrients to cells and tissues, and 
• serve as a drainage system for fluids leaking out of capillaries when the surrounding tissue does not absorb it. This clear liquid is called lymph. 

How the lymphatic system (green) collects and flushes the body (Current Biology, 2021)

About 20 liters of fluid from the blood seeps from capillaries (where arteries and veins join) and into the surrounding tissues. It's like a leaky garden hose under the soil. This fluid carries nutrients and oxygen. But 17 liters of that flows back into the capillaries to carry out waste and carbon dioxide. The remaining 3 liters is picked up by the lymphatic system, like a series of drainage pipes getting bigger and bigger until they reach the lymph node. It is then deposited in the bloodstream for further removal.

If you look at the diagram below, you can see that there appears to be no lymphatic system in the brain. Lymph channels in the head are actually on the back but not surrounding the skull. If you compare the diagram with an earlier one, you can see there is a blood circulation system around the brain, though, because it needs oxygen.  

Body diagram modified from Wikipedia; head diagram from SaintLukesKC.org

 
Normally, the blood vessels that surround the brain exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide when they cross the capillary cell wall (at the point where arteries meet veins). Bigger molecules can pass into the brain but do so through protein filter seals called tight junctions built right into the capillary wall cells. But they are so tight that they block germs from entering the brain. This blood-brain barrier is all over the brain except in certain areas like the pituitary gland which needs direct access to the bloodstream to deliver hormones.

Comparison of cross-sections of blood vessels in the body and the brain. (From YouTube)

So, aside from carbon dioxide, what needs cleaning in the brain that needs a special system of drainage?

The brain is composed of living cells, and like other cells in the body, they need nourishment and excrete waste products. A common waste is lactate from sugar metabolism.  A not-so-common waste is called amyloid beta peptides (Aβ). These fragments of protein come from a bigger molecule (APP) that is part of the cell membrane of oligodendrocytes (cells which wrap around and make up the insulating myelin sheath around the long part of a nerve cell). 

Two images of oligodendrocytes wrapping around nerves to make myelin coatings

(left) from YouTube; (right) from Wikipedia

The part of APP sticking out of the membrane is sliced off by 2 enzymes leaving the Aβ to float around outside the cell. They can be further broken down and (a) removed or (b) join with metal ions to create groups that may eventually form plaques found on brain cells of senile patients. They interfere with nerve cell signaling, trigger inflammation, and contribute to cognitive decline and memory loss. So, it is important to flush these out.

Formation of amyloid beta peptides (Modified from Redox Biology, 2018)

Amyloid plaques (orange) on nerves (blue) (from Alzheimer's Disease Research)

Researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University have just discovered a third system of channels in the body; it drains waste from around brain cells like the lymphatic system does elsewhere in the body. It is called the glymphatic system. It is composed of a special type of glial cell (a type of nerve cell that does not conduct impulses, but instead it provides support, protection, and nourishment to nerve cells that do conduct impulses). 

It gets it name by combining the nerve cell name and the draining action like lymph:

Glial + Lymphatic-like = Glymphatic

(left) Dark blue shows the lymphatic system in the brain using an MRI scan with blue dye.

(right) Cross section of brain tissue showing lymph vessel (LV) blood vessels (BV).

(Images from YouTube of Dr. Daniel S. Reich at NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)

Notice in the picture above how the glymphatic system tracks with the blood system in the first picture on this page.

What gave scientists hope that humans would have this drainage system came about in 2015 when mice were examined during research on Alzheimer's disease. A similar system was found in zebrafish in 2019 when researchers were simply investigating how the lymphatic system overall develops in those fish. They are the fish equivalent of white mice and are used a lot in genetic studies.

Left, zebrafish; Right, mouse

Brains with networks of lymphatic systems (in green)

(from Hogan and Bower, 2021)

In a 2019 study by David Holtzman, his team showed how tau protein gets cleared from normal mice. The tau protein normally helps support a cell structure, but abnormal tau molecules can lead to plaques like APP. Follow the blue dye-stained normal tau in this mouse brain to see how it should be removed and is within 72 hours.

Blue tau protein gets drained out by the lymphatic system of a mouse brain (Molecular Neurodegeneration, 2019)

Even before the glymphatic system was discovered, researchers still noticed that when mice slept or were anesthetized, drainage was better than when the mice were awake. 

Drainage of amyloid beta from mouse brains (Science, 2013)

At the time, just 2 years before the drainage system in mice was discovered, scientists did not know how chemicals like amyloid beta were removed from the brain, but the key point was that it took place faster and better when the animals were sleeping. In fact, when they were awake, more amyloid beta was made, leading the mice to stay awake longer in a vicious circle.

Now, we know more about the plumbing system. Moreover, sleeplessness caused by insomnia and even short bursts of waking in cases of apnea may aggravate the process and eventually lead to dementia or death unless changes are made in a person's sleep schedule. We know more about why now. It's not just to rest our minds, but to clear out harmful materials.

Mary Anning, early paleontologist and fossil hunter

The United Kingdom is a treasure trove of fossils, from dinosaurs to shellfish. The Enlightenment period (late 1600s and the early 1800s) brought with it a sense of importance to empirical observations, but also to classifying and organizing things. When the Industrial Revolution took place in the late 1700s to early 1800s, land became exposed to make railroads, quarries, tunnels, and canals. These actions created great opportunities for fossil hunters.

Map of fossil sites in the UK (left, Premier Inn); location of the best site, Lyme Regis

The Latin, and later French, origins of the word fossil were very general: something dug up. The word didn't have any more meaning than that, and so people spoke of curious rocks, crystals, teeth, shells, bones, and petrified plants and sea life. But fossil held only that meaning, with no early connection to what are known today as fossils--remains or impression of a prehistoric plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved. The word had to earn its current meaning through decades of learning.

In the 1500s, fossils were considered to come from "sports of nature" or Noah's flood. They were considered curiosities of rock, not biological origins.

In the 1660s–1670s, Danish scientist Nicholas Steno not only showed that triangular rocks called "tongue stones" were actually ancient preserved shark teeth, and he proposed three principles of geology that remain in use today:

• sediment layers are deposited flat
• the oldest layers are at the bottom, youngest at the top
• layers extend outward until they thin out or are cut off

Steno's drawing of a shark head and teeth, and a photo of a tongue stone (evolution.berkeley.edu)

The idea that fossil shells and other samples were actually biological remains and not simply rock curiosities grew into the 1700s. The age of the Earth was challenged with more geological findings, and a biblical age was being replaced with evidence to show that it was formed with long-term, slow, continuous processes that would tend to favor the slow formation of fossils. Scientists and private collectors were starting to notice that certain types of fossils were consistently found in particular rock layers, but they didn’t yet have a systematic method for using this information to understand Earth’s history. They instead just thought fossils were found in limestone and sandstone but wouldn’t systematically link them to the order that the sediments were deposited or use them to guess the relative ages of layers. (Dating of rocks with radioactive elements didn't start until 1907 by Bertram Boltwood.) Fossils were noted, collected, and described, but rarely mapped or correlated across regions of the UK and Europe.

Enter Richard Anning and his wife Molly. 

Richard was a cabinet maker and carpenter who moved to the county of Dorset in southern England ini 1793. They settled in a new resort town of Lyme Regis (population 1,250 then) that had been made accessible to wheeled vehicles by a new road in 1758 to boost the area's economy. People began to travel there and other coastal areas when doctors began to talk about therapeutic effects of ocean air, bathing in saltwater, and even drinking it.

Lyme Regis port in 1724 (Lyme Regis Museum)

Lyme Regis was in the center of a rocky coast containing beaches and high cliffs from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about 154 km (96 miles). This stretch of coastline was named Jurassic Coast in the 2000s for reasons that will become apparent. It is England's only World Heritage Site.

The Jurassic Coast (Photos from Wikipedia)

They had 10 children, but only the last two survived poor health conditions and a fire. The last was Mary Anning, born on May 21, 1799.  Her father supplemented his income by collecting fossils from the coast to tourists, and his charismatic nature made him quite popular with high class collectors. Since two busy roads passed right in front of their coastal home, it wasn't hard to set up a table and attract their business.

Richard died after an accident in 1810 at 44, when Mary was only 11, but not before teaching her and her brother Joseph something about finding, excavating, and polishing fossils in the area. She was on the beaches at age 5 helping him out.

Mary with her father Richard (from The Fossil Hunter, by Shelley Emling)

The coast has much exposed blue lias, a series of layers of limestone and shale laid down from the late Triassic and early Jurassic times, (195-200 million years ago). Quarries during Mary's time had exposed rocky formations inland what the ocean waves hadn't from the cliffs, and lias was used not just for building blocks but also for the lime content for making mortar. 

(left) Limestone cliff and pavement along the Jurassic Coast (Alamy).

(right) A couple in 1909 on the Blue Lias beach area taking in the sea air. (fossilguy.com)

During the Jurassic period, most of England was underwater, and its future land was being populated by sea creatures that turned into fossils. This explains why the blue lias was also very rich in fossils like ammonites, members of the mollusk family from 140 million years ago. These were common fossils sought by collectors. 

Fossil of the ammonite Astroceras from England (Wikipedia)

With her father having passed away, Mary tried to continue his hobby of providing fossils so the family could make money. This was the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and there were food shortages in England along with rising prices. Richard had owed 120 pounds (about 12,000 pounds equivalent today, about $16,255 USD and  ¥2,389,600 JPY), and the family still needed to pay rent.

In 1811, when Mary was 12, her brother found something tremendous on the coastal cliffs. It was a 1.2-meter (4-foot) long skull of an ichthyosaurus, a marine reptile with the narrow head like a crocodile. Mary spent several months digging further to uncover the rest of the body's skeleton by 1812. 

Mary working on the ichthyosaur (Image from Arthur Mee’s “The Children’s Encyclopedia”. 1925)

They sold it to a collector for 23 pounds. It was later sold again and labeled "Crocodile in a fossil state". Sir Everard Home of the Royal Society of London published a paper on it, but never mentioned Mary or Joseph.

Ichthyosaur found by Mary Anning (Natural History Museum); drawing of the creature when alive (Britannica)

In the next decade, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Birch became one of Mary's best fossil customers. In May 1820, he was so taken with the diligence of their fossil hunting and their poverty that he sold his entire collection and donated about 400 pounds to the Annings, making sure to announce who had found the fossils. 

Around that time, many professional naturalists were having difficulty sorting out what types of animals these fossils were, often from only fragments of their bodies. Joseph had started working as an upholsterer's apprentice to bring in more money, but Mary continued fossil hunting. Then, she made another discovery in 1823: a plesiosaur. This is a long-necked marine reptile resembling a sea serpent in modern language. Until much later identification, many thought it was merely a turtle with a long neck.

Mary's sketch & notes of her plesiosaur (Natural History Museum); the actual fossil she found (Wikipedia)

Georges Cuvier, a renowned expert in the field of paleontology, thought it was a fake until he saw it for himself. From then on, she became famous, and many people came to Lyme Regis just to seek her out for advice. However, despite being a recognized expert, the male-dominated scientific community refused to list her in their own findings. For example, despite being recognized through Europe as a great fossil hunter, a personal letter of hers was labeled by the British Museum as “lacking importance”. One exception was George Cumberland, a famous art collector. In 1823, upon displaying a new ichthyosaur that Mary had uncovered, he wrote of her specifically in a newspaper (using a local dialect which misspelled her name):

the very finest specimen of a Fossil Ichthyosaurus ever found in Europe, a specimen that sets at rest all further investigation...of that remarkable aquatic animal, which we owe intirely to the persevering industry of a young female fossilist, of the name of Hanning [sic] of Lyme in Dorsetshire, and her dangerous employment.

He then described the dangers. 

This persevering female has for years gone daily in search of fossil remains of importance at every tide, for many miles under the hanging cliffs at Lyme, whose fallen masses are her immediate object, as they alone contain these valuable relics of a former world, which must be snatched at the moment of their fall, at the continual risk of being crushed by the half suspended fragments they leave behind, or be left to be destroyed by the returning tide: - to her exertions we owe nearly all the fine specimens of Ichthyosauri of the great collections; and, to shew that it is one which rewards industry a single specimen of her's, far inferior to this placed in the Institution was lately sold to the College of Surgeons [as a result of the publicity of the Birch sale] for the sum of One Hundred Pounds.

She began identifying fossilized feces (coprolites) in 1824. Inside or outside the animal source, these provided a link to the animals that produced them. She was likely the first person to look inside coprolites to see fish remains, scales, and bones, which helped people learn what the animals ate.

Also in 1824, Mary found a Brittle star, a relative of starfish.  

Mary's Brittle star in the Natural History Museum, London.

In 1828, Mary made not one but two discoveries.

• the sheath and ink bag of a Belemnosepia, an invertebrate relative to squid and cuttlefish (which she dissected to investigate their anatomy)
• a winged reptile Pterodactylus macronyx (Britain's first example)

(left) Belemnosepia: top is Mary's find; bottom is sketch of whole animal

(right) top is sketch of 1784 pterosaur by Egid Verhelst; bottom is drawing of what it might look like

Mary then discovered a new type of fish in 1829, the Squalo-raja (45 cm, 17 inches). In fact, she found only the front half and sold it to one buyer, and later found a second half and sold it to another. It's like a cross between a shark and a ray. This was something Mary herself deduced when she practiced comparative anatomy by dissecting a ray. She decided that the vertebrae anatomy alone indicated that it was different. 

Front half of Squalo-raja (The Geological Society)

Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche was one of the few men in science who helped Mary Anning and who lived in Lyme Regis. Together, they searched for fossils as teenagers, then later he became the first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and the first President of the Palaeontographical Society. Although he did not include her name as a source for sampled he described, he defended her many scientific claims. He drew a colorful picture Duria Antiquior, A More Ancient Dorset in 1830 depicting life when the fossils she found was teeming on Earth. It won so much acclaim with his colleagues that he commissioned a lithographic copy and sold many of them, with money going to Mary.

Duria Antiquior (Wikipedia)

By 1838, Mary's fossil shop had started earning 25 pounds as a grant from the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the British government. 

Mary's fossil shop, 1842, drawn by W.H. Prideaux and E. Liddon

The naturalist and Swiss paleontologist Louis Agassiz visited Lyme Regis in 1834 on vacation and found himself talking with Mary Anning. He was impressed with her knowledge and later named two specimens of fish after her, Acrodus anningiae and Belenostomus anningiae in the 1840s. Others followed with similar accolades only after she died.

Mary Anning was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1845 and passed away on March 9, 1847. The Geological Society, to which she was never allowed as a member, gave her money for treatments. Henry De la Beche wrote and delivered a eulogy to her at a meeting of the Society and published it in its quarterly transactions, the first such eulogy given for a woman. He remarked on her hard work and incredible knowledge, and he noted that without her careful fossil preparation and sketches, the Society would never have been able to publish their great works.

Mary Anning's gravestone in Lyme Regis (From YouTube)

Geologist and paleontologist William Buckland met Mary when she was 16 and taught her about geology and paleontology. He was the first to describe fossil remains as that of a dinosaur. He worked with her on fossilized feces and coined the name coprolites. Buckland also kept a supply of the Duria Antiquior prints to hand out at his lectures. It was Buckland who recommended the annual stipend to her in 1838. However, she was barred from joining scientific circles as an equal. As a result, Mary herself never published her findings, except to sketch what she'd uncovered and to write messages to collectors and museums. 

A younger friend Anna Pinney wrote of Mary in her diary:

“She says the world has used her ill … these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages.” (quoted from fossilbias.com)

Mary was therefore often depressed, but Pinney wrote she was complex, as shown by being simultaneously witty & kind, as well as rude, crass, and quick to anger.

Mary Anning around 1842 (artist unknown, Natural History Museum)

Mary Anning's accomplishments in paleontology will not be forgotten. Books have been written about her, and a movie Ammonite was based on her life. She was mentioned in the movie The French Lieutenant's Woman, too. An international meeting of historians, palaeontologists, fossil collectors, and others met on the 200th anniversary of her birth. Coins and stamps have been issued in her honor. But most importantly, her collections of fossils are found all over the world, earning her the title "greatest fossil hunter".

Statue of Mary Anning in Lyme Regis (Wikipedia)