Google Doodle Highlights Mary Anning's 215th Birth Anniversary

Recently Google has been posting a number of Doodles on its home page. The search engine giant has today posted its latest doodle, which features British fossil collector Mary Anning. It is to celebrate her 215th birth anniversary.

Although the doodle is not interactive as such, it features a cartoon sketch as usual of Anning hunting for fossils and the fossilized remains of animals make up the word Google. Thus it is evident that Anning used to dig the fossils and sell them for a living. But later Anning's works helped influence and shape the early days of the study of the science of palaeontology.

Amongst Mary Anning's many discoveries, the most important ones are the Ichthyosaurs, the Plesiosaurs, Fossil fish and the Pterosaur. The doodle itself, pays a tribute of sorts with the second G in the word closely resembling the fossilized bone structure of a reptile from the Jurassic Age.

Born on May 21st 1799 to a cabin maker in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, Mary Anning worked on the marine fossils in the area around her hometown. Mary Anning died of breast cancer at the age of 47 in 1847.

In 2010, Anning was included by the Royal Society in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.

You can click here to see more doodles.