The Bone Hunter

You swim in the shallow sea. The water is blue green. The air above you is thick and heavy. The sun is sizzling hot.

Creatures like lizards zip across the skies. They are the size of small planes. Powerful sea beasts that make sharks look like kittens swim in the waters below. Yet you are not afraid. You are a monster too. 

You are a mighty Ichthyosaurus (IK-thee-uh-SOR-uhs). You lived in the ocean millions of years ago. You’re huge. You have eyes the size of tennis balls. You have razor-sharp teeth. You feast on fish and squid. They cannot match your speed.

But like all living things, you die one day. You fall to the bottom of the sea. Your body rots. Over millions of years, your bones turn to rock. All that remains of you is a fossil. Your watery home becomes dry land. You are forgotten.

Until one day a 12-year-old girl digs you up on a windy beach. Her name is Mary Anning. Together, you will change the world.

Imagine you lived millions of years ago. You swim in the blue ocean. Giant creatures fly above you. Sea beasts swim below you. You are a huge monster called an Ichthyosaurus (IK-thee-uh-SOR-uhs). You have sharp teeth. Your eyes are the size of tennis balls!

But one day you die. Your body falls to the bottom of the sea. Millions of years pass. You turn into a fossil. 

Then a 12-year-old girl digs you up. Her name is Mary Anning. Together, you will change the world.

Mary’s brother spotted it first. It looked like a huge skull buried in the sand, with a giant eye peeking out. It was Mary who found the rest. 

She soon realized the skull was part of a whole skeleton. For months, Mary returned to the beach and slowly chipped away at the rock. She braved fierce waves and falling rocks. Her hair became tangled by the salty sea air. But she didn’t give up. 

Finally, Mary uncovered the full fossil. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. It had a body like a lizard, flippers like a dolphin, and a tail like a shark. It was 17 feet long. That’s longer than four third-graders!  

Mary sold the amazing fossil and earned enough money to feed her family for months. The skeleton was put on display in a museum in London. People couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the skeleton. It seemed like a monster from a storybook!  

But as the world would learn, Mary’s creature came from a place even more fantastic. It was a real animal called an Ichthyosaurus. It lived about 200 million years ago, during the Jurassic era . . . when dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

Mary’s brother spotted it first. It looked like a huge skull buried in the sand. It had a giant eye peeking out. It was Mary who found the rest. 

She soon realized the skull was part of a whole skeleton. For months, Mary returned to the beach. She slowly chipped away at the rock. She faced strong waves and falling rocks. Her hair became tangled by the salty sea air. But she didn’t give up. 

Finally, Mary uncovered the full fossil. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. It had a body like a lizard. It had flippers like a dolphin. And it had a tail like a shark. It was 17 feet long. That’s longer than four third-graders!  

Mary sold the amazing fossil. She earned enough money to feed her family for months. The skeleton was put on display in a museum in London. People couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the skeleton. It seemed like a monster from a storybook!  

But Mary’s creature came from a place even more fantastic. It was a real animal called an Ichthyosaurus. It lived about 200 million years ago, during the Jurassic era . . . when dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

Today we know about more than 1,000 kinds of dinosaurs. There was the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex. It had giant jaws and a mighty roar. There was the elephant-sized Triceratops. It had pointy horns and a beak-like mouth. And there were amazing reptiles like the Ichthyosaurus. They lived alongside the dinosaurs in the sea and the sky.

But no one knew about this world when Mary found her skeleton. No one had heard of dinosaurs. The word dinosaur did not even exist!

Of course, people had found odd fossils before. They’d seen strange bones near cliffs. Huge footprints had been found in rocks. But scientists back then thought that these fossils came from animals that still lived somewhere on Earth. Few people thought an animal could reach the point of extinction. 

But Mary’s skeleton was different. It did not look like any creature on Earth. To many scientists, it proved that animals could die out for good. Scientists wondered: What other mysterious creatures lived on our planet millions of years ago? What else could we learn through fossils?

Mary made more important discoveries. She found a fossil of a flying reptile called a Dimorphodon. She was the first person to find a full skeleton of a sea reptile called a Plesiosaurus. She even studied coprolite. That’s old poop that turned into fossils!

Mary’s discoveries helped to create a new field of science. It’s called paleontology. Since then, we have made more discoveries about dinosaurs. We have also learned about the creatures that lived at the same time as them. And scientists continue to look for, excavate, and study fossils. Technology helps show what these creatures looked like, how they acted, and why they are no longer here. 

Each discovery helps us understand the world Mary helped open for us. And the most exciting part? That world is still open. Anyone could find a fossil—even you! Perhaps right now, a kid is walking on a beach, about to make a discovery that will change our ideas again—just like Mary Anning.