Remarkable Creatures

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The narrative alternates perspectives between Elizabeth and Mary. They are based on real people and Chevalier writes them into life, complete with obsessions and idiosyncrasies. The two women face a number of obstacles, including a male-dominated society that minimizes the role of women and church officials that do not support the concept of extinction. The reader can feel a sense of injustice when Mary is not even given credit for discovering the skeleton. The period is portrayed beautifully. I particularly liked how the authors shows the tremendous gap in scientific knowledge at the time the fossils are initially discovered.

I am kidding, of course, but the thought of Mary Anning as a real-life HP using fossils as portkeys to be transported into a time so different that it might as well just be another world did appeal to me for quite some time. People have been trying to wrap their heads and words about the story of Mary Anning for a long time, including Tracy Chevalier here in Remarkable Creatures. My Review: A middling book about interesting times and people. Not extraordinarily well, or poorly, written. Not unusual or original in plotting or in, frankly, any way I can think of. Like all of Chevalier's work, a solid, well-made entertainment, about a subject most of us have never given one instant's thought to.A regency era book about friendship between two women, rather than the marriage of some rehabilitated rake and some nubile. To me, looking for curies [ fossils] is like looking for a four-leaf clover: It’s not how hard you look, but how something will appear different. That woman, of course, is Charlotte Murchison, who many believe greatly influenced her husband’s research. It was Murchison who studied mineralogy and encouraged her husband, who was an army officer and then a fox hunter, to pursue scientific endeavors. Kölbl-Ebert wrote that Murchison later said: “It was during the years 1818-22 … that my wife was always striving to interest me in something more intellectual than the case, and began to teach herself mineralogy and conchology.” Until this story, I had no idea who Mary Anning or Elizabeth Philpot were and how important their work was in the discovery of prehistoric creatures. Their discoveries at the beginning of the 19th century came at the time when many tried to explain or reconcile geology with their religious beliefs when very idea of extinction was anathema because it suggested that God was imperfect. What are these creatures and why don’t they still exist? Is it possible that God made a mistake with these animals? Take this exchange between Reverend Jones and Elizabeth Philpot:

How would you characterize the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth—mother/daughter, sisters, or something else? Anning's accomplishments are so big that the interior romantic life Tracy Chevalier imagines for her seems almost sophmoric. Even with all these differences, as years pass by, we follow these two lives which become irrevocably intertwined and witness how they become close friends and the only anchor to one another when disgrace strikes both of their lives. The book is not just an intresting feature about the ideas about the world's creation and our origins in that time, but it is about friendship between two very diffrent women and how they fight for recognition in a scientific world, dominated by men. Apart from that, if anybody is intrested in fossils and geology, this is a nice way to start. he cliffs and beaches of Lyme Regis, in Dorset on the south coast of England, are fertile hunting grounds for creatures who lived in what were equatorial seas in the early Jurassic period, around 190 million years ago. Here is a look at some of the fossil types Mary Anning discovers in Remarkable Creatures:

The other night we watched Ammonite which I understood to be the film of the book. I thought it was a travesty of both the book and of Mary Anning’s life. I now know that it’s not based on the book which is a relief but also sad because it’s unlikely that a movie will be made of the book. In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, the daughter of one of them decides to collect the "objectionable" words they omit. The greatest fossil hunter ever known was a woman from Lyme Regis. Mary Anning's discoveries were some of the most significant geological finds of all time. They provided evidence that was central to the development of new ideas about the history of the Earth. Chevalier’s signature talent lies in bringing alive the ordinary day-to-dayness of the past…lovingly evoked.” Historical fiction based on the lives of real people, amateur paleontologists Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning, in the early 1800s in Lyme Regis, England. Elizabeth is an educated lady who has relocated from London, and Mary is a working-class daughter of an impoverished cabinet maker. They become unlikely friends, bonding over their love of fossils and searching for them by the sea. When Mary unearths a skeleton of what appears to be a large crocodile, it ultimately leads to their interaction with well-known male paleontologists of the day.

When Mary and her brother uncovered an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near Lyme Regis, she shook the scientific world and posed a challenge to religion. The creature was named an "ichthyosaur," ("fish-lizard") and it was a creature that had been totally unknown to science and, apparently, no longer existing on Earth. But if the creature had been created by God, why had God caused or permitted it to go extinct? That was a question that could not be satisfactorily answered, as it implied that God had made a mistake. And how could God make a mistake? I wish that Remarkable Creatures were, frankly, a little more remarkable. Except for just a few moments of excitement and tension... the plot moves like a careful geologist on the beach, slow and steady, turning over lots of the same things again and again. Yes, it can be rewarding, but you have to be patient and willing to look hard. Ammonite Tells a Partly True Story of Two Women Pursuing Love and Science. Here's What's Fact and What's Fiction Remarkable Creatures tells the story of a little-known figure from history who made valuable contributions to the emerging field of paleontology, despite being entirely self-taught and never fully accepted by the scientific circles of the day. Her discoveries provide important evidence for extinction of species, a controversial topic in the early 19th century. Her discoveries of animals that were so unlike any creatures living at the time provided valuable evidence to support the notion that there were species from the past that were no longer in existence.The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. It reminds us that friendship can outlast storms and landslides, anger and and jealousy. This a book of historical fiction, so we do know that Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpott lived off the coast of England and searched for fossils in the early 1800s. Their accomplishments are well documented. What is conjecture is the story of the difficulties they faced at a time when women needed a man to communicate with the world. It is the story of following your passion and the redemptive power of friendship. These women could never have known that they were challenging the accepted science and religion of the time. The book talks about some of the conflicts they faced as they discovered things that contradicted their fundamentalist religion.