Working Title: She Sells Sea Shells
I have begun research on a 19th-century fossil collector called Mary Anning. She was a working-class woman who lived all her life in Lyme Regis, a small town on the southern coast of England (where John Fowles set The French Lieutenant’s Woman). On its rocky shores and buried in its cliffs she discovered the first British pre-dinosaur fossils such as Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs. She sold her findings to eminent male geologists, who went on to write and speak about them, taking all the glory while Mary lived in poverty. She was tough, prickly, and eccentric. Plus she was struck by lightning as a baby.

I’m particularly interested in exploring how as a result of Mary Anning’s finds, people slowly came to realize that there had been animals on earth millions of years ago, and that the Biblical version of the creation of the would could not be taken literally. This paved the way for Darwin and his theory of evolution, and all of the arguing that is – remarkably – still going on today over these issues.

But my most challenging task will be to make fossils sexy.