Mary was the first person to find a whole Ichthyosaurus ... One customer, Elizabeth Philpot, knew so much more about my curiosities than me, so she gave me a book to help me study them.

My name is Mary Anning, and just as fossils are forgotten ... One customer, Elizabeth Philpot, knew so much more about my curiosities than me, so she gave me a book to help me study them.

Mary Anning was a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector. Her lifetime was a constellation of firsts. Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, in the southwest English county of Dorset.