The Carpenter’s Daughter (AW81)

Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a celebrated fossil hunter whose discoveries, made along the cliffs and shore of Lyme Regis, significantly contributed to theories about prehistoric life and the history of Earth.
The daughter of a local cabinetmaker, from childhood she contributed to the precarious family finances by selling her finds from a table set up outside their home.
Her most famous discoveries include skeletons of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterosaurs.
Despite her rudimentary education (she learned to read and write at Sunday school), she went on to teach herself geology, anatomy, paleontology and scientific illustration.
But being female, poor and a Dissenter meant she gained scant official recognition from the stuffy scientific establishment of the day.