History set in stone
An impoverished fossil-hunter born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1799, Mary Anning has long been a footnote in the history books, but a new film, Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet, is set to change all that.
Mary’s father died when she was just a child, and she spent her days wandering the coast around her home town, collecting the area’s abundant fossils to sell for the family’s upkeep. This rugged stretch of southwest England is now known as the Jurassic Coast, thanks to extraordinary evidence of 185 million years of history imprinted into its rocky shores.
Mary’s efforts reaped rewards. Aged 12, she unearthed the 16ft fossil of a sea monster belonging to
