Mary Anning's Curiosity

<p><strong>The amazing story of how the world’s greatest fossilist found her first huge find at the age of twelve.</strong></p><p>Mary was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, England. Her father, a carpenter and part-time fossil hunter, taught his children to look for fossils.</p><p>When her father injured himself and was unable to work, Mary quit school and took up fossil hunting full-time to help support her family, a task that became even more important when her father died, leaving the Annings in debt.</p><p>At the age of twelve, Mary, with her older brother Joe, found what they believed to be the skeleton of a gigantic crocodile, the Great Croc of the legends. Between dodging her rival fossil hunter the Curiman, and the sheer work of carefully digging out the fossil, Mary took almost a year to excavate what would later be termed the <em>Ichthyosaurus. </em></p><p>Mary Anning was uneducated, poor and a woman, but her life’s work of fossil hunting led her to make many discoveries that influenced our understanding of prehistoric creatures and the age of the Earth.</p><p>In this triumphant novel about scientific discovery, Monica Kulling brings Mary Anning and her world to life for young readers.<strong> </strong></p><p> </p><p><strong>Key Text Features</strong><br>author''s note<br>historical context<br>resources<br>facts<br>further reading</p>