Her name was Mary Anning
Photo by Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre
Photo by Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre
Did you see our recent production of Digging Up Dessa? The story highlighted the life of paleontologist Mary Anning who became known around the world for the discoveries she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England.
On May 21, 2022, what would have been Mary Anning’s 223rd birthday, Mary Anning Rocks and Professor Alice Roberts unveiled a statue celebrating her life and accomplishments.
From The Guardian:
”It all began with a curious nine-year-old and a question that she asked her mother. Where in their hometown of Lyme Regis was the statue of Mary Anning, the pioneering Victorian fossil hunter who, she had recently discovered, had lived and worked there?
There wasn’t one, Anya Pearson was forced to tell her indignant daughter. Anning’s lifetime of discoveries – including finding the first ichthyosaur skeleton at the age of just 12 – may have profoundly shaped the emerging science of palaeontology, but in her own Dorset town and farther afield, she had been largely forgotten.
The schoolgirl, Evie Swire, is now 15, and on Saturday she and Pearson will see that injustice finally righted, with the unveiling of a striking new statue of Anning, raised and funded thanks to a campaign they started as a direct result of Evie’s question.” Read the complete article here.
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Digging Up Dessa by Laura Schellhardt
Directed by Julia Flood
Dessa: Rae Davis
Nilo: John Katz
Esther: Alicia Revé Like
Mary Anning: Lizi Watt
Photography by Jennifer A. Lin