""I scraped off the clay...there was no mistaking what I saw...I had found it ""

What Mary Anning found in the cliffs in 1811, when she was 13, was the first complete fossil of an ichthyosaur, a marine dinosaur. Mary Anning lived in England in the 1800's. She hunted and sold fossils to save her family from poverty after her father died when she was 11 years old. Despite social disproval of her unfeminine occupation, Mary persisted and became a leading fossilist who made valuable contributions to science.

"Mary shines through as a spunky and believable heroine..."

--"Booklist"