At age 12, Mary Anning unearthed a remarkable fossilised skull and painstakingly excavated a 5.2-meter-long skeleton, revealing what was thought to be a monstrous crocodile. The specimen, eventually named Ichthyosaurus, sparked scientific debate and fascination. At this point, the father of palaeontology himself Georges Cuvier had only just introduced the theory of extinction.

But the Ichthyosaurus wasn’t even her most famous discovery. In 1823, Anning became the first to discover the complete skeleton of a Plesiosaurus, meaning 'near to reptile'. Then in 1828, she made headlines once more with her find of a Dimorphodon’s remains. It was the first pterosaur ever discovered outside of Germany.

Despite her groundbreaking discoveries, the male-dominated scientific community wrote Anning out of research papers, and she still doesn’t receive the full recognition she fully deserves.