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Tracy Chevalier on Mary Anning

4 Extra Debut. Novelist Tracy Chevalier chooses the Dorset Jurassic Coast fossil hunter, Mary Anning. With Matthew Parris. From 2017.

Novelist Tracy Chevalier discusses the life of Mary Anning with Matthew Parris.

Mary was a working class woman from Lyme Regis who discovered full dinosaur skeletons on Dorset's Jurassic Coast and sold them to collectors in the early 1800s.

Her remarkable finds came before Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and she believed them at first to be giant crocodiles, but as scientists began flocking to Lyme Regis to buy her specimens, she started to educate herself in geology, becoming an authority on fossils.

However, as with many of the subjects of Great Lives, she was never fully credited for her efforts and faded from public consciousness after her death.

With Hugh Torrens, Emeritus Professor of History of Science and Technology at the University of Keele.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

First broadcast on 成人快手 Radio 4 in August 2017.

Available now

1 minute

Last on

Sun 21 Nov 2021 05:30

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Matthew Parris
Interviewed Guest Tracy Chevalier
Interviewed Guest Hugh Torrens
Producer Maggie Ayre

Broadcasts

  • Tue 29 Aug 2017 16:30
  • Fri 1 Sep 2017 23:00
  • Fri 9 Apr 2021 23:00
  • Thu 18 Nov 2021 18:30
  • Fri 19 Nov 2021 00:30
  • Sat 20 Nov 2021 07:30
  • Sat 20 Nov 2021 17:30
  • Sun 21 Nov 2021 05:30

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