Mary canning biography ks2 science

Fossils are the imprinted remains of ancient creatures, forgotten about by the world, hidden in rocks under our feet.

My name is Mary Anning, and just as fossils are forgotten for many years, so too was I.

As a child I walked the seafront with my father and brother to find what we then called curiosities.

My father taught us how to patiently and carefully free these strange things from the rock.

We were very poor, so we sold what we found to people on the beach.

One customer, Elizabeth Philpot, knew so much more about my curiosities than me, so she gave me a book to help me study them.

From these books I discovered that my 'curiosities' were actually fossils; ancient creatures whose bodies were imprinted in what would become stone.

This brought to life the seafront and the cliffs that we searched with my father.

But, when my father died, we were left to search by ourselves.

One day we saw s