The Fossil Girl

It is 1810, and 11-year-old Mary Arming and her brother Joe are scrambling over the cliffs of Lyme Regis looking for "curiosities" to sell in their family shop. Suddenly the children see a large bony head sticking out of the cliff-face. Is it a giraffe? A gorilla? A crocodile? No one knows, but Mary is determined to get the creature out of the rock. She convinces a local builder to construct a wooden tower high enough for her to reach the giant skeleton and she risks life and limb to bring the pieces down. It is only later that she discovers that the creature is a million years old and she has made one of the great scientific discoveries of the century.