Lyme Regis Mary Anning statue fundraiser hits target

A campaign to erect a statue of Dorset palaeontologist Mary Anning in her hometown of Lyme Regis has hit its fundraising target of £100,000.

The Mary Anning Rocks campaign has been working to create a permanent memorial in Anning's hometown of Lyme Regis.

Work has begun on the statue but fundraisers have now raised the £30,000 needed for planning permission, legal fees, ground works and transportation.

They are now hoping to raise a further £50,000 for educational resources.

Trustee Anya Pearson said she and daughter Evie Swire - who launched the campaign - were "in tears" after exceeding the target.

She said: "We were holding our breath as we watch the total tick closer and closer to the final amount and then when I refreshed my laptop and we hit the £100,000 mark this morning, we just leapt from our seats and screamed, then burst into happy tears."

Additional donations will be used to launch the Mary Anning Rocks Learning Legacy - an educational program of free learning materials and funded fossils walks for children from underserved backgrounds.

The campaign for the statue was launched three years ago by Dorchester schoolgirl Evie, now 13, after she learned about Anning during a fossil-hunting trip.

Anning, whose life inspired feature film Ammonite, was never fully credited for her discoveries due to her gender and social status.

She was born in 1799 to a poor, working-class family, but made numerous groundbreaking discoveries, including a 5.2m (17ft) skeleton, now known to be an ichthyosaur, when she was just 12 years old.

Twelve years later, she found the first complete skeleton of a plesiosaur, a marine reptile so bizarre that scientists initially thought it was a fake.