Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

In the 19th century, people began to find the bones of impossible monsters hidden deep within the earth.

But what strange and spectacular creatures could these bones belong to?

And what did they mean both for religious beliefs and new evolutionary theories?

On today's episode, Michael Taylor, the author of a new book on the subject,

joins Rebecca Franks to discuss how the discovery of dinosaurs shook up Victorian Britain.

Welcome to the History Extra podcast.

We're here today to talk about your new book, Impossible Monsters and the discovery of the dinosaurs in the early 19th century.

I wondered if we could start our story with Mary Anning, who in 1811 found a fossilised skeleton

on the Dorset coast. Who was she? And how did she come to be fossil hunting?

Well, first, thank you very much for inviting me on to the podcast. And Mary Anning is indeed an excellent place to start. So in 1811, whenever it's actually her brother, Joseph, who makes the first discovery, the first major discovery, Anning is an 11, 12-year-old teenager. She comes from a very poor family. Her father, Richard, was a cabinet maker,

and he had died a few years previously. And so in pursuit of a little bit of money to keep the

family in bread and keep a roof over their head, both Mary and Joseph had followed in their

father's footsteps by hunting for fossils along what we now known as the Jurassic Coast in Dorset and in

Lyme Regis. So they went out looking for fossils or shells known as Ammonites and they would sell

these curios as they called them to a lot of the seasonal holiday makers who came down to Lyme Regis,

which played host to those holidaymakers who were taking the salt water as a means of improving their health.

And by 1811, Anning, who had already survived a fairly remarkable and dramatic incident when she was struck by lightning at the age of only a few months,

found something that they thought was a crocodile.

So Joseph first found this remarkable skull with a long

protruding snout and fearsome teeth, but he had to go back to work. So he charged Mary with

finding the remainder of the body. And eventually, about a year later, she found the remains of this

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