So do you think it would have been easy for Mary to find fossils along this coastline back in the early 1800s? OK, yeah, I think it would have been fairly easy because there would have been more fossils about, because there was less collectors. What would have been the difficulty of course is the interpretation and understanding what they were. But while to visitors the fossils were confusing and mysterious, Mary Anning had taught herself to recognise and understand what she was finding. And in the years to follow, the scientific community would rewrite the history of the world based in no small part on the findings of Mary Anning. But all this was really troubling to the Victorian mindset because fossils undermined faith in the Bible and the story of creation. They seemed to show that life had evolved slowly over a really long time. It all pointed to a world that was much, much older than 6,000 years.


十九世纪的玛丽在这片海滩很容易发现化石吧。 我觉得相对来说会容易，因为那时候收藏者比现在少，化石也比现在多。而研究和了解这些化石反而比较困难。游人们也许认为化石神秘难解，玛丽·安宁却自学成才，学会辨认理解她的发现。在接下来的数年中，科学界借助玛丽·安宁的发现重新诠释了世界历史，但对于维多利亚时代的人们这些理论让人烦恼。因为化石研究与《圣经》 创世论相悖。化石告诉人们，生命是在长时间内，缓慢进化成今天的样子，世界的历史要远远超过书上的六千年。