DORCHESTER’S DINOSAUR MUSEUM INSPIRES NOVEL

Author of ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’, Tracey Chevalier, has written her most recent novel on the subject of dinosaur fossil collecting after being inspired by The Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester.

The Canadian Press reported that Chevalier said before she discovered Anning's story "in a little dinosaur museum in the English town of Dorchester", she really knew nothing about things such as plesiosaurs.

She said: "I'm as surprised as anyone else...My background is not science. It's art or literature, but I always like to try to challenge myself and go in a new direction with books otherwise I get in a rut and write the same thing. I want to keep readers guessing, and myself guessing, too, so it was like opening up a whole new world that I spent two and a half years finding out about."

‘Remarkable Creatures’, which will be launched in the US on January 5th 2010, is about the fictitious working-class Mary Anning who strikes up a friendship with middle-class Elizabeth Philpot through their mutual love for fossils.

In the book, Anning's finds challenge ideas about the world's creation and stimulate debate over our origins before facing prejudice from the academic community because she is a woman. This forms the centrepiece of the novel as Annings becomes a famous fossil hunter, protected from men taking credit for her findings by her friend Philpot.

The novel was launched in the UK earlier this year.