TOM SHARPE is a geologist who has worked as a national museum curator, university lecturer, and expedition travel guide, mainly in the polar regions. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society and has been Chair of its History of Geology Group and Geological Curators’ Group, as well as a trustee of Lyme Regis Museum – part of whose building stands on the site of the house in which Mary Anning spent her childhood. He has published on the geologists William Smith and Henry De la Beche and on the history of the geological exploration of Antarctica. He first encountered Mary Anning in The Observer’s Book of Geology when he was twelve.