Mary Anning and the Dragon in the Cliff
Coming to Wonder People on 3 December 2026.
Dorset, England, 1811. After a winter storm batters the harbour town of Lyme Regis, twelve-year-old Mary Anning and her tall brother Joseph must find new 'curiosities' to sell — and in the crumbling Church Cliffs they uncover an enormous toothy skull the villagers call a dragon. Carrying it home, cleaning it, racing the tide on the ammonite pavement, and waving Joseph off to his apprenticeship, Mary keeps digging alone until, years later, a mud-slump on Black Ven gives up something stranger still: a creature with a neck longer than a ladder. With fossil-collector Elizabeth Philpot and sketch-mad young Henry De la Beche beside her, Mary rescues, cleans, crates and ships the first complete plesiosaur from Bridport Harbour to London — then climbs Golden Cap, the highest cliff on the coast, to look down at the whole sweep of Lyme Bay where her dragons slept.
About this story
- Length
- 10 illustrated pages
Who appears
- Mary Anning — Fossil hunter, twelve at the start of the story
- Joseph Anning — Mary's older brother, fifteen, apprentice upholsterer
- Elizabeth Philpot — Grown-up fossil collector and Mary's friend and ally
- Henry De la Beche — Neighbour boy, eleven, who draws everything
- Tray — Mary's small fossil-hunting dog
What happens on 3 December 2026
This story is finished and scheduled. On 3 December 2026 it opens here in full — every page illustrated — as part of Wonder People. Nothing on this page is a placeholder: the story exists, it has been reviewed, and this is its address.
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