Lyme Regis Mary Anning statue fundraiser hits target

The statue of Mary Anning will depict her with her dog, Tray

A campaign to erect a statue of Dorset palaeontologist Mary Anning in her hometown of Lyme Regis has hit its fundraising target of £100,000.

The Mary Anning Rocks campaign has been working to create a permanent memorial in Anning's hometown of Lyme Regis.

Work has begun on the statue but fundraisers have now raised the £30,000 needed for planning permission, legal fees, ground works and transportation.

They are now hoping to raise a further £50,000 for educational resources.

Trustee Anya Pearson said she and daughter Evie Swire - who launched the campaign - were "in tears" after exceeding the target.

She said: "We were holding our breath as we watch the total tick closer and closer to the final amount and then when I refreshed my laptop and we hit the £100,000 mark this morning, we just leapt from our seats and screamed, then burst into happy tears."

Additional donations will be used to launch the Mary Anning Rocks Learning Legacy - an educational program of free learning materials and funded fossils walks for children from underserved backgrounds.

Evie Swire has been campaigning for a statue of Mary Anning in Lyme Regis

The campaign for the statue was launched three years ago by Dorchester schoolgirl Evie, now 13, after she learned about Anning during a fossil-hunting trip.

Anning, whose life inspired feature film Ammonite, was never fully credited for her discoveries due to her gender and social status.

She was born in 1799 to a poor, working-class family, but made numerous groundbreaking discoveries, including a 5.2m (17ft) skeleton, now known to be an ichthyosaur, when she was just 12 years old.

Twelve years later, she found the first complete skeleton of a plesiosaur, a marine reptile so bizarre that scientists initially thought it was a fake.