Jurassic Coast, Dorset, 1812.

When a local auctioneer steals her mysterious fossilised skull, twelve-year-old fossil hunter Mary Anning breaks into a large manor house to steal it back.

Disguised as a maid, she narrowly evades incompetent footmen, a labyrinthine cellar and a menagerie of exotic animals. But when she realises the skull is about to go under the hammer, she is left with no choice but to step out of the shadows and come face to face with the seemingly immovable worldview of 19th Century England.

In a land of shifting coastlines, she must convince the gathered collectors that the ideological ground they stand on is itself eroding. And that the fossilised skull they see before them could hold the key to a complete reimagining of the history of life on Earth.