Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from  The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World  by Shelley Emling , published on October 13 by Palgrave Macmillan ( Scientific American  is a Macmillan publication).  The Fossil Hunter  chronicles the work of Mary Anning , a woman born in 1799 in Lyme Regis on the south coast of England, who discovered the first documented dinosaur skeleton. In the following passage from the chapter entitled "A Long-Necked Beauty" Anning first discovers the skeleton of a previously unknown dinosaur type. Her find is met with much skepticism, as no one believes a creature with such a long neck could actually have existed. [More]