Dr. Dean Lomax

And it was published in a journal in New York.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So the fact that it went from...

being thought to be a replica, being actively used in the education department, to then becoming the holotype, so the founding specimen of a new species, is quite remarkable.

And so I actually teamed up with Professor Judy Massere, who has been such an incredible supporter of my career over the years, and we named it as a new species to science.

We called it Ichthyosaurus aninae in honour of the wonderful pioneering paleontologist Mary Anning, who is somebody I'd read so much about as a child, and she was a real hero of mine.

As a youngster growing up in Doncaster, many of our family trips ended up going to the Yorkshire coastline.

And so I'd say, hey, could we go collecting fossils in Whitby?

And you'd find ammonites and balamnites, these squid-like creatures.

If you were lucky, you'd find ichthyosaur bones and plesiosaur bones and things.

And I always struggled trying to identify my finds.

And so as I got a little bit older, after I'd published my first paper...

and started to get a little bit more confidence in my abilities, I said, well, maybe an idea for a book, a field guide to identify fossils from the Whitby coast and happened to find this brilliant publisher who loved the idea.

And then this book was published when I was 21.

And so I'd gone then within the space of a few years of just leaving school to discovering these fossils, being on this dig and then writing a book.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely that.

And so I'd continue to work in several jobs as a barman, working in delivery, earning as much money as possible.

So I could then continue volunteering at Doncaster Museum.