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She mostly finds Gryphaea, ancestors of the oyster, but she also has ammonites, belemnites and sea lilies — all ancient sea dwellers.

The belemnite, it turned out, had been discovered four years earlier by an amateur naturalist named Chaning Pearce, and the discovery had been fully reported at a meeting of the Geological Society.

By contrast, a younger, early Cretaceous, ichthyosaur graveyard found in Chile shows large numbers of individuals, of all ages, thought to be hunting for fish and belemnites, and a regurgitation pellet containing pterosaur remains.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of the tentacled trio were slow, heavily armored creatures, like the coil-shelled ammonites and the cone-shelled belemnites.

Spending hours searching for perfectly coiled ammonites and long finger-like belemnite fossils to market to tourists is precisely how Mary Anning got her start as one of the greatest paleontologists in history.