Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Mary Anning, young, poor with little formal education, has a knack for finding "curies" in the cliffs of Lyme Regis in southwest England.  Elizabeth Philpot, educated and living on family wealth, is one of three sisters forced to leave the social circles of London for spinsterhood and the intellectual isolation of Lyme Regis.  These two women turn the scientific and religious world on its head in the early 1800's with their discoveries of fossils in the cliffs.  Before Darwin introduced the concept of evolution, they challenged creation theory by introducing the fossilized remains of creatures that no longer existed.  If God created everything, why would some of those creations disappear?  What did the world where these remarkable creatures existed look like? How remarkable that these "unremarkable" women would make such remarkable discoveries and raise such remarkable questions. Remarkable.