Mary Anning rooms Natural History museum

I have always loved the Natural History Museum, which I hold to be the best museum in London. It is a cathedral dedicated to Nature. I have not even got a GCSE in Science, yet my natural love of learning has inspired me to broaden my mind. One of my earliest memories is of the T-rex roaring and deafening my ears. Imagine if it was a real T-Rex, and it would feast upon the unsuspecting visitors as they came into the museum. What a visit to remember that would be!

The Mary Anning Rooms in the Natural History Museum are amazing and unique. The Museum wants to support the women who have played and continue to play a critical role in science. I firmly support this idea, especially as women back in Victorian times were especially criticised, with many male scientists taking credit for their work, which I find unacceptable. I also admire Mary Anning in my own way, as she invented (or at least inspired) the tongue twister "she sells sea shells on the sea shore". What a great saying to have started, and what a tongue twister, which even to this day, I still struggle to say!

I was lucky enough to be at the Museum on the day that these fantastic rooms opened. They just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, hidden in the Mintz hall. They are very useful for me because they are hidden away from the main thoroughfare of the museum, which for my Aspergers is brilliant. There is even a cafe in the membership rooms which consist of delicious cake, so they do know their audience.

When I was there on the opening day, the membership rooms smelt new; clean and inviting.

The rooms are named in honour of an amazing woman who was one of the first female scientists of the nineteenth-century. Being a woman there was a lot of prejudice against her gender and also her class. I think I am pleased she is being honoured now.

What a lot of people do not know, is that she donated a lot of reptile fossils to the Earth and Science Library. It is a beautiful library and maybe one day I shall be lucky enough to work there.

Mary Anning was born around 21st May 1799 in Dorset. She picked up her fossil hunting habits from her father who enjoyed the odd day at the beach hunting down fossils. It was hard for her to become a expert fossil hunter as most of them at the time were men, so she had to forge her own path and become one of first female fossil hunters.

The new membership rooms were built in special recognition of her amazing contribution towards science. She gained international reputation for the identification of a idthyosaur and pterosaur skeletons. These famous finds helped to inform a modern understanding about the extinction and evolution of animals.

Anning's discoveries also led to a particular smelly find as she was the first to discover fossilised dung. Mary Anning was largely respected for her contributions to the expanding fields of palaeontology and geology. What I admire most about Mary Anning was that she was one of the first women scientists in English history. She named her dog "Dash" in honour of Queen Victoria's dog who was also called Dash. Sadly Anning's dog was caught in a landslide so the dog may end up as a fossil, which is rather ironic!

I am a lucky devil to be a member of the Natural History museum, not least because it is a great place to visit on the weekend. Obviously, I am not the only one who thinks so, as I casually bumped into Sir David Attenborough in the new membership rooms. It was a true honour to meet the gentlemen, as he is a British icon. It was a memory I shall never forget. I was completely in awe of the man. It really is the most strange story to have bumped into Sir David Attengburgh in the Natural History Museum. He is definitely my favourite naturalist as he is a fountain of knowledge.

The founder of the Natural History Museum, Sir Richard Owen, is someone I also resonate with because he received bad grades at school. It proves that just because you have bad grades at school does not mean one can not grow into your own form of success. Maybe one day I will be able to create my own Cathedral to learning, even if it is in my own mind and in my own library at home.