A palaeontologist by choice--and perhaps due to the accidental discovery of a fossil fragment on the north coast of England when he was six years old--Howard Beamish is flying to Nairobi on a professional mission when his plane is forced to land in an imaginary country called Callimbia. On assignment to write a travel piece for Sunday magazine, journalist Lucy Faulkner is on the same flight. What happens to Howard and Lucy in Callimbia is one of those...

In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild English coastline. She hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself. When one such tourist arrives in Lyme, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Despite their differences, it is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds...

On the windswept fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast Mary Anning learns that she has "the eye" - she finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton she sets the religious fathers on edge the townspeople to vicious gossip and the scientific world alight. But as a woman Mary is barred from the academic community. Luckily she finds a champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot a recent exile from London.