If you need our finest fossil hunter, call out Steve the plumber - The Times

Steve Etches with an ammonite at his Dorset museum, which holds thousands of specimens he has found.

Sixteen of them are new speciesOne is a pioneering Victorian fossil hunter called Mary, whose contribution to science has just been celebrated on screen by Kate Winslet.

The other is a retired plumber called Steve, who is taking a hammer and chisel to a big rock on the Dorset coast.

“One good thing from my plumbing days is that I can use both hands,” Steve Etches, 71, says as he switches tools between them, demonstrating how he digs up 150 million-year-old ammonites.

Not much would appear to unite Etches and Mary Anning, whose initially unheralded devotion to fossils 200 years ago is the basis for Ammonite.

Published On: Sun, 28 Mar 2021 00:01:00 GMT