This poem is dedicated to a real person who is a sort of hero of mine, a 19th-century paleontologist named Mary Anning. Back in those days, fossil-hunting was the cool thing to do, but making big discoveries that changed how people viewed the world were not supposed to be made by lower-class people, nor young people, nor women, all three of which Mary Anning was. She was also a religious dissenter, as was her whole family, making her an outcast in the creationist world of the time. She lost her father at the age of eleven and had to support her family on her own, selling fossils to make money. At the same time she discovered plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, and made many findings of baculites, ancient fish, the first pterosaur from outside Germany, and, yes, ammonites. I thought the ammonite in particular would make a nice symbol for self-protection; if they were threatened by a predator, they could just retreat within their shell, and Mary Anning (in the poem) does a similar thing to protect herself from the harsh words of others. After her time, she was much more appreciated, listed among Britain's top 100 most influential women and considered one of the most prominent heroes of paleontology in history.