Mary Anning has been hailed by the Natural History Museum as “the unsung hero of fossil discovery”. But her extraordinary story was not quite enough to satisfy the producers of a new film about her life.

Ammonite, which began filming in Lyme Regis on Monday with Kate Winslet in the starring role, will focus on a romance between Anning and a younger woman, played by Saoirse Ronan.

The relationship is a fiction, and its inclusion has drawn a mixed response from Anning’s relatives and others who want her to be recognised for her many achievements.

The film comes hot on the heels of The Favourite, which ‘sexed up’ the life of Queen Anne with a lesbian love triangle.

Anning, who came from humble beginnings, made her first discovery aged 12 when she and her brother found the remains of an ichthyosaurus while digging on the Jurassic Coast. This was in 1811, 48 years before the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

As the Natural History Museum puts it, her life was “a constellation of firsts”. She went on to uncover other dinosaur species which caused a sensation, but male scientists often wrote of these finds in scientific papers without crediting her. The Geological Society of London refused to admit her - they did not admit any women until 1904 - and she died in relative obscurity.