Connecting a book and reality

Today is one of the many May holiday days (see last year's post) we have in France. The plan was to visit the Natural History museum.

I just finished reading a book I picked randomly at my local bookstore. I chose it for 2 reasons: it was in English and I trust the author. I had no expectations. The book is Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier and tells the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. As you can see from the wikipedia links those 2 women existed and led amazing lives. They collected fossils and discovered for the first times some dinosaurs... It was very interesting to read the depiction of what conversations would have been at the time regarding those "animals"... Such as : Why were the animals not on earth anymore since God created them and God could not have rejected them or be wrong...
One of the fossils found by Anning was bought by Cuvier and is exposed at the Natural History museum in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

Hence the goal was to go see what the author talks about in the book in real... Well being a holiday today, many parents had the idea to take their kids see the dinos at the museum...and the line was very long and I didn't go in. I only had a walk in the gardens.
The other connecting point was the University were I worked. It's located next to the museum and Cuvier was from the Paris Academy des Sciences...with is the ancestor to UPMC...