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Video: Sotheby's/BNPS

Pictured: The letter.

An unseen letter by palaeontologist Mary Anning will not be returning to her Dorset home 191 years later despite a last-minute desperate crowdfunding appeal.

Lyme Regis Museum, which is built on the site of Anning's former family home, and the Jurassic Coast Trust teamed up in a bid to buy a letter she wrote in 1829.

The three-page document went up for auction at Sotheby's today (Tues), with an estimate of £8-12,000 but eventually sold for a whopping £100,800 including fees and premiums.

It was the first time a letter written by "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew" had gone up for auction.

Supporters of the two charities answered a rallying cry to raise £18,000 in just 24 hours with more than 600 people donating £21,000.

But it was not enough to bring the letter back to the place where Anning made all her great discoveries on the Dorset coast.