Dorothea Bate, a pioneering fossil hunter and one of the first women employed by the Natural History Museum, has been honoured with a national blue plaque by Historic England. The plaque, unveiled at the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire, recognises her groundbreaking contributions to palaeontology and her role in paving the way for women in science, despite working for most of her career without a permanent paid position.

Born in Carmarthen, Wales, in 1878, Bate had little formal education but taught herself and joined the Natural History Museum in 1900, beginning a 50-year association that saw her become Officer-in-Charge from 1948. She undertook solo expeditions across the Mediterranean, discovering a dwarf elephant species in Cyprus and the extinct goat-like myotragus in the Balearics in 1909, and published more than 80 scientific papers before her death in 1951 aged 72.