Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by palaentology. I remember as a small boy walking excitedly with a sense of fascination and wonder through halls and corridors of the Natural History Museum in London. Rows upon rows of hardened specimens laid out in arcane orders with wonderful names showing the strangeness and variety of life on Earth. Seeing ancient fossils and modern day specimens together would make me think of how far back one would have to go before encountering the first of each species, the first of life itself. Exotic names such as the Cambrian, Devonian and Permian, would conjure bleak alien worlds ripe for my imagination to colonize. This interest in biological extrapolations and collection stayed with me …