The Great Fossil Enigma by Simon J. Knell

PRELUDE
The Impossible Animal
    AS STUDENTS, WE DREW AND LABELED A JARGON-RICH palaeontological world, only too ready to be captivated by the objects before us. Our tutor, however, seemed to have other ideas. He evidently had no passion for his subject. To him, ammonites and trilobites were just things to carry names. As each fossil was introduced in sequence, then drawn, annotated, named, and removed, our enthusiasm waned. How could paleontology be so dull? Why would any tutor wish it to be so? Our disapproval turned to disdain. Then, one day, we were greeted by rows of binocular microscopes. Through them, we looked at “microfossils” and, among these, some peculiar tooth-like objects. Immediately, and to our great surprise, everything now changed. Our roles were reversed. We initially thought these new objects dull (they were not the prettiest examples of their kind), but our tutor had woken up! He asked us what they were. We made a few feeble guesses, which he easily rebuffed. He did, however, take our suggestions seriously. That too was new. Then he began to list other possibilities, and one by one he explained that they too were incorrect. Before long, every blackboard in the room – and there were many – was covered with names and sketches of what seemed like the whole animal kingdom, and a few plants besides, and yet still we seemed no nearer the truth. We waited patiently for the answer, but that answer never came. Sporting a smile we had never previously seen, and with obvious relish, this dour Yorkshireman (or so we had thought) admitted he didn't know what they were either. There was a moment of silence. Then we became brave: “What about…?” “If…?” “Couldn't they…?” But our speculation was futile. In every case someone had been there before us.
    We looked again at these tiny teeth. They were so evocative. How could no one have any sense of what they were? How could we not even know whether the animal that possessed them also possessed a backbone? How could a natural object exist in this advanced age and yet remain beyond the most general categorization? Undoubtedly enhanced by a perfect prelude – that dull journey through paleontological gems – our tutor's performance had been quite brilliant. For years after, we would recall this impossible thing and dream a little about that magnificent moment when all would be revealed. Many years later, over a cup of coffee with curator Peter Crowther, who was also one of the editors of the journal Palaeontology , I recalled the wonder of this little fossil. His face lit up. It was clear that he, too, had experienced a similar moment. It was as though we had shared a religious rite of passage. Then he said, “And have you heard? They have recently found the animal!”

That's one small step for man…
    NEIL ARMSTRONG ,
on landing on the moon, July 21, 1969
    Â 
ELEVEN
The Beast of Bear Gulch
    MANY WHO HAD HEARD THE CONODONT'S STORY DOUBTLESS imagined that impossible day when the animal would be found. In a corner of so many minds, there was intense curiosity about these tiny things. They were, after all, as Maurits Lindström had put it in 1964, “the biggest and most important group of fossils about which the zoological relationships are entirely unknown.” 1 The fossils seemed to defy comprehension. That special day did, however, come. It was September 5,1969. That, at least, was the day of realization. Less than two months after Neil Armstrong stepped onto an alien world, paleontology produced its own alien and it was utterly bizarre. Before long, the news spread across the same networks that had covered the moon landing, though rarely warranting more than a column inch.
    The animal's reception – at least in the scientific world – was, appropriately enough, that reserved for aliens in those classic American sci-fi films of the 1950s: From the moment of its innocuous arrival,