101 YEARS OLD AND STILL IN TOUCH WITH PREHISTORY...

CHILD GGored By Mastodon. If you enter that phrase into Google or, I suspect, any other search engine, you’ll find no exact matches but it may only be a matter of time before that headline hits the national press, maybe a few million more years

My thoughts to that effect were formed during a most enjoyable visit to the new Museum of Zoology in Cambridge which is a beautiful example of what a museum of zoology ought to be. It is small enough to walk around without getting tired, yet packed with enough specimens, both ancient and modern, to learn from and boggle at in equal measure.

Perhaps best of all, many of the skeletons of prehistoric beasts are on open display, with their bones attached to thoughtfully designed minimal frameworks to show them in lifelike postures that allow visitors to approach them. There are not even any Hands Off or Do Not Touch signs, so I can now proudly claim to have gently stroked the foot of a giant sloth.

The potential horror of a Child Gored headline came when I was chatting to one of the helpful and knowledgeable volunteer assistants at the museum, who told me enthusiastically about what a busy day she was having, with the school holidays having started and the place packed with young visitors.

Fortunately, they were all well behaved, so there was no danger of a child’s eagerness or clumsiness causing a skeleton to collapse, causing a mastodon’s tusk to skewer the poor infant. All the same, the prospect is enough to scare even the hardiest museum curator.

Sensing that the poor lady was still affected by the potential horror of a dangerous mastodon skeleton, I calmed her with a joke about a sloth:

A sloth was walking down a road when it was set upon by a gang of snails who beat him up terribly before slithering off and leaving him in the street. When the sloth had recovered sufficiently, it crawled to the police station and reported that it had been assaulted by a gang of snails.

“Did you get a good look at your assailants?” the police officer asked. “Can you describe them?”

“It all happened so fast,” the sloth replied.

Calmed by this sad tale, the museum assistant told me about several of the exhibits which had benefited from delicate reconstructive and artistic work by museum staff to enable the animals to be displayed as effectively as possible. “We have a pangolin skin somewhere,” she said, “but it’s not on display as it might get damaged.”

I didn’t think of it at the time but a pangolin skin could be just the thing to protect a young person from a mastodon. Pangolins can, after all, curl up into balls when their hard scales protect them from anything. Pangolin Skin Saves Child From Mastodon would be just as striking a headline as the one with which I started this column but without the disturbing touch of horror about it.

I must go back to the museum to tell the assistant. See you there, I hope; it’s really worth a visit.