Trick-or-Treating with the Ichthyosaurus

On the spookiest night of the year, while everyone else was busy hunting ghosts, I decided to hunt something a little more prehistoric at the Natural History Museum!
And apparently, I wasn’t the only one on a mission. The museum was crawling with Pokémon trainers, presumably searching for their next rare catch, alongside witches, vampires and a few suspicious characters who looked as though they’d escaped from a different century entirely.
Although, I must say, an Ichthyosaurus (ICK thee oh SOR us) would make a rather impressive addition to anyone’s Pokédex. Gotta catch ’em all… even the extinct ones!
Between meeting the mighty Pliosaurus (ply O saur us, a prehistoric marine predator that would make today’s sharks think twice about going for a swim), the wonderfully bizarre Plesiosaurus (PLEE-zee-uh-SOR-us, essentially what happens when evolution gives a reptile four flippers and a neck that refuses to stop), and discovering creatures with names that require a degree in linguistics to pronounce, I found myself on a rather fascinating evolutionary deep dive.
And then there was Leedsichthys (LEE-ds-IK-this) – an absolutely enormous prehistoric fish that could grow to over 15 metres long, yet apparently had no interest in terrorising the neighbourhood. Instead, this gentle giant spent its days filtering tiny organisms out of the water. Imagine being one of the largest fish ever to exist and choosing the prehistoric equivalent of a smoothie diet! Meanwhile, the Plesiosaurus looked as though someone had described a turtle, a snake and a seal to an artist who had never seen any of them.
Evolution really does work in mysterious ways.

Seeing prehistoric life not just as tiny illustrations in biology textbooks, but through life-sized models, fossils and the incredible stories behind them, made me appreciate just how extraordinary our planet’s history is.
Millions of years of survival, adaptation, fierce predators, gentle giants and the occasional catastrophic asteroid, all leading up to… well, us. A species that has somehow evolved enough intelligence to study its ancient ancestors, yet still spends Halloween dressed as fictional creatures and collecting sweets.
I’d call that evolutionary success.

Naturally, I brought some sweets along because who decided trick-or-treating should be reserved for children? Adults deserve a little Halloween magic (and sugar) too!
A wonderfully spooky evening filled with ancient monsters, curious discoveries and a reminder that the real world has produced creatures far stranger than anything we could invent.