People have sometimes asked me if I don’t think that I should have become an academic. I have never been quite sure about that. I think that the requirement to have your papers cited must push you towards consensus, limiting the possibilities for original, exploratory thinking. And I question the likely financial position. But, anyway, with time on my hands, I decided to sign up for a Masters in physics at University College London. I’m not sure what that will lead to, but it has given me access to scientific papers, and it prompted me to write one of my own, albeit in palaeontology, not physics.

There is a species of marine invertebrate known from the Cambrian period which has attracted significant interest and numerous reconstructions. It is named “Hallucigenia sparsa.” It has a form of limb which it is typically shown walking upon on the seabed (see image below). Having scuba-dived, and seen what marine organisms look like today, I find these reconstructions absurd. I can find no animal, marine or terrestrial, that walks on multiple stilt-like legs like that.

 H. sparsa reconstruction (H. sparsa.jpg) by Jose manuel canete, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

I noticed a striking and remarkable similarity between the fossils of Hallucigenia and the modern cosmetic claw hair grip. That suggested to me that the animal was well adapted for grasping. So, taking my cue from that, I got thinking about how this animal might really have lived. And it has been an interesting intellectual exploration, with ideas of adaptations that animals might have evolved to help them grasp, and how some adaptations might look extraordinary to us, but in fact be entirely natural ways to deal with a problem for which a better, more familiar solution later became available. And I even found a modern-day animal that I argue lives in a very similar fashion to how H. sparsa would have lived.

In the interests of sharing my insights, I sent the paper to several palaeontological and geological publications. It was roundly rejected. I was told by one that it lacked sufficient quality with regard to structure, data presentation, and validity of the conclusions. It was rejected by another as simply not suitable. The editor of a third encouraged me to submit it, only for the sub-editor for palaeontology to reject it as outside the scope of the publication! So I gave up.

You can read the paper for yourself and decide whether you agree with the publishers' assessment. It’s here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18685151. You may agree, or you might instead conclude that this is a familiar case of new ideas facing resistance. But, in either case, I think that this reinforces my feeling that I should not have become an academic – my papers would have never been published. Better to go travelling instead.