Odus to Sparnodus

This week I’ve been rifling through our stores to dig out fossils for our upcoming installation The Future Took Us. As a consequence I’ve been working with fossil fish called Sparnodus.

Here’s how one looks.

I’ve been so inspired by Sparnodus this last week that I have written the following poem.

Odus to Sparnodus
O! Sparnodus.
Every museum has one or two specimens of you.
Or at least pretending to be you.
But you’re a genus of fairly non-descript fish.
Nobody cares about you
And you are extinct
Which means commonly used idioms about fish abundance in marine environments don’t apply to you.
Perhaps that is why you have no friends?