When I was five years old, shortly after my dinomania hit a fever pitch, my parents took me to New York City’s grand American Museum of Natural History. The towering, tail-dragging Tyrannosaurus and low-slung, wrong-headed “Brontosaurus” were the species I most wanted to see on my fossil safari, but I didn’t only have eyes for the Mesozoic. Anything suitably large and monstrous shocked my imagination, including the dim diorama of a sperm whale tussling with a giant squid.

The life-scale model was artificial – I can’t even imagine how anyone would go about mounting an authentic giant squid – but the fantastic scene drew me in because there was the distinct possibility that such an