Antlers

A trip to the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution located at the muséum national d’histoire naturelle stirred my inspiration. I was dazzled by the amount of bones on display, the number of skeletons they erected. Walking the gallery felt like a promenade among the cemetery of geological generations. As if the hand of God opened the crust of the earth and poured out all sorts of hidden and unscathed treasures.

Mammals and other creatures that walked the surface of the earth are exhibited in this gallery. Time stopped for these animals creating a gap for paleontologists to study their pasts, diet and whatever comes to identify

One begins to see how conditioning works in the way it sculpts little by little the individual down to the bacterium. Darwinism slowly unravels itself. The thought of having one common ancestor lurks behind each anatomical infrastructure. With it comes the dread of realizing that the Homo sapiens is not a special snow flake of species after all. It is just a branch in a tree that extends itself in a past measured far beyond our ephemeral times.

A special feature captivated my fleeting attention. The antlers of the gigantic Irish deer – known in the scientific circle as Megaceros Hibernicus. It occupied a wall in an almost hidden cavity of the first floor, next to the stairwell. It belonged to a male deer.