Imagination

Imagination: the capacity to create something new, something that has not existed before; to be resourceful; an active thought made by effort rather than a passive thought. Imagination can be conscious or unconscious (as in dreams), cognitive, emotional, visual, sensational. Imagination can involve reality or fantasy or blend both.

Creating imaginary creatures

In 1911, a palaeontologist called Charles Doolittle Walcott discovered a fossil dating back 500 million years. The creature became known as hallucigenia because of its unusual qualities. At first people thought that it had spines for legs and fed from tubes on its back. Then they decided that they were looking at the fossil the wrong way round and in fact the spines were on its back to protect it from predators, while it moved with the help of tubular legs.

Can you create a creature with the strangest features? Can you then work out what the features are for? (The weirder and more wonderful, the better!)