There are books that open like old wooden wardrobes, with creaking hinges, drawers where someone has left papers, fossils, yellowed letters, and drawings of whales made with squid ink. Anna Aguilar-Amat (1962) has written one of these books. Dead naturalists (Pagès, 2025), a delightful blend of genres that is simultaneously archive, initiatory journey, elegy, and homage to a naturalist legacy that lives both within and beyond the body.