May 18, 2009
It might not be well known outside of palaeontology that the south-west of England is famous for its marine reptile fossils. But it is: some of the best, most historically significant, plesiosaur and ichthyosaur specimens have come from Street in Somerset and from Lyme Regis and Charmouth in Dorset…
May 17, 2009
I try not to under-estimate the intelligence of my readers, but couldn't you be just a little more clueless? I mean, come on: virtually every person who left a comment realised that the 'mystery animal' from yesterday was a replica owl. Clearly, it was much, much easier than I thought. Anyway,…
May 15, 2009
Last weekend I went out, and saw this. What could it be?
Warning: this is not meant to be easy. Answer tomorrow.
May 15, 2009
Ever one to jump on a bandwagon, and with another 'mystery carcass' case still all too fresh on the Tet Zoo list of articles, I've decided to blog about this new 'Montauk monster' carcass. In case you've forgotten, back in July 2008 the global media went absolutely apeshit over a rotten raccoon…
May 14, 2009
In the previous post we looked at the small, island dwelling crocodilians of the south-west Pacific. I personally find it exciting that such animals were (in the case of at least some of the species) alive until just a few thousand years ago, that they were encountered by people, and that their…
May 12, 2009
Here's an interesting contention: until just a few thousand years ago, small crocodilians inhabited the tropical islands of the South Pacific and elsewhere. In fact, judging from recent discoveries, small terrestrial crocodilians were an ordinary component of many tropical island groups, and they…
May 11, 2009
It is with some sadness that I must pass on the news that Cyril Walker died last Wednesday (6th May 2009). Cyril worked at the Natural History Museum from 1958 until his retirement in 1999. He is best known for his many palaeornithological contributions: often working together with his colleague…
May 10, 2009
Yet again I became distracted the other day, this time by that 'Jaws' photo. The previous article is required reading. Thanks to everyone who provided comments, and had a go at identifying the carcass. While many people suggested 'short-faced dog', a cat identification seems to have been more…
May 8, 2009
The Australian mainland's largest extant native mammalian predator is the Spotted-tailed quoll or Tiger quoll Dasyurus maculatus. It weighs, at most, 7 kg. While rumours of Thylacine Thylacinus cynocephalus (15-30 kg) survival persist both in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland (and,…
May 6, 2009
A little while ago - that is, during Ceratopsian Week - I discussed NMC 8538, the excellent articulated Anchiceratops ornatus specimen today displayed at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Alas, while photos of the panel-mounted specimen were published by Lull (1933) and also by David Norman…
May 5, 2009
Yesterday, Tet Zoo was the featured blog on the Nature Blog Network blog: if you haven't seen the interview please do check it out here.
NBN is well known to most bloggers who write about the natural world: it's a ranked network of blogs, all of which are united by the fact that they focus on…
May 4, 2009
After last week's look at an emu dissection, it seemed only logical to follow up with dissection pics of another ratite. So when John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) mentioned his dissection photos of Ozbert the ostrich, I asked politely, and received. Note that all photos are ©…
May 1, 2009
Here is a mystery I'd really like to know the answer to. On the way to school this morning, Will discovered a dead baby bird. Here it is: the photo (which I took on my phone) is atrocious, so there's little point in showing it at larger size. Clearly, this is an altricial, nidicolous passerine…
April 30, 2009
As you'll know if you've already seen the announcement over at SV-POW!, my friend and co-author Mike P. Taylor successfully defended his Ph. D. yesterday: congratulations again, Mike. Mike's thesis was titled Aspects of the History, Anatomy, Taxonomy and Palaeobiology of Sauropod Dinosaurs: its…
April 28, 2009
Inspired by comments made following the emu dissection article from Monday, I got thinking about elongate tracheae in birds. As we'll see, this subject is fertile ground if you like serious weirdness and spectacular extremes [Trumpet manucodes shown here, from wikipedia.. all will become clear].…
April 26, 2009
Back in 2006 my good friend Matt Wedel - who you may know better as one of the three SV-POWsketeers or as plain old Dr Vector - produced a short article on an emu dissection he participated in at the University of California at Santa Cruz [adjacent image: an Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae... though…
April 24, 2009
I never planned to do a whole week on ceratopsians: the initial idea was just to recycle some of those field guide texts in order to save a bit of time. But, oh well, Ceratopsian Week took on a life all its own. To finish things off, we're going to look at some tremendously obscure ceratopsians:…
April 23, 2009
What with yesterday's article on an 'alternative look' for ceratopsians, here's another one. The image used here (again, a powerpoint slide from one of my talks) is pretty self-explanatory, and I use it here because Witmer and colleagues (Papp 1997, Papp & Witmer 1998) used the leptoceratopsid…
April 23, 2009
One of the most distinctive features of ceratopsian dinosaurs is the conspicuous bony frill, formed from the parietal and squamosal bones, that projected backwards (and sometimes upwards too) from the rear margin of the skull.
Typically decorated around their edges by semi-circular bones called…
April 20, 2009
So far we've looked at leptoceratopsids and chasmosaurine ceratopsids. This time, it's the turn of the basal ceratopsoid Zuniceratops. If these terms are giving you grief, a cladogram showing a few of them is below...
Zuniceratops christopheri [adjacent life restoration by Todd Marshall] was named…
April 19, 2009
Another obscure ceratopsian from the defunct field guide project: for the back story go here and here.
A distinctive chasmosaurine similar in size to a large rhino (total length approximately 3.5 m), Anchiceratops ornatus was a heavily built species with a particularly short tail and robust limbs…
April 18, 2009
Once more, I'm going to start recycling some of those dinosaur texts written for the defunct field guide (for the back-story on that project see the ornithomimosaur article here). This time round, I'll get through some of the ceratopsians [adjacent skull reconstruction from wikipedia, and based on…
April 16, 2009
Thanks to Monday's article on the unusual African mosasaur Goronyosaurus, I will admit that I was - quite seriously - considering doing a 'mosasaur week', perhaps even a 'weird mosasaur week'. Alas, I have not had the time. However: brand-new in the journals is Johan Lindgren et al.'s article on…
April 15, 2009
Back in June 2008, Nemo Ramjet launched the official website on Snaiad, one of humanity's first off-world colonies. Snaiad's spectacular wildlife has to be seen to be believed: I've been meaning to post a brief introduction to the site for months and here, in 'text-lite' week, is an excellent…
April 15, 2009
Cattle are another of those groups of animals that, while they're familiar and while we take them for granted, are really pretty incredible. The size, power and awesome appearance of many wild cattle never fails to amaze me. Markus Bühler (of Bestiarium) has been good enough to share these photos…
April 14, 2009
Welcome to a week of honest-to-goodness 'text-lite' posts. Yeah, I've made promises about going 'text-lite' before, but I've failed to deliver. This time I'm determined to succeed. We begin with these pretty pictures, provided by Greg Popwell and showing a taxiderm specimen of.. of... well, what?…
April 13, 2009
One of my favourite mosasaurs is the unusual Goronyosaurus nigeriensis (Swinton, 1930) from the Maastrichtian of Nigeria and Niger. Mosasaurs are Cretaceous marine lizards, (probably) closely related to gila monsters and kin (the monstersaurians) and monitor lizards and kin (the goannasaurians),…
April 10, 2009
How do you stuff an elephant? The - ha ha - obvious answer is 'with great difficulty'. As for the actual answer: funnily enough, the preparation and mounting of elephants for museums is quite well recorded. These African bush elephants Loxodonta africana are on display at the Field Museum in…
April 8, 2009
Yay: day.... err, 4 of Stuffed Megamammal Week (day 1: Khama, day 2; Eland, day 3: Okapi). And now for something completely different... a perissodactyl. Specifically, a rhino and, more specifically still, the weirdest rhino of them all (among extant forms at least): the Sumatran rhino Dicerorhinus…
April 7, 2009
Welcome to day 3 of Stuffed Megamammal Week. So far (day 1, day 2) we've looked at bovids. Now for something completely different. Yes, it's that wonderful, charismatic, beautiful African mammal, the Okapi Okapia johnstoni. Again, this specimen is on display at the National Museum of Ireland in…
