May 2, 2008
Yesterday, my colleague Anthony Butcher (who shares my office at UoP.. but, alas, works on Palaeozoic microfossils called chitinozoans) was driving out of our carpark when he realised that the grey object he had driven past on the pavement was a sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus, plucking the pigeon it…
April 30, 2008
This is not a world of reality TV, fashion, big-screen sport and daily newspapers, but one covered in seas, mountains, forests, ferns, beetles, frogs and birds - get out there and look at it. The good thing about living in a country with a depauperate herpetofauna is that you can go out on a day…
April 29, 2008
Welcome to the third and final part of my write-up of the CEE functional anatomy meeting: for part I go here, and for part II here. Here's where we wrap things up, but let's get through the last of the talks: those on tuataras, and yet more on primates...
Marc Jones discussed his work on skull…
April 28, 2008
More recollections from the CEE Functional Anatomy meeting: part I is here. We looked in the previous article at Robin Crompton's overview of primate locomotor ecology and evolution, Renate Weller's overview of new technologies, John Hutchinson's work on dinosaur biomechanics, and Jenny Clack's…
April 28, 2008
At a vertebrate palaeontology workshop held in Maastricht in 1998, some colleagues and I sat in a bar, lamenting the fact that nobody cared about anatomy any more, and that funding bodies and academia in general were only interested in genetics. Given the poor to non-existent coverage that anatomy…
April 24, 2008
The unusual fossil mammal skull posted here yesterday was, of course, that of the astrapotheriid astrapothere Astrapotherium magnum, as many as you said. But I'm a bit surprised that more people didn't get it straight away, given that astrapotheres were covered and covered again at Tet Zoo only a…
April 24, 2008
Yesterday I attended the Centre for Evolution and Ecology workshop 'Modern Approaches to Functional Anatomy', held at the Natural History Museum (and organised by the Royal Veterinary College's John Hutchinson). Whoah: what a meeting...
Bipedal chimps and orangutans, leaping lemurs,…
April 21, 2008
You might have noticed very little/no activity here over the past two weeks: partly this is because I'm very busy (preparing for Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective, among other things), but it's also because I currently have no internet access at home. Sigh. In an effort to add something new,…
April 15, 2008
If you've been with Tet Zoo since the beginning (early 2006), you will know that, again and again and again and again, we've been coming back to the fact that large eagles, like Golden eagles Aquila chrysaetos, can and do kill surprisingly large mammalian prey (weighing over 100 kg in cases). And…
April 14, 2008
Before I begin, let me say: yay Raeticodactylus. Would say more but haven't had time (plus I've had no internet access for the last few days). Last year Dave Martill and I published part 1 of our review of the British dinosaur fauna (Naish & Martill 2007). While several published lists provide…
April 8, 2008
Here's that cute porcupine photo I mentioned (I think). It shows a group of Crested porcupines Hystrix cristata photographed at Marwell Zoological Park.... awww, look at the little baby. Many other blogs would stop there. But ooooh no, that's not how we do things round here. Here are some little…
April 8, 2008
Well done everyone who had a go at identifying the lizards from yesterday. Dead easy, as both species are highly distinctive and easy to identify (and both were previously mentioned in the Tropiquaria article)...
The armour-plated lizard shown with and without the effects of the flash was a Sudan…
April 6, 2008
It's going to be a busy month, what with the run-up to 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective', and other stuff. So I regret I haven't had time to knock up any new articles: but hey, I know you don't mind what with the recent 'mammals are amphisbaenians' article, and the panda stuff. So...
I…
April 5, 2008
In the previous article we looked at the discovery of the Red panda Ailurus fulgens, and also at some aspects of its biology and distribution. There's so much I didn't cover: Red panda physiology is bizarrely interesting, for example. In this article we're going to look at the Red panda's fossil…
April 3, 2008
They sit there, mostly curled up, mostly asleep, high up in tree-tops, sometimes chewing on bits of plants. But little known is that, deep within their furry little heads, they harbour an unknown desire: to take over the world...
Pet peeve # 113 concerns pandas: it's the generally held notion that…
April 2, 2008
This picture borrowed from wikipedia. Full story later (about wahs, not wikipedia).
April 2, 2008
As I've mentioned previously, 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective' happens on May 6th and 7th: pretty soon! This two-day conference will be held at the Geological Society's Burlington House in Piccadilly (London), and we now have all the required information available online: if you're thinking…
March 31, 2008
Among the most controversial and remarkable of living tetrapods are the bizarre amphisbaenians: a group of fossorial, long-bodied carnivorous animals with reduced or absent limbs, spade-shaped or bullet-shaped skulls strongly modified for burrowing, and an annulated body where distinct, regularly…
March 29, 2008
I've mentioned on and off lately that Tet Zoo the book is now go. The manuscript is complete, and right now (when not working on other things) I'm dealing with the editorial tidying-up. The book won't, I'm sorry to say, be anything technically new: it's simply a compilation of the better articles…
March 27, 2008
Continuing the theme of discussing 'things in the news', we arrive, finally, at dinosaurs. The previous 'late news' pieces looked at fossil anurans and pterosaurs, and assorted mammals. So what news has been announced recently-ish in the world of dinosaurs? Well, frankly, there are always so many…
March 24, 2008
Maybe it's because I write too much, but I am frequently surprised and sometimes a little freaked out at the strange coincidences that have so often cropped up during my time here at Tet Zoo. Long-time readers will recall the several occasions when we've looked at hypothetical intelligent…
March 21, 2008
Dr David Hone is well known for many scientific achievements. For the description of the new rhynchosaur Fodonyx (Hone & Benton 2007a). For his papers on Cope's rule and macroevolutionary trends in archosaurs (Hone & Benton 2005, Hone et al. 2005). For his PhD work on the phylogenetic…
March 20, 2008
As explained in the previous article, here's another by-now-outdated effort to report on stuff that's been published recently, or recently-ish. This time: mammals.
Several neat new fossil mammal discoveries have gone unreported in the press so far as I can tell. Deng & Qiu (2007) recently…
March 19, 2008
It was Beelzebufo that finally made up my mind. Long-time readers will have noticed that I generally fail to discuss the exciting stuff that's being announced in the news, even when it's very much relevant to the Tet Zoo remit. Indeed some of you have even commented upon this fact. What's my…
March 16, 2008
Regular readers will know that I am an unashamed fan of non-standard theories, aka fringe theories or whacky theories, and of course we looked just recently at the haematotherm theory. Doubtless you've all heard of the aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH): that strangely popular notion which promotes the…
March 15, 2008
Yes, the globally renowned internet phenomenon that is Ask A Biologist had its official first birthday on Friday 14th. All the AAB contributors got together and had a massive champagne lunch to celebrate...
... no, of course they bloody didn't, but it would be good wouldn't it. I need not say…
March 13, 2008
In the previous article (required reading) we looked at European leopards. But the leopard wasn't the only big spotted Panthera species that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene: it was joined by a second, far less well known animal: Panthera gombaszoegensis (originally Leo gombaszoegensis…
March 12, 2008
So, on to the contents of my BCiB talk (see previous article for preamble). We began by looking at Homotherium latidens, sometimes called the scimitar cat, scimitar-toothed cat or dirk-toothed cat. H. latidens is one of several Homotherium species that inhabited North America, Eurasia and Africa…
March 11, 2008
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll be saying it again: one of the best ways to invigorate your enthusiasm about a subject is to attend a conference on it, and to spend at least a couple of days talking with other people about that subject. I've (more or less) just returned from the third Big…
March 6, 2008
Congratulations are in order: well done Dave Hughes, David Marjanović and Allen Hazen in particular. No, the creature shown yesterday is not a squabrat from The Dark Crystal (if there is such a thing), Romer's hellasaur, an old picture of a colugo, a proto-bat, proto-pterosaur, arboreal theropod,…
