March 4, 2008
Yes yes, well done (almost) everyone: yesterday's so-called mystery picture was indeed of a takin calf Budorcas taxicolor, and yes it's the offspring of the individuals that I was talking about seeing at Marwell Zoological Park back in 2006. This particular photo was taken by Graeme Elliott (I…
March 3, 2008
You all love the 'identify the mystery animal' posts so much I thought I'd produce a whole string of them. Minimum effort, maximum result ('min eff, max res', as I always say). Go go go!!
March 2, 2008
I spent much of my Saturday doing an interesting thing. Together with another 30 or so people, I went along to my local nature reserve (Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, Southampton) and took part in an effort to clear the shore of its tons upon tons of human crap. Unsatisfied with our constant use of…
February 28, 2008
Thank you and well done to everyone who had a bash at identifying Ermentrude. For the most part, you were correct: Ermentrude was indeed an iguanian, and within Iguania a tropidurid... or tropidurine... I mean liolaemid... or liolaemine, or liolaemin.. and, within that group, a species of the…
February 26, 2008
This is Ermentrude, or Ermie, the best lizard I ever kept. Despite his name he was a male (I think). He got used to being handled but didn't like having his claws clipped. Strangely, he liked banana and once he ate a load of white butterfly chrysalises. Anyway... can you succeed where so many have…
February 24, 2008
The third Big Cats in Britain (BCiB) conference is almost upon us: it happens from 7th-9th March 2008 at Tropiquaria (Watchet, Somerset). This time round, I'm speaking, and most of my research time is currently being eaten up as I prepare for the meeting (I'm also speaking in the first week of…
February 19, 2008
Yet again I am going to have to go quiet-ish on Tet Zoo for a little while as I just cannot put the time into completing the many planned articles. Sigh. One thing approaching on the near horizon is eating up lots of my research time: the third Big Cats in Britain conference, happening in early…
February 18, 2008
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll be saying it again: as a life-long zoology nerd, one of my greatest frustrations has always been the fact that there are so many animals that get mentioned - only ever mentioned - but never elaborated upon. I've always liked Axolotls Ambystoma mexicanum, and…
February 15, 2008
And so, here we are, at the end of it all. Ankylosaur week has come and gone, but oh what a week it was. As I said at the beginning, the whole aim was to save myself work and time by not producing anything new - and this worked, more or less. Did I clear the backlog? Did I hell, but at least I…
February 15, 2008
Another day, another ankylosaur. This time: Silvisaurus condrayi. Known only from the Albian-Cenomanian Dakota Formation of Kansas and described by Theodore H. Eaton in 1960, Silvisaurus is a surprisingly well known, though enigmatic, nodosaurid. Because Eaton provided a life restoration in his…
February 14, 2008
Welcome to day 5 of ankylosaur week. This time, we look at Panoplosaurus' sister-taxon Edmontonia. Edmontonia was a large (6-7 m long) Campanian-Maastrichtian nodosaurid that lived right across North America...
Two species are presently recognised. The type species, E. longiceps, named by Charles…
February 12, 2008
Panoplosaurus mirus was a large nodosaurid (reaching 6 m) and a particularly close relative of the even larger Edmontonia (for a quick intro to nodosaurids see the day 2 article). One of several Canadian dinosaurs from the Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation named by Lawrence Lambe, Panoplosaurus…
February 11, 2008
Originally discovered in 1987 by Bradford Riney during a palaeontological surveying trip, the only known specimen of Aletopelta coombsi [shown here] is from an outcrop of the Campanian Point Loma Formation at Carlsbad, California. It's one of several ankylosaur specimens whose remains come from…
February 11, 2008
Welcome to day 2 of the 'ankylosaur week' series - for the background on this go see day 1 on Hungarosaurus. Before talking about today's ankylosaur, here's a quick 'everything you wanted to know about ankylosaurs but were afraid to ask'. Ankylosaurs were ornithischian dinosaurs from the Jurassic…
February 10, 2008
My to-do list has once again reached epic proportions, and includes three technical projects that now need urgent attention, about ten editorial jobs that need to be dealt with, several overdue book reviews, a lot of consultancy work, and a book synopsis. Plus of course this is all done in 'spare…
February 7, 2008
Time to do more astrapotheres. In the preceding article, we more or less introduced astrapotheres, had a quick look at their diversity, and ran through some of the basal forms. Here we get to the good stuff on astrapotheriid astrapotheres, on lifestyles, and on that question that keeps us all…
February 6, 2008
While googling for astrapothere images recently I came across the image used here: wow! This is a life-sized reconstruction of the gigantic Miocene alligatoroid Purussaurus, first named in 1892 for P. brasiliensis from the Upper Miocene Solimões Formation of Brazil. Most of the salient features…
February 3, 2008
Anyone even vaguely interested in fossil mammals has the same problem at some time or another. You repeatedly encounter the same bizarre and fascinating beasts, long to know more about them, and yet have to endure a lifetime of frustration in the absence of any good, comprehensive information.…
January 30, 2008
Long time readers will, I'm sure, recall Tet Zoo's role as whistle-blower back in April 2007. The article that started all the trouble - The armadillodile diaries, a story of science ethics - was posted here. Well, as you'll know if you've seen today's Nature, a new article by Rex Dalton brings…
January 30, 2008
Will and I looked at some really awesome creatures on our recent visit to the Blue Reef Aquarium at Southsea (Portsmouth, UK)... but most of them weren't tetrapods so I won't be blogging about them. Sturgeons, wobbegongs, remoras, horseshoe crabs, four-eyed fish, Pacific giant octopus, moray eels…
January 27, 2008
Keeping promises isn't always easy, but - following what is hopefully a forgiveable hiatus - here we get back to that short series on obscure island-dwelling, recently extinct animals. It started with a map of the Caribbean. Then we got through (some of the) island otters and canids, and then more…
January 26, 2008
2007 - Tet Zoo's second year of operation - has come and gone. The previous article was a brief personal review of the year, and here's more of the same (sort of) if you can handle it...
As if Tet Zoo wasn't enough to deal with, in September my partners-in-crime Mike P. Taylor and Matt Wedel […
January 24, 2008
January 21st 2008 was Tet Zoo's second birthday, but due to its clashing with the launch of the EDGE amphibian site I didn't have the chance to write about it. So, better late than never, I'm doing that now. It's time to reminiscence on a year gone by, on a year when so much happened in the world…
January 22, 2008
Time to resort to posting images, with minimal use of text, once more. Previously we had giraffes vs planes: these pictures - which are widely available on the web and unfortunately don't come with any details* - pretty much speak for themselves. In the image at top, an unfortunate seabird has…
January 21, 2008
A major global conservation effort, aiming to bring to better attention the chronic plight of the world's amphibian species, was launched at the start of this year. You might have heard of it: the Year of the Frog movement. And, today, a second project aimed at conserving the world's endangered…
January 18, 2008
Those of you with particularly good memories might recall the little references I've been making here and there to a 'big, personally-relevant publication', and those asides to new papers about pleurodires and enantiornithines. Following horrific delays (caused by amphibians, dinosaur growth rates…
January 16, 2008
Or - alternative title to this article - 'It will be the best conference of all time' (no hyperbole at all). Do you like dinosaurs? Are you particularly interested in our changing ideas about dinosaurs, about key discoveries and concepts, or about the evolution of our ideas, reconstructions and…
January 15, 2008
It seems that this story is already all over the internet - I would have posted on it sooner this morning but was busy with amphibians! Anyway... back in 2005 Mary Schweitzer and colleagues dropped a bombshell into the world of dinosaur palaeontology: they reported the discovery of medullary bone…
January 13, 2008
In the previous article, we covered Mesozoic stem-caudates, the cryptobranchoids, and the sirens. The latter are almost certainly part of the most diverse salamander clade, Salamandroidea (also named Salamandriformes or Diadectosalamandroidei), aka the 'internally fertilizing salamanders', or IFS…
January 12, 2008
Did I mention that 2008 is Year of the Frog? Just kidding. In actuality, the conservation effort so many of us are now involved in doesn't just concern anurans (frogs and toads), but all the living amphibian groups: as you'll know, there are, besides anurans, two other such groups. We looked…
