"It is - still - the best zoological blog out there, period"
With six years of tedious phd work on theropod dinosaurs behind him, Darren Naish stares longingly from his office window at the birds outside and wonders: why did I bother? He pursues exotic lizards and feral cats across the British countryside, occasionally prizes the skeletal jaws from hedgehog corpses, and aims to publish his technical work on obscure Cretaceous dinosaurs. He remains desperately in quest of an academic job that'll last more than a month, and - with a background in TV research, e-learning development, academic editing, popular writing, teaching, landscape gardening, parenting and the wonderful world of retail - he still holds out hope of becoming a dedicated academic. He can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. For more biographical info go here.
You've read the blog, now buy the books....
April 29, 2007
Category: herpetology
Popular culture would have it that turtles are weak, flaccid, crappy organisms with dull social lives, stunted and barely functional internal organs and - it goes without saying - undersized sex organs. Right? WRONG... Warning: the following blog post...
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:41 PM • 44 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 27, 2007
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs
So, on to more ornithomimosaurs, aka ostrich dinosaurs (part I here). This time, the ornithomimids: this is the ornithimimosaur clade that includes only the edentulous arctometatarsalian taxa. Yes, I said arctometatarsalian*. However, note that some authors have incorrectly regarded...
Posted by Darren Naish at 11:18 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 25, 2007
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs
As events conspire, I again find myself unable to devote time to completing any new blog posts. That's a shame, as I'm desperate to finish and publish my article on the terrifying sex organs of male turtles (yes really:...
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:14 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 22, 2007
A week ago I went on a tetrapod-finding trip - with my good friends Mark North and Jon McGowan - to the Isle of Portland. Portland isn't an island: it's a promontory, sticking out from the south coast of...
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:54 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 21, 2007
Category: preemptive
Hmm, how cryptic. Post to follow soon (thanks to Mark North for photo: that's him on the right). Calling all palaeo-artist friends and colleagues: please start sending me your temnospondyl images (see profile for email)....
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:50 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 18, 2007
Category: mammalogy
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we keep coming back to the subject of flightless bats. Besides fictional future predators and night stalkers, there never have been any flightless bats so far as we know. Whenever...
Posted by Darren Naish at 11:36 PM • 34 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 14, 2007
Category: mammalogy
I'm out in the field tomorrow: whether I blog on what happens will depend on... what happens. Think snakes, sea caves and mammal tracking. Until then, here is a mystery......
Posted by Darren Naish at 8:17 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 12, 2007
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs
Yesterday the most remarkable thing happened. No, I have not been handed new DNA work on the Dufftown rabbit-headed cat, nor has the rest of Yaverlandia been found. An articulated azhdarchid has not been discovered on a Cretaceous savannah...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:01 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 10, 2007
Category: herpetology
In the previous post we introduced the aetosaurs, a strange and fascinating group of armour-plated quadrupedal Triassic crurotarsans. Equipped with stout limbs, a strange upturned snout and (usually) toothless jaw tips, aetosaurs have been interpreted as omnivores, herbivores, and...
Posted by Darren Naish at 11:54 PM • 95 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: preemptive
More aetosaurs coming soon. If only I didn't have all this other crap to deal with first....
Posted by Darren Naish at 1:17 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
