READ ME: I'M NEW! With six years of phd work on theropod dinosaurs behind him, Darren Naish mostly spends long, happy hours in the library, hunched over his laptop. But he gets out sometimes, and picks up litter and pursues exotic lizards across the British countryside, aiming all the while to publish his technical work on obscure Cretaceous dinosaurs. He also messes around with pterosaurs, swimming giraffes, British big cats and stuff like that. He has given up on the stupid idea of being a dedicated academic and ekes out a living as a technical consultant, editor and author. He can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. For more biographical info go 
Late in the evening I sat in an airport lounge, finally reading Robert Twigger's book on python hunting, my head full of Robert Appleby's legacy, fossil giraffes, giant mustelids, and the song from the end of Portal. I thought about the wolfhounds I'd seen, the bullfinches, stock doves and plovers; the bones we'd found; the teeth and vertebrae I'd handled or photographed; a futile search for hares and about the leverets I discovered in Germany once; the pile of correspondence I'd gone through; and the work I had yet to do on all those hundreds and hundreds of unlabelled diagrams. I thought about an imminent phd viva all about lemurs, about the hilarious conclusion to a paper I'd read that day on fossil frogs, about vampire squids and plesiosaurs, and about my friends in Guyana, looking for giant anacondas.
I came up with an idea for a novel, but knew I'd never bother to write it down.
Anyway, I'm back and trying to catch up. While you sit there, constantly clicking refresh and waiting for the next proper Tet Zoo article to appear (joke), why not have some fun and try to identify the creature shown in the image at the top? (not the wolfhound) If Mark Evans can remember the answer he's not allowed to say it :) Good luck.
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Comments
It's a trick - the big openings are nostrils, the smaller holes are fang holes for big lower jaw teeth. It's a temnospondyl, I will say Mastodonsaurus.
Posted by: Silvia P | November 28, 2007 9:29 AM
Homo diluvii testis
Posted by: Mike Keesey | November 28, 2007 10:47 AM
Looks turtley to me. I'll say Carettochelys on the assumption that it's something weird. Could be a skull of the elusive Putah Creek Placodont...
Posted by: neil | November 28, 2007 11:46 AM
Skull of Chelus fimbriatus, the matamata
Posted by: Andy Farke | November 28, 2007 3:40 PM
Huzzah for readily available 3D models on the internet!
http://www.digimorph.org/specimens/Chelus_fimbriatus/head/
Unless this is some temnospondyl-related trick, I think the matamata has a good case.
Posted by: Cameron | November 28, 2007 4:35 PM
Tetrapod! (I'm getting better at this, I hope noticeably so.)
Posted by: DDeden | November 28, 2007 6:06 PM
we'll I got the weird part right at least...
Posted by: neil | November 28, 2007 7:01 PM
Sorry - nope, it ain't no matamata. I'll spill the beans tomorrow. I wonder if anyone will get it before then..
Posted by: Darren Naish | November 28, 2007 7:21 PM
Some kind of aberrant flatheaded gorgonopsian ...
Posted by: Stevo Darkly | November 28, 2007 10:38 PM
A big tryonichid? The biggest species are South Asian, as I recall. Looks like one of those - the orbits are so far anterior - can't remember any species names at present, though.
Posted by: Lars | November 29, 2007 1:46 AM
Looks like a solid anapsid type skull. A turtle of some kind?
Posted by: susan | November 29, 2007 3:12 AM
"hilarious conclusion ... to a paper on fossil frogs." I'm more interested in that than this ID game! Spill!
Posted by: djlactin | November 29, 2007 3:57 AM
Ok, but I warn you - it might only be me that finds this funny. The paper in question is...
Nokariya, H. & Hasegawa, Y. 1998. Two fossil ranids from the Late Tertiary Kabutoiwa Formation, Gunma Prefecture, central Japan. Bulletin of Gunma Museum of Natural History 2, 1-10.
After seven pages of detailed discussion and description of two new fossil frog specimens, the very last line in the paper (p. 7) is 'Anyway it should be left to further study'. I'm sorry, but I laughed out loud on reading that.
Posted by: Darren Naish | November 29, 2007 4:31 AM
Soft shelled turtle?
Posted by: johannes | November 29, 2007 4:48 AM
A softshell, perchance? Trionyx?
Posted by: Emile | November 29, 2007 6:45 AM
Chitra? Pelochelys?
If not, then it's either:
a) gorgonopsian
b) baboon
c) sealion
d) albino grey squirrel
;-)
Posted by: Hai~Ren | November 29, 2007 7:48 AM
The elusive Putah Creek Placodont? Is this a story I haven't heard? (since I live within a mile of said creek....)
Posted by: Chris | November 29, 2007 2:55 PM
Turtle. Looks like a big (?) version of some of our fresh water species.
Posted by: Steve Bodio | November 29, 2007 8:18 PM
I would have got that it's a turtle, but I wasn't there.
For Mastodonsaurus or any temnospondyl the proportions are all wrong, and so are the smooth bones. Temnospondyl skulls are sculptured! (Insert "your mother has a smooth forehead" joke here.)
Posted by: David Marjanović | November 30, 2007 12:24 PM