"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 30, 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...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:14 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 29, 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...
Posted by Darren Naish at 4:57 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:01 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 25, 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...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:17 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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......
Posted by Darren Naish at 9:27 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 21, 2008
Category: mammalogy
Quite why and how lynxes then became extinct in Britain - especially when they survived in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe - is open to speculation; it's assumed that deforestation, hunting and persecution did the lynx in. Is it conceivable that they survived from the 5th, 6th or 7th century to even more recent times?
Posted by Darren Naish at 8:16 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 15, 2008
Category: ornithology
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...
Posted by Darren Naish at 8:51 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 14, 2008
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs
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...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:18 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 9, 2008
Category: mammalogy
I don't think this reflects any sort of penisocentric bias: it's simply easier to extrude and meddle with a dead or anaesthetised penis than it is to peer deep into the recesses of a vagina. Insert here hilarious quip about personal experience...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:37 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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)......
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:14 AM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
