Now on ScienceBlogs: And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores
"It is - still - the best zoological blog out there, period"
With six years of phd work on theropod dinosaurs behind him, Darren Naish mostly spends long 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 here.
You've read the blog, now buy the books....
The Great Dinosaur Discoveries (US edition)
The Great Dinosaur Discoveries (UK edition)
Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life
Walking With Dinosaurs: The Evidence
Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight
May 30, 2008
Category: ornithology
Something came up at a meeting the other day and I consider it worth discussing. And it concerns birds - which is good, because I haven't done much on birds at Tet Zoo lately. Specifically, it concerns sunbirds, or...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:53 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 27, 2008
Category: pterosaurs
Observant readers might have noticed the several recent references to 'big news in a big journal' coming soon, or on 'how a Tet Zoo article evolved into a peer-reviewed technical publication'. Yes, not all of Tet Zoo is idle...
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:05 PM • 99 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 26, 2008
Category: herpetology
It goes without saying that most predatory animals need to open their mouths when they want to stab or bite potential prey items. But, get this, there's a group of snakes that can erect their teeth and stab prey...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:32 AM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 23, 2008
I was saddened to learn today of the recent death of elephant researcher and conservationist Prof. Yeheskel (or Hezy) Shoshani: he was severely injured in what is thought to have been a terrorist attack in Addis Ababa (where he...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:27 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 22, 2008
Another busy week, so no time yet to finish any new articles, sorry. The photo here - kindly supplied by Mary Blanchard - depicts the little-known Collared nightjar Caprimulgus enarratus, a Madagascan endemic associated with humid evergreen forest and...
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:20 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 21, 2008
Tone and I recently threw out* tons of old clothes, and among the many t-shirts I'd been hoarding was the one shown here: I had it made in 1993 for the Jurassic Park premiere, how sad is that. Consider...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:00 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 19, 2008
Category: mammalogy
Well done and thanks to everyone who had a go at identifying the mystery skull, and congrats to TJ, Jorge Velez-Juarbe, Mark Lees and others: it was indeed a glyptodont, specifically a glyptodontine glyptodontid and, most specifically of all,...
Posted by Darren Naish at 8:45 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 17, 2008
What the hell is this? As usual, I'm sure that many people will get it, but oddities (clues?) to note include the paired shallow concavities on the dorsal surface, the rugose laterodorsal patches and the clusters of large foramina....
Posted by Darren Naish at 10:59 AM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 16, 2008
Category: herpetology
The scales of typhlopids at least are thick and strongly overlapping, and in some species the scales glow under UV light (I don't think anyone knows why); furthermore, the scales are so thick that shed skins are said to be rubbery in texture. A pair of cloacal sacs - the retrocloacal sacs - are also present in these snakes, the function of which remains unknown (they were suggested to function in sperm storage but Shea (2001) showed that this was not the case).
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:44 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 13, 2008
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs
I have a lot on at the moment, so getting this finished wasn't easy - but I managed it. Here we are with the rest of my recollections from 'Dinosaurs (and other extinct saurians) - A Historical Perspective', held...
Posted by Darren Naish at 8:52 PM • 43 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
