"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....
July 31, 2008
Category: mammalogy
More on weird odontocete skulls. This time, another river dolphin: this is the skull of the Amazon river dolphin or Boto Inia geoffrensis, also known as the tonina, bufeo or pink dolphin. Three generally recognised Inia taxa exist, and views...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:25 AM • 11 Comments •
July 30, 2008
Category: mammalogy
Yay: day 3 of seriously frickin' weird cetacean skull week. While we've previously been looking at the skulls of extant species, this time we have a fossil (or, actually, a diagram of one: from Muizon 1988). It's Scaphokogia cochlearis from...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:31 AM • 33 Comments •
July 29, 2008
Category: mammalogy
Welcome to day 2 of seriously frickin' weird cetacean skull week, and here we look at one of my favourites: Platanista, the Asian river dolphins or susus. Susu is a Hindi onomatopoetic name based on the exhalation noise these dolphins...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:07 AM • 17 Comments •
July 28, 2008
Category: mammalogy
Welcome to another of those week-long series of themed posts, produced (ostensibly) to save me from spending time on blogging (other jobs require priority). Previous series have been ankylosaur week and sea monster week. This time round we're looking...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:50 AM • 27 Comments •
July 26, 2008
Very late to the party here (the story was first published waaaaaay back on the 18th), but it just seems wrong not to cover this at Tet Zoo. Sincere apologies to the Bleiman brothers at Zooillogix and to John Lynch...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:40 PM • 13 Comments •
July 25, 2008
Category: mammalogy
We looked previously at a partial skull, collected in northern Africa. Apart from the odd outing when it's been used in teaching, it's been sat in a box on my desk for a couple of years now, forlornly hoping that...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:08 AM • 20 Comments •
July 22, 2008
Category: picture of the day
This incomplete fossil skull was collected from the coast of northern Africa by Dave Martill and is suspected to represent a new species. It's one of those annoying back-burner projects that sits there on your desk for months and months.....
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:51 AM • 36 Comments •
July 21, 2008
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs
The idea that non-avian dinosaurs might have been able to climb trees is (I assume) not all that familiar to people outside the field of dinosaur research, but within the field of dinosaur research it has become an increasingly...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:22 AM • 36 Comments •
July 20, 2008
Annoying teaser ahoy! The tree-climbing dinosaurs are coming......
Posted by Darren Naish at 4:34 PM • 12 Comments •
July 18, 2008
Category: mammalogy
Once upon a time longhorn cattle were abundant and kept by many people; in fact, they were the most abundant domestic cattle, and this breed more than any others was selected for 'improvement' by Robert Bakewell (1725-1795) of Leicestershire, the...
Posted by Darren Naish at 1:11 PM • 13 Comments •
YES! Send me a free issue of Seed.
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $14.95. That's 50% off the cover price! If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep.
(Non-U.S. subscribers, click here.)
