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
December 31, 2008
Category: ornithology
Seabirds are undeniably cool. They often look neat, they often have very cool names (witness such examples as Macronectes, Oceanodroma and Cerorhinca), and their biology is often amazing. They include some of the largest and longest-lived of birds, the most...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:44 AM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 30, 2008
One of the lamest things people do on blogs is (in my humble opinion) write about their own blogroll. I mean: how banal, vapid and insipid can you be? Anyway, on an unrelated note, observant readers will note... that I've...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:43 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 29, 2008
Category: hate-filled rants
Over the course of my research career I have, like so many scientists, accrued a ridiculous list of 'semi-complete', 'near-complete' and 'essentially complete' research projects, all of which are sitting there, awaiting that extra investment of time and effort...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:00 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 23, 2008
Category: frivolous nonsense
Here's the Tet Zoo Christmas card. As always, it's strikingly Christmassy in theme and content (for 2007 go here and for 2006 go here). What does it all mean? Why, you're a Tet Zoo reader: you don't need to ask...
Posted by Darren Naish at 5:49 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Welcome to my final set of musing and recollections about our recent Moroccan trip, led by Nizar Ibrahim. Mostly I'll be talking here about the amazing desert birds we got to see, but I also have stuff to say...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:44 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 21, 2008
Category: picture of the day
Here's a picture I left on a wall at the edge of the Sahara... It wasn't random graffiti: we stayed at an auberge where there was a long tradition of this sort of thing. And if you need a close-up...
Posted by Darren Naish at 4:10 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 20, 2008
More musings from the Morocco trip. So, we travelled over the Atlas Mountains and were soon up at the snowline. We joked about seeing lions and bears, but did see a Barbary partridge Alectoris barbara (another first) and a...
Posted by Darren Naish at 8:56 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 19, 2008
Several weeks ago, I and a group of colleagues from the University of Portsmouth (Dave Martill, Robert Loveridge and Richard Hing) set off on a trip to the Cretaceous exposures of Morocco. We were to be joined by Nizar...
Posted by Darren Naish at 6:04 PM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 17, 2008
Since getting back from Morocco I've had no time to do anything for the blog, dammit. Too much to catch up on. But stuff is coming. Meanwhile, here are some interesting pictures. They depict the same sort of creature, but...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:29 PM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 16, 2008
Over the past month Tet Zoo has been totally different. In what way has it been "totally different", I hear you ask. The answer: I have been absent, with all of the posts having been scheduled in advance of my...
Posted by Darren Naish at 7:45 AM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
