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Tetrapod Zoology
Amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals - living and extinct
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Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK) who mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He also studies such things as the swimming abilities of giraffes and fossil marine reptiles. An avid interest in modern wildlife and conservation has resulted in many adventures in lizard-chasing, bird-watching and litter-collecting. I've been blogging since 2006 and a compilation of early Tet Zoo articles is now available in book form as Tetrapod Zoology Book One. Additional recent books include The Great Dinosaur Discoveries and Dinosaurs Life Size. For more biographical info go here. I can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. PLEASE NOTE: I am now completely unable to keep up with email correspondence. I do my best to respond to all queries and requests, but please don't be offended if I fail to reply. I blog from and about conferences - please contact me for more info. Follow me on twitter: @TetZoo.
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- DDeden on Pouches, pockets and sacs in the heads, necks and chests of mammals, part I: primates
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Tetrapod Zoology backstory
The ones I participate in
- Ontograph Studios
- Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
- Azhdarchid Paleobiology
- Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered, the Blog
- Southampton Natural History Society
- Chessel Bay Local Nature Reserve
- Ask A Biologist
Mostly on extant tetrapods
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- The Beaked Whale Resource
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Mostly Cenozoic
- Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution, and Science
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- Gerald Mayr palaeornithology publications
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Mostly Mesozoic
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Palaeozoic
Cryptozoology
- The Aquatic Monsters Site
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Speculative Zoology
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- The World We Don't Live In
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Invaluable resources
You've read the blog, now buy the books....
The Great Dinosaur Discoveries (US edition)
Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life
"Walking with Dinosaurs": The Evidence - How Did They Know That?
Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight (Guide 10; Field Guides to Fossils Series.) (Palaentology FG Fossils)
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« When bivalves attack (or: bivalves vs birds, the battle continues) | Main | The familiar Matamata, known to us all since the 1700s, and its long, fat neck (matamatas part II) »
Squamozoic sneak-peek
Category: speculative zoology
Posted on: July 25, 2010 5:09 PM, by Darren Naish
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Comments
When I see Gary Larson's pictures of pre-historic sceneries, there is always Elvis somewhere peeking out from his hiding-place. You have neglected to show him in this image, even tough Elvis is apparently the most long-lived life form of the phanerozoic. Also, there are no pterodactyl cows in the sky... :-)
Posted by: Birger Johansson | July 25, 2010 6:17 PM
This deserves a good visit:
Latest Cretaceous hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) remains from Bulgaria
In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 17 July 2010
Pascal Godefroit, Neda Motchurova-Dekova
Comptes Rendus Palevol
Posted by: J.S. Lopes | July 25, 2010 7:38 PM
Eryops in a tree?
Posted by: mike sheridan | July 26, 2010 2:03 AM
Sorry, spelling error. Is the tree supposed to be a pine? I cannot see the claws well, is it a deinonychus holding its victim?
Posted by: Birger Johansson | July 26, 2010 4:28 AM
Eryops in a tree?
Nah, the head's too small and rounded. Some sort of caseasaur, I reckon. In a tree.
Posted by: chris y | July 26, 2010 4:33 AM
In a parallel timeline, mammals never diversified much during the Cretaceous, and it is squamates that have become the most important group of big-bodied Cenozoic tetrapods. This is what we refer to when using the term Squamozoic (background here). The Patagonian scene here shows an assortment of endothermic teiids and iguanians. Anoles have diversified like crazy in the Squamozoic: the big animal in the tree is a sloth-anole. I'll be coming back to the Squamozoic world at some point in the future...
Posted by: Darren Naish | July 26, 2010 4:44 AM
Hooray for the squamozoic!
:)
Posted by: Tim Morris | July 26, 2010 7:45 AM
Yay. :-)
Posted by: David Marjanović | July 26, 2010 9:27 AM
So, about the speculative biology.
David, glad to see you here.
I'd like to talk with you about Spec. I see the project is into something like catalepsy. But people from my forum started the translation of pages of Spec project into Russian. Some pages are completely translated, btw. So, I'd like to know - are you going to update Spec project?
Posted by: Pavel Volkov | July 27, 2010 12:53 PM
Pavel, A lot of that is my fault, I promised to update quite a bit of the various fauna, never got around to it. Plus, the discovery of "Tianyulong" and that land crocodilians (notosuchians et al.) may have had an intermediate "cool-blooded" metabolism and possibly even quilly integument has really,REALLY messed things up. Spec is "supposed" to be a mammal, maniraptor(+tyrannosaur) dominated world. We've got a LOT to iron out. Plus all the original contributors are in cognito. David is the last member.
Posted by: Raymond | July 28, 2010 3:20 PM
Sloth-anole? I dunno...
Hey, that does remind me of a squamate question I've had for awhile: who are chameleons descended from? Are there fossil chameleons known that are clearly more basal than modern taxa?
Posted by: Zach Miller | July 28, 2010 3:26 PM
Zach - is your anole-fu weak? Sloth-anoles are just souped-up versions of Chamaeleolis.
I don't have time to properly answer the chameleon question, but you could have a look at this.
Posted by: Darren Naish | July 28, 2010 5:45 PM
Raymond - Wait, what's this about "cool-blooded" notosuchians and land crocodilians having quilly integument? Are you just speaking broadly in terms of the evidence from phylogenetic bracketing or has something new been discovered?
Posted by: Ranjit Suresh | July 28, 2010 5:50 PM
Ranjit-
"Raymond - Wait, what's this about "cool-blooded" notosuchians and land crocodilians having quilly integument? Are you just speaking broadly in terms of the evidence from phylogenetic bracketing or has something new been discovered?"
Several of the south american crocs show evidence of extensive vascular openings on their snouts.
http://felipe-elias.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2m4sba
However, it seems that land-crocs all through-out the jurassic into the cretaceous were BIG time competitors with mammals. Both land-crocs and small quadraped ornithischians may have prevented mammals from being larger than 20 pounds (8 kilos) until the Maastrichian, when North America had an abundance of "large" mammals around 20 to +40 pounds 8 to +20 kilos)from widely diverse lineages.
I apologize that there are no real peer-reviewed works to pour over, however, it is becoming fairly obvious that both small ornithischians and the diverse crurotarsan metasuchians* prevented almost all synapsids (aside from the lingering dicynodonts) from getting to really large sizes.
*I know, I know, it is wikipedia (shudders) but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasuchia
Posted by: Raymond | July 28, 2010 6:23 PM
Yes. Just not before the defense of my PhD thesis, which is supposed to be in the first half of September. And by then someone will probably need to find new webspace for it.
No, it's not. There are lots of great essays, including some Tiina wrote in two thousand fucking six, that I never got around to upload. Spec is currently on my university webspace.
Posted by: David Marjanović | July 29, 2010 5:25 AM
David, can you point the stable and not-going-to-change pages to translate it first? To tell the truth, I do not take part in translation of your project, just discuss the possible versions of translation of Spec inhabitants' names.
In Russian it is a proverb: "Later is better then never". And I hope Spec will be even more interesting after renewing. Maybe, new ideas will come from Russia?
Posted by: Pavel Volkov | July 29, 2010 12:12 PM
OMG ! Hey Darren, I'm not sure if you remember me, but we had e-mailed each other concerning this project, as I was taking it under my wing. I haven't done much lately, though I did work rather tediously do eventually scrap all of those ideas, and come up with new ones. If you check my DA page (I'm Chimpeetah there), I did upload a weird sentient iguanid, but I haven't really focused on many projects since then...
Anyway...
This illustration looks great, and I love the radiation of anoles ! If you would like a few cool suggestions and designs for this I will surely help...this has really sparked my interest in it again :D
Posted by: Venatosaurus | September 25, 2010 2:00 AM
with no insulation?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 27, 2011 1:07 PM
It's a warm bit of Patagonia. And they're not _all_ endothermic.
Posted by: Darren Naish | May 27, 2011 1:22 PM