January 18, 2009
I've pretty much given up on TV. I occasionally watch a few things (The IT Crowd, Doctor Who, QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks), but mostly it's all shit and I'd be very happy to not have a TV at all. Once in a blue moon, however, there is something really good. On Friday evening (Jan 16th), BBC 2…
January 16, 2009
There just haven't been enough squamates around here lately (well, apart from the anguids). Because I have guilt, here is a good photo of a beautiful animal: a Plumed basilisk Basiliscus plumifrons. Thanks to their striking appearance, basilisks are often featured in books and on TV, but people…
January 14, 2009
Most people who know stuff about animals 'know' that the White rhino Ceratotherium simum owes its vernacular name - not to its colour - but to its wide, flattened lips. After all, the 'White' rhino is not really any whiter than any other rhino. So, the 'white' must - so everyone has been saying -…
January 14, 2009
By popular request, in this and in a few later articles I'll be reposting the rest of the Ten Bird Meme text originally posted at Tet Zoo ver 1 in 2006 (where appropriate, I've added corrections and updates). The 'Ten Bird' birds I've covered so far are Ifrita, Shoebill, Tibetan ground-pecker, and…
January 13, 2009
Do you remember that weird old Brontornis picture we looked at back in June? Here it is again...
We're not, on this occasion, interested in the Brontornis, but instead in the freaky long-necked duck-billed monster that's menacing it.. or, that it's menacing (impossible to say). That creature - and…
January 11, 2009
Last year the blogosphere and global media went nuts over the 'Montauk monster'. A small mammal corpse that washed up on the beach at Long Island, New York, it was not an alien, government experiment, or sea-monster, as widely claimed by idiots worldwide, but - without doubt - a dead, rotten…
January 8, 2009
Here we are, at the beginning of 2009. And here's where I get that horrible feeling that - on the 'things to do for 2008' list - so many things remain incomplete. Among these are a number of Tet Zoo posts that were cutting-edge and topical when I started them, yet are now not so cutting-edge, and…
January 6, 2009
It's not everyday that you discover a shop named after a group of fairly obscure amphibious lipotyphlans. While in Spain last year, I was intrigued by this shop...
I think it sold clothes or something, though frankly I don't recall checking. Here's a close-up of the animal featured on the signage…
January 5, 2009
At the start of 2008 I promised myself - in fact, I might even have said it on Tet Zoo - that I'd photograph all the Slow-worms Anguis fragilis I see. The bad news is that I only saw four and - of those - one was dead. Nevertheless...
Both individuals you see here (above) were found in the New…
January 4, 2009
Extant sulids - the gannets and boobies - are admittedly pretty uniform (greater diversity existed among fossil forms, as we'll see at some stage), but they still differ in many subtle ways. In the previous sulid post we looked at the gannets: we now turn to the boobies [composite image shown here…
January 3, 2009
Late last year (on December 22nd) the British newspapers told the story of Pete, a purple-coated Grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis photographed in the grounds of Meoncross School, Stubbington (Hampshire, UK). Why a Grey squirrel should have a purple coat is, of course, the big mystery.
One…
January 1, 2009
No time at the moment to complete anything for the blog, dammit. So only time for a picture of the day. Inspired by recent comments made here about the whereabouts of the Krayt dragon skeleton from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Matt Wedel has done a great job of both identifying the skeleton,…
January 1, 2009
Oh crap, it's 2009 already (one of my favourite lines from movies is: "They say time is the fire in which we burn". Quiz: where is it from?). Happy New Year! For no reason at all - other than that I'm reading a lot about seabirds at the moment - here is a neat photo of several Black-headed gulls…
December 31, 2008
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 numerous (there might be over 50 million…
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 just updated my blogroll - hooray! - and have added a brand-spanking-new and…
December 29, 2008
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 required to get them to the…
December 23, 2008
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 that! After all, you already realise the significance of qilins, cadborosaurs and…
December 23, 2008
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 about the mammals, and - of course - about the fossils...
One of the birds I most wanted…
December 21, 2008
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 of the little figures on the left...
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 representative of the strikingly blue Blue tit subspecies Cyanistes…
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 Ibrahim from University College Dublin - our team leader - and by Samir Zouhri…
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 what is it?
I know, I know: easy.
Next: to the Sahara and back! Camels,…
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 departure. Many thanks to everyone for reading stuff and for leaving comments in my…
December 15, 2008
I like ducks, and I particularly like steamer ducks. Again, here we revisit some Tet Zoo ver 1 text that was originally published in 2006 as part of the Ten Birds Meme.
The most widely distributed of the four Tachyeres species*, the Flying steamer duck T. patachonicus inhabits both the fresh and…
December 12, 2008
All three tetrapods shown here all work on tetrapods. But what the hell Dave Martill was doing I can't recall. Eric Buffetaut appears over my shoulder. I look bemused.
Mo Hussan - of The Disillusioned Taxonomist - took this photo on the Isle of Wight. Thanks Mo, I think. Something about Tet Zoo…
December 10, 2008
More from the archives - and again this is from the Ten Bird Meme of 2006.
If convergence is one of the most interesting evolutionary phenomena, then the Ground tit Pseudopodoces humilis should become a text-book example of it, on par with thylacines vs wolves and ichthyosaurs vs dolphins […
December 8, 2008
Another article from the archives, written back on April 19th 2006. Two days earlier I'd sat up watching BBC4's night of primate documentaries, and that where our story begins...
I've sat up and watched such things as 'Natural History Night' and 'Dr Who Night' before - usually they're a con, the…
December 5, 2008
Here's an interesting photo provided by Markus Bühler (of Bestiarium): it shows a bull Asian elephant Elephas maximus at Hagenbeck Zoo, Hamburg.
The picture is neat for a few reasons. For one, it emphasises the agility of elephants: despite their size and 'graviportal' specialisations, they can…
December 3, 2008
Another bit of text from the Ten Bird Meme of 2006. This time: well, you already know... also called the Shoe-billed stork, She-billed stork [not a typo], Whale-bill or Whale-headed stork, Balaeniceps rex is a long-legged big-billed waterbird of central Africa, and a specialist denizen of papyrus…
December 1, 2008
Another one from the archives. It's one of several articles I wrote in 2006 on obscure tropical rodents, was originally published here, and appears here with new pics and a few new details...
If you've read Scott Weidensaul's excellent book The Ghost With Trembling Wings (2002), you'll recall the…
