June 25, 2008
I was recently asked a reasonable and intelligent question on elephants. One thing led to another, and after a bit of research I discovered the fascinating world of elephant masturbation. If you want to collect sperm from a (captive) elephant, how do you do it? Luckily youtube provides the answer.…
June 24, 2008
Here I am again, derailing the Tet Zoo publishing schedule, but while I have them on my mind I may as well deal with them now. It'll be brief (no, it wasn't). GOLDEN MOLES!!!1!, or chrysochlorids. If you think true moles, or talpids, are weird (think about it for a minute: they are), you ain't…
June 23, 2008
Phil Budd (of the Southampton Natural History Society) recently gave me a dead mole Talpa europaea, and here it is. It isn't the first mole for my collection: I have another one that I skeletonised long ago. Moles really are amazing. Their forelimb and pectoral anatomy has to be seen to be…
June 21, 2008
You wouldn't know it from Tet Zoo's content, but for many, many months now I've been working continually on ichthyosaurs, the 'fish lizards' of the Mesozoic. I'm not ready to talk about the project yet, but will do at some stage. An awful lot has happened on ichthyosaurs since the late 1990s,…
June 20, 2008
This is the third time that Tet Zoo has featured a dead giraffe (for the first time go here, and for the second go here). It's not that I don't like giraffes - quite the contrary - it's just that anything and everything about them is fascinating. Lions Panthera leo are incredibly adaptable, and…
June 18, 2008
As if the revelations about Brontornis and all that new work on the ameghinornithids weren't enough, 2007 also saw the publication of a long-awaited new study on the age of Titanis walleri, North America's only phorusrhacid, and - supposedly - a species that survived until as recently as 15,000…
June 17, 2008
Shame, shame, shame, oh shame on me. I saw the following on John Conway's Philosophica Neopalaeontographica and have become so obsessed with it that, here I am, stealing it. It's not, even, really about tetrapods...
... and the accompanying paper (available as a free pdf) is available here. As John…
June 15, 2008
The image depicted in the previous brief post is one of those famous iconic photos that many people have seen but few know anything about: it's an alleged yeti track, photographed by Eric Shipton and Michael Ward on the 8th November 1951 on Menlung Glacier during their exploration of the Gauri…
June 14, 2008
A very famous image, and you probably know what it is. But - really.. look at it very closely, what is it really? No, this is not a trick question: I'm just proposing that people really look in detail at all of its features. More terror birds soon, also tree-climbing dinosaurs, the last anurans,…
June 13, 2008
You'll recall me saying recently that 2007 was a good year for publications on phorusrhacids, aka terror birds. And as I discussed in the previous post, one of the most interesting contentions made about phorusrhacids last year was that one of the most remarkable members of the group (super-robust…
June 12, 2008
Contrary to plans (you know how it is), I haven't had time to finish the phorusrhacid theme I started on Tuesday. Because it's important to keep it in mind, I feel we need a reminder about the fact that 2008 is Year of the Frog, and hats off to Carel for discussing this recently, and of course to…
June 9, 2008
Actually, given that they've been extinct for quite some time now, 2007 wasn't really a particularly good year for either terror birds, aka phorusrhacids, or for mega-ducks (on which read on), but it was a pretty good year in terms of the new material that was published on them. Phorusrhacids were…
June 7, 2008
One of the greatest fallacies held about evolutionary theory is that fossils are essential in demonstrating the existence of change (don't believe me? Look at 'creation science' books like Duane Gish's Evolution: the Challenge of the Fossil Record and Evolution: the Fossils Say No!). Of course,…
June 6, 2008
If you're a blogger, then you choose when and how often you blog, what you blog about, and even whether you blog at all. There's no pressure, do what the hell you like. I've always been determined not to do stuff on Tet Zoo that I don't want to. No participation in pointless, boring memes for…
June 4, 2008
Only time right now for one of those brief Dave Hone-inspired Tet Zoo picture of the day posts (or TZPOTDPs, yeah), and what with all the azhdarchoid news lately (Lü et al. 2008, Witton & Naish 2008) it's only fitting that we have more pterosaurs. Here's a photo I took back in the days of Tet…
June 3, 2008
Here at Tet Zoo we've looked at lake monsters on a couple of occasions now: at alleged Nessie photos here, and at the sad death of the Lake Khaiyr monster here. For a while I've been planning to add to this list, and to write about one of the most famous, most iconic lake monster photos: the Mansi…
June 1, 2008
The silence must have been deafening. As - hopefully - everybody knows, during 2007 Spencer Lucas and colleagues at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNHS) were charged with intellectual theft, of pre-empting the writings of colleagues, and of publishing on material without…
May 30, 2008
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 nectariniids, the nectarivorous, superficially hummingbird-like passerines of the…
May 27, 2008
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 nonsense written for fun; at least some of it results in actual peer-…
May 26, 2008
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 with a closed mouth. And that's not all that's interesting about these snakes. Yes,…
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 worked) on Tuesday 20th May, and died in hospital on Wednesday 21st.…
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 primary lowland forest (though it has also…
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 it a protest directed at Spielberg's hideous feather-less dromaeosaurs (recall that, even in…
May 19, 2008
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, Glyptodon clavipes. So much for posting the answer on…
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. Have fun...
PS - I'll post the answer on Sunday night.
May 15, 2008
Despite efforts, there just hasn't been enough time (yet) to get Tet Zoo to properly reflect the balance of diversity within Tetrapoda (I blame the charismatic megafauna). And among the many groups that have been totally under-represented here are the snakes: one of the most speciose (over 2700…
May 13, 2008
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 at Burlington House (home of the Geological Society of London) on May 6th and 7th (…
May 11, 2008
So, was it really 'the best conference of all time'? Hmm, maybe, but it was excellent and all went well (more or less). On May 6th and 7th I attended 'Dinosaurs (and other extinct saurians) - A Historical Perspective', a meeting featuring a packed schedule of talks and posters devoted to Mesozoic…
May 10, 2008
Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you'll know that 2008 is Year of the Frog (more here), and that several projects - including Amphibian Ark and EDGE - are working to try and save endangered frog and toad species before they become extinct. We need to do all we can to continue to drum up…
May 4, 2008
Ok, signing off for a while now. Among other things, the above will get discussed when I get back: the image on the right (from here) might look somewhat, err, 'inspired' if you're familiar with the original produced by Mark Witton (see here and here). So long for now. Oh, actually, one last thing…
