March 28, 2007
I've said it before, but it's worth saying again: we live in exciting times. When new Cretaceous theropod dinosaurs and bizarre fossil lizards come out of the woodwork thick and fast; when highly obscure, recently discovered birds are relocated or reported for just the second or third time; and…
March 26, 2007
Well, holy crap. Want to have your enthusiasm for a certain subject invigorated? Then attend a conference; preferably one that features amazing new data, unbelievably cool new video clips, valuable discussion of new ideas and sharing of concepts, is attended by the great majority of active people…
March 22, 2007
Tomorrow morning I leave for that conference. One last thing before I go...
Some of you will know that I am a close personal chum of Mark Witton: pterosaur worker, expert illustrator, meeter of David Attenborough and all round good egg. Mark's astronomical rise to fame is due, not to his visit to…
March 21, 2007
So, at last, it's that war rhinos post you've all been waiting for...
Remember that all the things I promise will appear eventually, it's just that these things take time. Tetrapod Zoology is becoming an increasingly active site that now generally gets over 1000 hits a day, so to all those who…
March 19, 2007
Everybody's talking about it: that most controversial of ideas... were rhinos ever used in warfare? Sure, you've seen armoured war elephants, but what about armoured war rhinos? Well, there's good news, and there's bad news. Stay tuned, for all will be revealed. And if you don't know what I'm…
March 18, 2007
At 12:30am this morning, as I lay on the settee watching Walking With Monsters on the UK History channel, there came an almighty series of loud noises from the fireplace. Like most British homes these days, we retain an open chimney, but the fireplace it's connected to is sealed over with a metal…
March 17, 2007
Readers in the UK might be aware of Primeval, an ITV drama series featuring a time portal that connects the present day with the past. The main premise of the series seems to be that various animals from the past - including a pareiasaur, a gorgonopsian, dodos, a mosasaur, pterosaurs and some…
March 16, 2007
The naming of any new large mammal species is always an exciting event, and within the past few days you've probably heard much in the news about the formal recognition of a new species of extant big cat: the Indonesian clouded leopard Neofelis diardi (that's not its formal common name by the way…
March 14, 2007
Those of you interested in the whole Australian mega-cats issue may recall my discussion of the Lithgow footage, filmed in 2001 by Gail Pound and her husband Wayne on their camcorder. I first saw the footage at a 2006 conference where it was shown and discussed by Australian cryptozoologist Paul…
March 13, 2007
Predators don't just kill 'prey' species; they also kill other predators whenever given the chance. Lions kill hyenas and cheetahs, tigers kill dholes, dholes kill tigers, wolves kill bears, otters kill mink... dinosaurs kill dinosaurs...
For various reasons my early plan to produce a new blog…
March 12, 2007
This one's doing the rounds at the moment, you've probably already seen it. Funnily enough I have an old article on file (well, on my office wall) about a giant Red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris that attacked a bunch of cub scouts back in the 1980s.. it would have been about this size. The article was…
March 11, 2007
Most of us have grown up with the idea that the Mesozoic Era was, excepting the Early Triassic, a time when dinosaurs dominated life on land. Or, put another way, a time when dinosaurs were the most ecologically significant and most obvious of all land animals. The familiar generalization,…
March 9, 2007
It's not all dinosaurs, killer eagles, blue whales, vampires and giant feral cats you know... as planned, I did spend Wednesday evening out in the field looking for newts (for the purposes of this discussion, newt = any member of the amphibian clade Salamandridae that is aquatic during the…
March 6, 2007
It started with a visit to the zoo. Those remarkable African birds, the ground hornbills, got me thinking about Dale Russell's hypothetical thought-experiment (Russell 1987, Russell & Seguin 1982): what if non-avian dinosaurs (specifically, troodontid maniraptorans) had not bought the farm at…
March 4, 2007
A few bits of circumstantial evidence suggest to some that feral cats in Australia are now reaching enormous sizes, equivalent to that of a small leopard. This sounds incredible: how does the evidence hold up?
Tetrapod Zoology exists in a delicate balance. On the one hand I want to try and…
March 3, 2007
Coming next: that long-promised post on Australian giant cats. If this stuff is unfamiliar to you, prepare to be surprised. I still can't believe it. After that: the beluwhals, newts (pending fieldwork to be carried out on Wednesday), maybe more feathered dinosaurs.... and rhinogradentians. Spent…
March 2, 2007
In the previous post we looked at the feathers and filament-like structures that covered the bodies of coelurosaurian theropods. While basal coelurosaurs - compsognathids and tyrannosauroids - possessed filament-like 'Stage 1' structures alone, members of Maniraptora (the coelurosaur clade that…
February 28, 2007
By now most people know that feathers are no longer unique to birds. Thanks mostly to a series of wonderful fossils from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China, we now know that feathers first appeared in non-avian theropods, and were - later on - inherited by early…
February 25, 2007
One of the most remarkable organs in nature might have one of the most remarkable functions, if the results of a recent study are to be accepted...
I lectured this weekend on the evolutionary history of whales, so am feeling pretty inspired about cetaceans and their history. Actually, it's always…
February 24, 2007
It's funny what you can find kicking around in the corner of a friend's flat. Full post to follow soon...
February 22, 2007
By now you've probably heard the news: chimpanzees have been reported manufacturing, and using, spears (Gibbons 2007, Pruetz & Bertolani 2007). I'll say that again. Chimps Pan troglodytes make and use spears....
Specifically, the chimps concerned are of the subspecies P. t. verus, a taxon that…
February 21, 2007
A story of cheeks, beaks, feathers, bizarre theropod dinosaurs, and truly, truly amazing fossils....
Yesterday I made a special visit to the University of Portsmouth's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences in order to attend a talk by, and meet, Professor Altangerel Perle, the famous…
February 19, 2007
If you like amphibians and non-avian reptiles, Britain is a crappy place to live: we have just three native lizard species, three snakes, three newts, two toads and two frogs. But do we have a few more: are various 'neglected natives' lurking in our midst?
This depauperate herpetofauna mostly…
February 18, 2007
Sorry, another one of those really annoying teasers. But, come on, you love it really. Coming later this week...
... at long long last, those lost tree frogs...
... proto-narwhals and the case of the beluwhals...
... the amazing social life of the Green iguana...
... and maybe something on…
February 17, 2007
So in the previous post - required reading before you get through this one, sorry - we looked at the various hypotheses that have been published on the origin of sanguivory (blood feeding) in vampire bats. We saw that only two hypotheses matched with the phylogenetic pattern of feeding styles…
February 16, 2007
Continuing the vampire theme, I here want to discuss another of those really, really interesting things about vampire bats: namely, how did their blood-feeding behaviour evolve in the first place?
First off, a big thank you to everyone who's been visiting, commenting and generally saying nice…
February 15, 2007
Look what happens when you blog about Godzilla. Huh. Back to normality soon...
February 14, 2007
Imbued with god-like powers, the ever-inspirational Mathew Wedel, aka Dr Vector, has wondered what sort of experiments he might play with the biosphere in order to observe the evolutionary results. Given that I just posted an article the other day on Godzilla, it would be a good idea to avoid the…
February 14, 2007
Have you ever wanted to know how much gas a sauropod dinosaur might pass in a day? What an echidna smells like when it dies? If it's true that Indian rhinos don't blink? How far a flea might be able to jump in zero gravity?
Probably not. But imagine if you did: the good news is that there is now…
February 12, 2007
In the previous post we saw that vampire bats were more diverse and more widespread during the Pleistocene than are they today. Two things stand out (to me) as being particularly interesting; firstly, that some of these vampires seem to have differed in morphology, and therefore presumably in…
