frivolous nonsense
tetrapodzoology | June 29, 2011If you didn't know, I've been away. The last four articles that have appeared here were all scheduled to publish in my absence. I've been in Romania and Hungary where I had a great time - saw lots of neat animals (fossil and living) and hung out with some neat people. I'll talk about some of this stuff in due course. For now, here's a really nice picture, kindly provided by artist-animator Ethan Kocak.
Ethan keeps and breeds geckos and, as you can see from this photo of one of Ethan's New Caledonian giant geckos Rhacodactylus leachianus henkeli, it seems that these lizards are big fans of at…
tetrapodzoology | March 15, 2011Well, the whole 'distributed denial of service' thing has done a pretty effective job of keeping me away from Tet Zoo entirely. No chance to blog, and not even the chance to look at the site at all - so, wow, thanks for keeping the protobats discussion going (97 98 comments... not bad). While those jolly nice people at ScienceBlogs tech support have just unblocked my IP address, it seems that lots of readers remain blocked - I see Tet Zoo sliding down the ratings a bit over on Nature Blog Network. Yikes, fifth place! Anyway, I'm just about ready to start deluging Tet Zoo with the enormous…
tetrapodzoology | February 6, 2011
Borrowed from here on David's Really Interesting Pages (and used with permission: thanks David). A sort of homage to this article from last month.
tetrapodzoology | January 20, 2011Today, my friends, is January 21st 2011. Do you know what this means? It means (drumroll)... that Tet Zoo is five years old today. Wow. Five years. With apologies to those who've heard the story before, things started in 2006 over at blogspot, and in 2007 Tet Zoo ver 2 kicked off here on ScienceBlogs. So: happy birthday Tet Zoo!
The fact that I've now been blogging about hardcore zoology for five years is a little scary; it makes me worried that things here might have become stale or blasé. To be honest, if that's so I haven't noticed and, anyway, my motivations for blogging are almost…
tetrapodzoology | November 29, 2010When you discover something new on the internet, you usually find - minutes or hours later - that everyone else already knows about it, and you're just late to the party. And so it is here. But what the hell. Petya Cosmos recently alerted me to this hilarious, and interesting, video. The drama, the suspense, the sheer, epic scale of what unfolds, the music from Predator... make sure you have the volume turned up loud... [NB - only watch the video if you can have the sound on too].
Maybe it's just me, but I found the video hilarious (and brilliantly edited). Then again, I always did find cats…
tetrapodzoology | August 25, 2010
While on holiday in Wales recently, we visited Cardiff Castle. Located within the grounds is the Victorian House, extensively transformed between the late 1860s and 1930s by William Burgess under John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute. I was quite surprised to find carved platypuses, armadillos, wombats and pangolins on some of the bookcases.
Apparently they commemorate particular countries of the then Commonwealth: any idea which countries armadillos and pangolins might be associated with? There were bears and otters, too. Sorry the photos aren't great. I couldn't use the flash, and…
tetrapodzoology | July 1, 2010Darren is away. Back soon. Here are sneak-peeks...
The amazing freaky beast that's getting all the attention, that everyone gawps at in amazement (drumroll)...
... stands at centre-left in a white shirt. Yay, it's Witton's World of Pterosaurs. Photo above stolen from Benjamin Moon.
Dave Martill hard at work.
"Hey, it's Dave Hone, of Archosaur Musings!""Hey, it's Darren Naish, of Tet Zoo!".
Much more to come very soon...
tetrapodzoology | May 16, 2010I came up with the idea recently of inventing a Tet Zoo logo, and a few friends and regular readers said that this was a good idea. Soooo....
I decided to incorporate just three creatures (any more would be too crowded), and the ones I chose can be regarded as Tet Zoo superstars or regulars: a ground hornbill (representing Diapsida or even Reptilia), a babirusa (representing Synapsida), and a toad (representing Lissamphibia). I wanted to have more wording round the margins, but (a) that's probably not a good idea, as the logo would become too cluttered if there were any more text, and (b)…
tetrapodzoology | April 9, 2010
Readers with good memories will recall both that January 21st 2010 was Tet Zoo's fourth birthday, and that I wrote about 'four years of operation' on that day. I had more to say about the subject in 2009, a year of Tet Zooery. Buuut... then things went downhill, and I had to take that break, and then all that other stuff happened, and - well - I ended up not finishing the 4th birthday series. Purely in the interests of publishing it and getting it out of the way (better late than never), herewith find the last, very belated, instalment in my thoughts on the whole fourth birthday thing [the…
tetrapodzoology | March 28, 2010
I like to think that I've done my bit for babirusa promotion. Hopefully you agree. And babirusas could do with lots of promotion - not only are they fascinating and bizarre, they're globally endangered and in real need of protection (if you want to know more, check out Babirusa.org).
I'm pleased to announce that my babirusa articles here at Tet Zoo have not only inspired an endearing cartoon, but something equally fantastic and captivating... a knitted babirusa!
Sasha Kopf - or Tapir Girl, if you prefer - mostly knits tapirs (as you can see from her collection of photos here). She's…
tetrapodzoology | March 13, 2010It turns out that Martinus van Tee of Caricature a day (and of martinus van tee illustration) is a big fan of Tet Zoo, and obviously of babirusas too. Yes, here's me, Flintstone-style, riding a familiar artiodactyl. Have I written about babirusas on Tet Zoo? - - I can't remember.
Thanks indeed Martinus, truly I am honoured. In real life, remember that babirusas need help: they are threatened by illegal hunting and habitat destruction on Sulawesi (visit Babirusa.Org for more).
tetrapodzoology | March 9, 2010Even in this day and age - when anyone who's anyone has a huge personal pdf archive - 'dead tree' libraries are still used by many (or most?) of us.
Partly because I've never worked on a computer that can do more than three things at once, partly because I spend 90% of my waking life staring at screens anyway, and partly because I really prefer to hold literature in my hands and have it scattered about the desk while writing, I hate using pdfs and will always use hard-copy when possible. I even find myself wasting time hunting down a printed-out copy of a paper when I know full well that a…
tetrapodzoology | January 27, 2010I have to take a break. I may be gone for some time... I may not. Here are some cool photos.
tetrapodzoology | January 23, 2010So, if you read the previous article, you'll know that we're here because Tet Zoo was four years old on January 21st. In that article, I got as far as discussing blog-relevant events that happened up to the end of May or so. Time to crack on...
During June I had a particularly bizarre job - I did a day's worth of radio interviews on behalf of The Sun newspaper. They were running a promotional event that tied in with the British tour of the Walking With Dinosaurs Live show (incidentally, I was fact-checker for the script of WWD Live when I worked at Impossible Pictures). Felt a bit weird…
tetrapodzoology | January 21, 2010
Today is January 21st which means, believe it or don't, that it's Tet Zoo's birthday, the 4th no less. Holy crap... have I really been blogging for four years? Yikes, and there is still so much to do, so little ground I've covered. This is despite more than 635 (count 'em) Tet Zoo articles here on ScienceBlogs alone. As on some (but not all) of the previous occasions, this article is going to be a personal look back at the year, not a proper review of all the Tet Zoo-relevant stuff that happened in 2009 (wow, wish I had time for that). Actually, this is just about the worst time to write a…
tetrapodzoology | December 23, 2009In time-honoured fashion, once more it's time to wish you all best Christmas wishes and share with you my digital 'Christmas card'... though if you're a regular correspondent or one of my Facebook friends you'll already have seen it, sorry...
A larger version is available on request. You'll note a random assortment of real and not-so-real tetrapods. Qilin parungulatus comes from this article, Anachrodactylus is explained here, and the idea that Deinocheirus might have been an arboreal slothosaur is discussed here (the idea is certainly erroneous, by the way). The giant pongine is, obviously…
tetrapodzoology | November 19, 2009My good friend Luis Rey was kind enough to pass on the following photos, taken at the Jardin Des Plantes in Paris. It's the extinction carousel, (presumably) the only place in the world where you might ride a sivathere...
... or a meiolaniid, or an elephant bird...
... or a dodo...
Yes, yes, I know that the creatures aren't totally accurate (the meiolaniid in particular), and if you know your extinct animal artwork you'll have realised that the animals are all based directly on the paintings that Eric Alibert produced for Jean-Christophe Balouet's 1990 book Extinct Species of the World:…
tetrapodzoology | November 8, 2009My wife gives money to a cancer charity. She gets literature of some sort for doing this, and here's the front cover of the Christmas booklet she recently received. Why, as a Tet Zoo nerd, do I find it so funny?
tetrapodzoology | October 18, 2009Preparing blog posts for Tet Zoo takes hours, sometimes days or even weeks. It's done in "spare time". Putting crap on facebook takes minutes and can be done during the course of a normal work day. Some of the stuff is soooo hilarious it deserves to be shared...
Francisco Gascó (aka Paco) knocked this up, thanks Paco. It was taken in about 1992 1994 (when I was 18 19): note the Battat dinosaurs on the terrarium lid, Greg Paul theropods on the wall, and Luis Rey spiky amargasaur t-shirt. The croc skull is a juvenile C. niloticus.
My one and only photo of a British big cat, taken on Dartmoor…