herpetology
tetrapodzoology | January 21, 2008
A major global conservation effort, aiming to bring to better attention the chronic plight of the world's amphibian species, was launched at the start of this year. You might have heard of it: the Year of the Frog movement. And, today, a second project aimed at conserving the world's endangered amphibians launches: the EDGE amphibian project, a website designed by the Zoological Society of London to draw attention to amphibian species that are not just globally endangered, but are also evolutionarily distinct...
As you might have guessed, 'EDGE' stands for Evolutionarily Distinct and…
tetrapodzoology | January 18, 2008
Those of you with particularly good memories might recall the little references I've been making here and there to a 'big, personally-relevant publication', and those asides to new papers about pleurodires and enantiornithines. Following horrific delays (caused by amphibians, dinosaur growth rates, ichthyosaurs and conferences) I am, finally, pleased to announce that Cambridge University Press' huge new book, The Crato Fossil Beds of Brazil: Window into an Ancient World (Martill et al. 2007), was published in December 2007 and is now available. If you're interested in Cretaceous anurans,…
tetrapodzoology | January 16, 2008
Or - alternative title to this article - 'It will be the best conference of all time' (no hyperbole at all). Do you like dinosaurs? Are you particularly interested in our changing ideas about dinosaurs, about key discoveries and concepts, or about the evolution of our ideas, reconstructions and theories about dinosaurs? If the answer is yes then get ready to come to London in May 2008 for Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective...
On May 6th and 7th this year, Burlington House in Piccadilly (London) will be hosting this most prestigious of meetings. We've arranged it through the History of…
tetrapodzoology | January 15, 2008
It seems that this story is already all over the internet - I would have posted on it sooner this morning but was busy with amphibians! Anyway... back in 2005 Mary Schweitzer and colleagues dropped a bombshell into the world of dinosaur palaeontology: they reported the discovery of medullary bone within a Tyrannosaurus rex specimen (Schweitzer et al. 2005). Medullary bone is a specialized, densely mineralized, highly vascularized tissue laid down on the endosteal surface of long bones: its formation is triggered by hormones that are produced during ovulation, and it functions as a calcium…
tetrapodzoology | January 13, 2008
In the previous article, we covered Mesozoic stem-caudates, the cryptobranchoids, and the sirens. The latter are almost certainly part of the most diverse salamander clade, Salamandroidea (also named Salamandriformes or Diadectosalamandroidei), aka the 'internally fertilizing salamanders', or IFS clade (Larson & Dimmick 1993). You can guess from the name what makes the IFS clade a big deal (more on that in a second). Yes, I know you've all been waiting for this - it's finally time to cover the amphiumas, mudpuppies, waterdogs and olms, the mole salamanders, the lungless salamanders. Aww…
tetrapodzoology | January 12, 2008
Did I mention that 2008 is Year of the Frog? Just kidding. In actuality, the conservation effort so many of us are now involved in doesn't just concern anurans (frogs and toads), but all the living amphibian groups: as you'll know, there are, besides anurans, two other such groups. We looked previously at the bizarre caecilians. This time round we get through the last group of the three: the caudates, or salamanders, of which there are about 560 living species. Again, these animals are anything but boring. Yes, this is that group that, believe it or don't, includes species that have evolved…
tetrapodzoology | January 4, 2008
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the attention that the first caecilian article received (it's here): it was in the Sb top five most active articles for most of today (Jan 4th), and elicited a decent amount of response. Thanks as always to everyone who commented and especially to those who added snippets of information - in particular Lars Dietz, David Marjanović, and of course Sordes for that invaluable fact about pugs and what happens when you shake them too hard. Anyway, last time we got as far as tentacles, protrusible eyes and the dual jaw-closing mechanism - but what about all the…
tetrapodzoology | January 3, 2008
Did I mention that 2008 is the Year of the Frog? Well, believe it or don't, another major conservation effort directed at the world's amphibians kicks off in January 2008, and in an effort to bring all you wonderful Tet Zoo readers up to speed on amphibian diversity before it launches, we need to get through ALL of the world's amphibian groups first. But that's not as bad as it sounds. Besides anurans - which we've nearly covered in entirety - there are only two other groups, and here we look in detail at one of them.
With apologies to those who already have privileged knowledge.... if I…
tetrapodzoology | December 29, 2007
It's hardly a secret that I've had a bit of a thing going for frogs and toads - anurans - during the latter part of 2007 (the anuran series has so far consisted of part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, and part VII). While the whole exercise was a good excuse to learn a lot about one of the most fascinating, charismatic and bizarre tetrapod groups, the main reason for going down this road in the first place is the major conservation effort that's going to get underway next year.. or, tomorrow, if you're reading this on New Year's Eve. 2008 is, you see, the YEAR OF THE FROG: it…
tetrapodzoology | December 23, 2007
One last thing before Tet Zoo closes down for Christmas but, don't worry, this isn't anything I've knocked up specially... due to an unfortunate series of misunderstandings it's something I produced 'by mistake' and have since decided to recycle. Hey, why not. Ironically, I post it just when I'm in the middle of two other pterosaury bits of work (more on those soon). So I never did get to finish the anuran series before Christmas, nor post about that big, personally-relevant publication which has just appeared, nor get through the titan-hawks, monster pigeons and whatnot. And what about all…
tetrapodzoology | December 17, 2007
If you're on my hallowed List of Correspondents you'll already have received the image here as an attachment (and at slightly higher resolution: email me if you want a higher-res version). For the other several thousand of you, happy Christmas and all that. I've never been one to bother with paper Christmas cards, so the digital revolution gave me a good excuse to create senseless tat and send it round to my friends, ostensibly in the spirit of Christmas. For a previous effort you can see the 2006 card on ver 1 here (the 2005 card used to be viewable at Steve Bodio's Querencia but is no…
tetrapodzoology | December 15, 2007
What with yesterday's Simolestes picture-of-the-day article I couldn't resist but using - at last - this picture. It was taken by Mark Witton at the Oxford University Museum and depicts the immense pliosaur mandible OUM J.10454, a specimen that comes from the Kimmeridge Clay of Cumnor, Oxfordshire, and was acquired by the museum some time between 1880 and 1888. William J. Sollas (1849-1936) had intended to describe the specimen in the year that he died, but its proper debut in the literature didn't occur until 1959. The lovely lady posing next to the specimen is Claire, Mark's sister (at…
tetrapodzoology | December 14, 2007
For shame, I have yet to cover Mesozoic marine reptiles in depth here at Tet Zoo: in another effort to bring balance, I here depict a skull of the awesome Jurassic pliosaur Simolestes vorax Andrews, 1909. The name means something like 'voracious snub-nosed robber'. This essentially complete skull, discovered with much of the rest of the skeleton, was found in 1990 in a waste disposal site at Dogsthorpe, Peterborough (Cambridgeshire, UK) and comes from one of the most famous units of Jurassic rock in the world: the Oxford Clay. Originally identified as a new specimen of Liopleurodon ferox,…
tetrapodzoology | December 6, 2007
We returned late last night: it was a journey involving koalas, Pallas' cat and Asian golden cat, wolverines, rhinos, anteaters, Ceratosaurus, a toy armadillo, and yet again those bloody ichthyosaurs. Thanks to those who've been leaving comments in my absence, I'll address some of the points in due course. Anyway.. so, Tet Zoo has recently played host to articles on deer and carnivorans and, all too briefly, to weird turtles and red bats. But you know that, eventually, we had to return to anurans right?
Yes, finally, we come to the last group of ranoids, last group of neobatrachians, and…
tetrapodzoology | November 29, 2007
That weird little face was, indeed, that of a turtle - but it wasn't that of a matamata Chelus fimbriatus, it was instead that of a softshell turtle (a trionychid), and specifically that of a narrow-headed softshell Chitra indica (though read on). Well done Lars, Johannes and Emile, and particularly Hai-Ren. Chitra has to be one of the most amazing turtles: a big to enormous, long-skulled rubbery animal that hardly ever leaves the water.
Unlike all other turtles, softshells have reduced the bony carapace to such an extent that the margins of their shell are flexible: in some species, the…
tetrapodzoology | November 18, 2007
Now, I've described quite a few isolated dinosaur bones in my time. And I've been involved in some pretty hectic media whirlwindy events ('Angloposeidon', aka 'Europe's largest sauropod', was huge news: see here, as was Eotyrannus). But I've never been associated with any PR exercise that was as well orchestrated and successful as the event that surrounded Xenoposeidon. I have lots of thoughts about what an outstanding success the entire media campaign was, but for those you'll have to check SV-POW!
After all that, does it seem at all anticlimactic to return to frogs? No, it does not: right…
tetrapodzoology | November 11, 2007
Within the immense anuran clade termed Neobatrachia, we've so far gotten through the hyloids (see previous anuran article here: you'll need to read also the articles on basal anurans, transitional anurans, and ghost frogs and so on). All we have left is Ranoidea, but this is the biggest, most diverse, and most complex (and perhaps most interesting) anuran group. So here we go: we are at the beginning of the end...
Ranoidea has always been understood to include ranids ('typical frogs') and all the anurans closer to them than to hyloids, and several derived characters of the skeleton and…
tetrapodzoology | November 8, 2007
So here we are, back with the anurans. In the previous article on neobatrachians (here), we looked at the basic division of the neobatrachians into the mostly New World Hyloidea, and the mostly Old World Ranoidea. While the characters historically used to differentiate hyloids (an arciferal pectoral girdle and procoelous vertebrae) are now understood to be primitive within neobatrachians, recent molecular studies have revealed good support for a clade that more or less corresponds with traditional Hyloidea. Many anuran workers have included within Hyloidea the Australasian southern frogs (or…
tetrapodzoology | November 4, 2007
Welcome again to Frog Blog, as Tet Zoo is now affectionately known. In the previous froggy article we got through the so-called transitional anurans, and I finished by introducing the largest, most speciose, most diverse anuran clade: Neobatrachia Reig, 1958. It contains about 96% of all extant anuran species: most of these belong to one of two great assemblages (conventionally dubbed hyloids and ranoids). My aim here - mostly an effort to avoid discussing all the myriad groups that belong to Neobatrachia - was to briefly dash through all of neobatrachian diversity in just one article, but I…
tetrapodzoology | October 31, 2007
So here we are: anuran diversity part II - you have to have read part I (here) for the following to make proper sense. Yesterday I showed my video of Tiger the secretary bird (filmed at the International Bird of Prey Centre, Gloucestershire, last week) to anybody that would watch, and in the wee small hours I even completed the first draft of a paper on yet another new Wealden theropod (as always, more on that in due time). I remain perpetually busy with those pesky ichthyosaurs. Oh yeah, and happy wedding anniversary me and Tone (yes, we got married on Halloween. Don't ask). Anyway, anurans…