tetrapodzoology | 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 covered a few times back on Tet Zoo ver 1 in 2006 (go here and here): we looked at their phylogeny, taxonomy, anatomy and palaeobiology, and at the then-new discovery of BAR 3877-11, a gigantic Patagonian skull, 716 mm long, and most similar to the skull of Devincenzia pozzi (Chiappe & Bertelli…
tetrapodzoology | 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, fossils do indeed show how characters were accrued and modified over time, and it's that 'time' aspect of the data that they shed crucial information on. But we most certainly do not need fossils to demonstrate the fact of evolution, as we are surrounded by evolutionary intermediates right here in the…
tetrapodzoology | 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 example. But if people send me books to review then, yikes, I suppose I better get reviewing them...
A recent-ish addition to the Tet Zoo library is Don Glut's Dinosaurs The Encyclopedia: Supplement 5, a 798-page synthesis of new stuff in the dinosaur literature, as of April 2007. Don published…
tetrapodzoology | 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 Zoo ver 1 (June 2006): it shows what we might call The Birthplace of Pterosaurs, or God's Workshop or, more prosaically, downstairs at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth...
You'll note the tupuxuarid model that you might previously have seen in its blue phase,…
tetrapodzoology | 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 photo [detail shown in adjacent image: © Sandra Mansi]. This reasonably good colour photo is well known to everyone interested in cryptozoology, but I suppose is not so familiar to those who haven't read the cryptozoological literature. So if you're familiar with lake monster literature, nothing I'…
tetrapodzoology | 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 getting an OK from those based at the repository where the relevant specimens were held (all of this is documented in painstaking detail here). In particular, they apparently pre-empted Bill Parker's in-press paper on a new aetosaur genus, and appeared to take credit for Jeff Martz's re-…
tetrapodzoology | 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 Old World tropics. Sunbirds are passeroid oscines: they've generally been considered related to the mostly frugivorous, mostly Australasian flowerpeckers or dicaeids*, and both appear to be the sister-group to the huge passeroid clade - dubbed 'core passeroids' by Barker et al. (2001) - that includes…
tetrapodzoology | 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-reviewed result: you know, the stuff that's made me the fulfilled, famous, financially successful person I am today. And long-time readers might recall the threat, from way way back in April 2006, that 'Why azhdarchids were giant storks' represented '... the better part of a paper on the subject [of…
tetrapodzoology | 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, time for more weird snakes. There are lots and lots and lots of weird snakes, and one of my favourite groups of weird snakes are the atractaspidids (or atractaspids), and in particular the atractaspidid genus Atractaspis. If you haven't heard of these snakes before it might give you some idea of what…
tetrapodzoology | 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. Two other people travelling on the same minibus were killed in the same attack and nine others were injured...
I had never met nor corresponded with Prof. Shoshani but have always been a great admirer of his excellent work. He was a giant in the world of elephant research and made an immense…
tetrapodzoology | 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 recently been reported from mangroves and brush forest). Its broad rufous collar is distinctive, and it is easily distinguished from the paler, more streaky-patterned Madagascar nightjar C. madagascariensis (these two are the only nightjars on Madagascar). The cryptic patterning deserves no comment,…
tetrapodzoology | 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 1993, many of us were confident that dromaeosaurs should be depicted with feathers). The wording says 'Scaly protobirds no thanks! Feathering the theropods: a matter of principle' (kudos if you know the derivation, though it's horribly obvious). I never got beaten up for wearing the t-shirt in public,…
tetrapodzoology | 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 Sunday night - I've been busy but, if you feel in need of a good, lengthy Naish article you can always nip over to SV-POW! and read the piece I recently produced on theories about sauropod pneumaticity. There's an awful lot that you could say about glyptodonts: their armour, tails, limbs, and limb…
tetrapodzoology | 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.
tetrapodzoology | 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 species) and abundant tetrapod clades. It'll take a long time before snakes are fairly represented at Tet Zoo, and what I'd like to do here is talk briefly (relatively speaking) about a very obscure and poorly known group of really weird little burrowing snakes, the scolecophidians. The... what?
Three…
tetrapodzoology | 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 (part I here). This time round we look at the second day of talks, as well as the posters and whatever else I can think to write about...
So, the day kicked off with Phil Currie's talk on the history of dinosaur hunting in Asia. Yes, Phil Currie. After talking about the AMNH expeditions of the 1920s,…
tetrapodzoology | 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 fossil reptiles and how they've been discovered and interpreted. Ably abetted by John Conway yet again, I made it to London on time for the field trip on the 5th to the Crystal Palace animals, and on the 8th and 9th went on a trip to the Isle of Wight (going both into the field and to Dinosaur Isle…
tetrapodzoology | May 10, 2008Unless 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 interest in the conservation effort that many of us are now involved in. Quest, a science show at KQED (the PBS station in San Francisco), has just produced a new video concentrating on the decline of Californian Yellow-legged frogs R. boylii (aka Foothill yellow-legged frog, and it's - apparently -…
tetrapodzoology | 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...
You all know that 2008 is Year of the Frog. As I discussed back in December 2007, tiny sums of money (relatively speaking) are all that are needed to get individuals of many endangered amphibians into captivity, and hence away from the chytrid fungus that is making them extinct in the wild. And…
tetrapodzoology | May 2, 2008
Yesterday, my colleague Anthony Butcher (who shares my office at UoP.. but, alas, works on Palaeozoic microfossils called chitinozoans) was driving out of our carpark when he realised that the grey object he had driven past on the pavement was a sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus, plucking the pigeon it had just killed. He reversed, held his phone out of the window, and took several photos. The hawk - less than a metre away - couldn't care less and carried on. The photos aren't brilliant, but for me they bring home the point that we are surrounded by extraordinary animals doing extraordinary things…