tetrapodzoology | October 22, 2007
For, like, the second time in the last six years we're going on holiday. So, goodbye. Back soon. Just received a copy of Gasparini et al.'s Patagonian Mesozoic Reptiles; looks awesome. Anurans, beluwhals, red panda empire, and really, really bizarre new sauropods when I get back. Yesterday I went rat-watching, and the adjacent picture shows how good I was at it :)
PS - remember to keep an eye on one of the Tet Zoo sister-sites, SV-POW!
tetrapodzoology | October 19, 2007
Yesterday - the day I posted an article on horned treefrogs - there was a peak on the site stats graph. In view of that I'm thinking that weird anurans are popular, so I'll try the same trick again. This time round we're looking at another group of 'horned' anurans: the Brazilian smooth horned frogs of the genus Proceratophrys. This time I really will try and keep it brief: I have ichthyosaurs to deal with...
Like the hemiphractids we saw yesterday, smooth horned frogs are wide-skulled ambush predators that hide on forest floors in tropical South American forests, specifically those of…
tetrapodzoology | October 18, 2007
As per bloody usual, I'm going to struggle to get a 'proper' post finished today, so yet again I'll have to settle for posting something short and sweet (PS - I failed miserably). Who am I kidding anyway - 95% of the bloggers in the blogosphere routinely produce articles that are shorter than my 'short' posts. I'm sure Tet Zoo readers know how lucky they are :) I'm reading a lot about obscure frogs and toads at the moment, hence the adjacent image. But more on that in a moment. Let me start by saying a very belated congrats to Brian Switek - better known as Laelaps - for hitting the big time…
tetrapodzoology | October 17, 2007
Here's a photo of one of my favourite anurans: the fantastic Helmeted water toad, or Gay's frog* Caudiverbera caudiverbera, a large, robust Chilean species (the only extant member of its genus) that is said to mostly feed on other anurans (though it also eats insects and other arthopods, fishes and even small birds and mammals)...
Females can reach an SVL (that's snout-to-vent-length) of 320 mm, which is huge. Its larvae reach a ridiculous size of about 150 mm and take about two years to metamorphose. Together with another obscure Chilean anuran (Telmatobufo), Caudiverbera has conventionally…
tetrapodzoology | October 16, 2007
I have tried desperately to not be distracted by the mysterious rodents, new gigantic dinosaurs and Iberian lynxes that have been on my mind lately - plus lots of things are happening with the 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective' conference that I'm co-organising with Dick Moody, Eric Buffetaut and Dave Martill (to be held in May 2008: more news later). Before the whole white squirrel thing, I was talking about cryptozoology (here), in particular on the ideas that (1) a cryptid is any animal reported from anecdotal data (i.e., it does not have to be a 'monster'), and that (2) given that…
tetrapodzoology | October 14, 2007
So what was the mysterious beast shown in the photo? As usual, the Tet Zoo readership proved too clever to be fooled by such a rubbish trick. That white blurry streak in yesterday's photo was...
.... not a fox, lynx, marten, white carrier bag, draft excluder, house cat, tree trout, rhinogradentian, dormouse, slug, ent, iguana, arboreal monitor lizard, tree octopus, kitten, raccoon, tree-eel, kite skeleton, nor, sadly, a late-surviving, modern-day, dwarf arboreal gorgonopsian (wow - an impressive list of in-jokes there). It is nothing more than, as some of you correctly guessed, a lowly Grey…
tetrapodzoology | October 12, 2007
Can you identify the mysterious cryptic beast shown in the photo? A prize to whomever gets it right*. The photo was taken in Europe, and the one person who was with me when I took the photo is not allowed to profer his opinion. I wish you the best of luck!
* Subject to availability.
tetrapodzoology | October 10, 2007
By naughtily avoiding the long list of things that I'm supposed to be doing in my 'spare' time I've finally done it: adapted my monumental, keynote cryptozoology conference speech into an article(s) for publication here at Tet Zoo. Ok, so it wasn't so 'monumental' or 'keynote', but I thought I might as well recycle it anyway (for more on the conference in question see the article here). The general message here might, by now, be familiar to Tet Zoo regulars, as I've been promoting the same view for a while now...
The talk included several hundred words on the discoveries made by Marc van…
tetrapodzoology | October 9, 2007
There's no way I'm going to have time today to post any of the promised articles - sorry. Once more, all I can do to combat the frustration is post a picture of the day: this one depicts the head of a Green turtle Chelonia mydas and was provided by Dave Hone, thanks Dave. Chelonia is a wide-ranging oceanic cheloniid (or hard-shelled sea turtle). Its common name comes from the colour of its body fat, not from the colour of its scutes or skin. The fact that its generic name is the same as that sometimes used for the entire turtle clade explains why turtle workers mostly prefer to use the name…
tetrapodzoology | October 8, 2007
So the other day I got to stroke a live pipistrelle. In the adjacent photo, Mike Pawling (chairman of the Hampshire Bats Group) is holding the bat; Vicki is touching the bat's back. Mike and his wife Chris hold permits and everything, and they take care of rescued bats that have been found injured, or have been dropped by their mothers. Pipistrelles are certainly Britain's - and probably Europe's - most abundant bat; they are highly adaptable little bats (part of the vesper bat group, or Vespertilionidae) that inhabit cities and suburbs as well as woodlands and other places. Here are just a…
tetrapodzoology | October 7, 2007
So I've told you all about the Wellnhofer pterosaur meeting (three links), and I've told you all about the 55th SVPCA (here and here). But there was a third conference I attended recently (August 17th-19th) that I have yet to write about - it was that cryptozoology one. As some of you might recall, I'm going to avoid using the name of the meeting: it's not that there's anything wrong with the name... it's just that it doesn't exactly do the whole subject of cryptozoology any favours. But, anyway, here are my assorted thoughts. As usual, I'm not going to cover everything, just the…
tetrapodzoology | October 5, 2007
Time permitting... coming next: that cryptozoology stuff. If I say any more I'll spoil the surprise (there are a few technical errors in the map shown here - it's not meant to be totally accurate. It depicts various extant and recently-extinct Caribbean tetrapods. Well done to anyone who can name all the taxa).
tetrapodzoology | October 4, 2007
I used to have a deep-seated sense of guilt that I didn't post enough dinosaur stuff here at Tet Zoo. After all, I might be the only writer at scienceblogs involved in palaeontology, so I have a duty to remind the world how incredibly cool and scientifically relevant long-extinct dinosaurs are. Well, yeah, you can argue that Mesozoic dinosaurs aren't that 'relevant' to the big things we all worry about* - but, as is so often pointed out, an interest in dinosaurs is actually one of the first things that gets a lot of people, particularly kids, interested/involved in science. Vertebrate…
tetrapodzoology | October 2, 2007
As discussed in previous articles on the 55th SVPCA, I've decided to publish a version of my talk here on the blog. Some time ago I published a collection of theropod images (go here), some of which might have seemed a bit random or unconnected. As we'll see here, those images are indeed connected, sort of, and now all will be revealed...
Ok, so, the talk was titled The large theropods Becklespinax and Valdoraptor from the Lower Cretaceous of England. I might get into the habit of publishing other talks that I give or, at least, I might in those cases where there's a script or pile of notes…
tetrapodzoology | October 1, 2007
As promised, here's the SVPCA group photo: a larger version can be viewed here on the SVPCA site (you can move your cursor around to identify people.. well, most people). I'm in the front row near the middle (I was skulking around at the side but got moved). Oh look, Dave Hone's wearing the same clothes again* (go here and here). Oh, hold on, so am I. One more SVPCA post to come: later today, or tomorrow. After that, things will get weird.
* OK.. I shall add that that is because his luggage got lost at an airport.
tetrapodzoology | September 30, 2007
How did the centenary workshop on mammal bone identification go, I hear you cry? It went very well, thank you very much. Anyway, as promised here are more of various recollections from the 55th SVPCA, held at the University of Glasgow between August 29th and September 1st. For previous of my thoughts visit part I here, and for abstracts, photo galleries and more, visit the SVPCA site here. In this article, I'm going to review the dinosaur talks. You have been warned.
[I should explain the photo montage used here. For reasons that might have been mysterious to him, Bob Nicholls (of…
tetrapodzoology | September 28, 2007
No time for nothing today, sorry. In desperation, I thought I'd blog a photo of a bronze hippo. Here it is. SVPCA part II next, then Becklespinax and Valdoraptor, then cryptozoology conference stuff (think monster pigeons and assorted other obscure extinct island-endemic giants), then Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered amphibians. Then red panda empire, Australia land of placentals, and beluwhals (at last). But don't hold your breath. And it's not really TZPOD # 28, but I've lost count.
tetrapodzoology | September 27, 2007
Having spent the better part of the day recovering from the birthday celebrations of last night (and working, of course), I regret that I haven't had the time to post any of the promised articles (more SVPCA stuff to come next). So here's a picture of the day: it depicts the incredible mounted Pentaceratops sternbergii skeleton on display at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, and comes courtesy of Matt Wedel...
First described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1923, P. sternbergii is a deep-snouted chasmosaurine/ceratopsine ceratopsid known only from the Fruitland Formation and Lower…
tetrapodzoology | September 25, 2007
Without doubt, one of the coolest living animals on the planet is the Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis, a giant flesh-eating lizard that kills water buffalo, eats children, harbours noxious oral bacteria and is impervious to bullets (ok, I made that last bit up)...
Unknown to western science until 1912 (when it was 'discovered' by J. K. H. van Steyn van Hensbroek, and described in the same year by P. A. Ouwens), it reaches a maximum authenticated length of 3.5 m and can weigh about 250 kg (Steel 1996). In contrast to most other monitors, its legs and tail become proportionally short and…
tetrapodzoology | September 24, 2007
So I've done the pterosaur meeting; now you all know all about it. But what about the 55th Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, held at the University of Glasgow between August 29th and September 1st, and described for some reason as 'The best conference ever', I hear you cry? After much deliberation I have decided to do a brief rundown of the tetrapod talks: and my intention is to be as brief as possible about talks and their contents, not to review them at length or properly summarise them. As usual, I regret that I'm only covering those talks that appealed to me…