tetrapodzoology | April 14, 2007
I'm out in the field tomorrow: whether I blog on what happens will depend on... what happens. Think snakes, sea caves and mammal tracking. Until then, here is a mystery...
What do these horns belong to? They're part of Jon McGowan's collection: he acquired them some years ago from an antique shop (the same sort of place where he previously obtained a head of the remarkable Osborn's caribou), so provenance data of any sort is lacking. While this animal is clearly a bovid, beyond that we're having trouble identifying it. As you can see from the ruler, it's not particularly big: we estimate…
tetrapodzoology | April 12, 2007
Yesterday the most remarkable thing happened. No, I have not been handed new DNA work on the Dufftown rabbit-headed cat, nor has the rest of Yaverlandia been found. An articulated azhdarchid has not been discovered on a Cretaceous savannah ashfield, nor have the islands of the SW Pacific yielded an assortment of ten new cursorial, durophagous and scansorial mekosuchine crocodiles. No, it's something far, far more significant than any of those things...
Ok, it's not. Regular readers will be aware of one of the biggest proverbial thorns in my side: that bloody review paper on the British…
tetrapodzoology | April 10, 2007
In the previous post we introduced the aetosaurs, a strange and fascinating group of armour-plated quadrupedal Triassic crurotarsans. Equipped with stout limbs, a strange upturned snout and (usually) toothless jaw tips, aetosaurs have been interpreted as omnivores, herbivores, and even as armadillo-like generalists. But it's not just their lifestyles that have been the subject of controversy. By following the publication dates of various recent technical papers on these animals, it seems that some aetosaur workers themselves have been acting in a controversial manner...
Aetosaur fossils were…
tetrapodzoology | April 9, 2007
More aetosaurs coming soon. If only I didn't have all this other crap to deal with first.
tetrapodzoology | April 5, 2007
Having written articles lately on war rhinos, British big cats and rhinogradentians, I think it's time to come down to earth and cover some far more mundane, less speculative areas. Expect, then, a whole slew of articles on small lizards, brown passerines and mice. As regular readers will know, I find such animals just as interesting as the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, giant flightless birds, big cats and whales that I also sometimes write about. I need to get something off my chest, and to those interested in Mesozoic reptiles, you will be pleased to hear that it concerns aetosaurs, the…
tetrapodzoology | April 1, 2007
In the previous post we looked at the diversity of the rhinogradentians (aka rhinogrades or snouters) belonging to the so-called monorrhinan or uni-snouter division, and we also started to go through the asclerorrhinan or soft-nosed snouter division. Here, in the second post on this much-discussed and highly popular subject, we finish our tour of asclerorrhinans before going on to look at the last and most anatomically complex group, the polyrrhinans or multi-snouters. We finish by looking at the modern-day renaissance in rhinogradentian research: an endeavour which has resulting in the…
tetrapodzoology | March 31, 2007
I am always surprised when I meet zoologists who aren't familiar with Harald Stumpke's* famous 1957 book Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia, a volume translated into English by Leigh Chadwick in 1967 as The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades (and referred to from hereon as 'Stumpke 1967'). For the few who don't know, this legendary text discusses in marvellous detail the biology, lifestyle and evolution of the snouters (aka rhinogrades or rhinogradentians), a bizarre and unique group of small mammals originally thought endemic to the south Pacific Hi-yi-yi archipelago, an island group…
tetrapodzoology | March 30, 2007
One last post on British felids, and if you're bored or uninterested in cats.. well, sorry. Rhinogradentians next (though with a nod to Cretaceous zygodactyl birds, burrowing ornithopods, prosauropods, and the new azhdarchoid pterosaurs that Dave Martill and Mark Witton showed me today). Anyway, in the previous post on the mastiff cat hypothesis I included some discussion of the small, black felids we now know we have in the country. They are named Kellas cats due to the fact that the first specimen to be obtained, a male shot dead in 1983 by Tomas Christie, came from near Kellas in West…
tetrapodzoology | March 29, 2007
In the previous post I discussed some of the interesting goings-on that happened at the 1st Annual Big Cats in Britain Conference, held at Hull between the 23rd and 25th March. If you found any of the stuff I covered interesting, then you'll be pleased and (hopefully) intrigued to know that I didn't even get round to writing about the stuff I found really interesting. As promised, there are some revelations which - if valid - are just jaw-slackeningly amazing...
In the previous post I wrote briefly about Kellas cats, a population of melanistic felids first discovered in 1984 and now known…
tetrapodzoology | 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 when new technology and forms of analysis allow us to realise - for the first time - that ordinary animals do the most extraordinary things. I'm referring there to a whole slew of recent discoveries that I'd blog about if I had time. I don't. And I'm here, as you know full well, to write about cats.…
tetrapodzoology | 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 in the field, and - best of all - includes several scoops that are so stunning that it's difficult to imagine how far-reaching they might be. I've just returned from the 1st Annual Big Cats in Britain conference, held at the Dorchester Hotel in Hull (East Yorkshire). And I'm really, really excited.…
tetrapodzoology | 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 the house of Our Majesty, nor to his various appearances in the national press, and least of all not to his half-hearted effort to grow a beard. Rather, it is due to his world-famous ground-breaking flickr site. What started as a random collection of photos taken by an undergraduate student on his…
tetrapodzoology | 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 visit regularly, and to those who leave comments, many thanks. Please note that I'm starting to expand the about me section of the site: I've recently added a list of publications and will be adding links to pdfs as and when they become available. On the subject of things becoming available, those of…
tetrapodzoology | 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 talking about, you might need to see the movie 300 first, or at least its trailer...
tetrapodzoology | 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 plate. A gas fire is in front of the plate, its flue connected to the chimney via a rectangular opening in the metal plate. From time to time bits of mortar fall down the chimney. But this time, noise continued for many minutes after the first series of big, initial noises. And Tigger Mamum-Ra, our…
tetrapodzoology | 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 giant arthropods - wander through the portal and get into various japes and scrapes in the present. I've cleverly managed to miss the entire series, so I'm not exactly the best person in the world to be talking about it. But due in part to the fact that I'm currently horribly ill, Will and I were in…
tetrapodzoology | 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, but it'll do for the time being). However, I confess to being somewhat confused...
You'd think from some of the global media that (1) N. diardi has only just been discovered, and (2) the study announcing its discovery has only just been published. On the first count, I note that the wording used by…
tetrapodzoology | 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 Cropper...
To remind you, here is what I said about the footage in that previous blog post...
We start with a daytime shot of a perfectly normal grey domestic cat, sat on a shrub-covered hillside near a stand of trees. Then the camera pans to the right. From behind the trees slowly emerges a big…
tetrapodzoology | 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 post every day has fallen by the wayside, as well it might given that this would cause me to spend what 'computer time' I have doing blog writing and nothing else. So in the interests of churning out new material, I have for a while been recycling old texts wherever possible. Several years ago, Dave…
tetrapodzoology | 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 titled 'Tufty terror slashes sprogs' and was published in that most reliable of academic sources, The Sunday Sport. The author, if I remember correctly, was a Mr Ollocks, first name Bertie.
Thanks to Tony Butcher.