tetrapodzoology | April 30, 2008
This is not a world of reality TV, fashion, big-screen sport and daily newspapers, but one covered in seas, mountains, forests, ferns, beetles, frogs and birds - get out there and look at it. The good thing about living in a country with a depauperate herpetofauna is that you can go out on a day and see nearly everything. On Sunday I and other people from the Southampton Natural History Society went into the field with members of the Herpetological Conservation Trust to look at reptiles at Town Common, Christchurch (Hampshire)...
Alas, we did not see Smooth snakes Coronella austriaca or…
tetrapodzoology | April 29, 2008
Welcome to the third and final part of my write-up of the CEE functional anatomy meeting: for part I go here, and for part II here. Here's where we wrap things up, but let's get through the last of the talks: those on tuataras, and yet more on primates...
Marc Jones discussed his work on skull shape and feeding behaviour in rhynchocephalians (the extant tuataras and their Mesozoic relatives: adjacent image, from Marc's UCL page, shows Marc with a live tuatara). It is generally agreed among herpetologists that Sphenodon is not, as used to be thought, an archaic relict; a sort of poor relation…
tetrapodzoology | April 28, 2008
More recollections from the CEE Functional Anatomy meeting: part I is here. We looked in the previous article at Robin Crompton's overview of primate locomotor ecology and evolution, Renate Weller's overview of new technologies, John Hutchinson's work on dinosaur biomechanics, and Jenny Clack's new look at Ichthyostega [adjacent image is Jaime Chirinos's Thylacoleo restoration]. Still loads more to get through...
Paul O'Higgins took us back to primates. His key message was that two distinct computational techniques used to study anatomy - geometric morphometrics and finite element analysis (…
tetrapodzoology | April 28, 2008
At a vertebrate palaeontology workshop held in Maastricht in 1998, some colleagues and I sat in a bar, lamenting the fact that nobody cared about anatomy any more, and that funding bodies and academia in general were only interested in genetics. Given the poor to non-existent coverage that anatomy gets in many biology courses and textbooks, you might think that anatomy has had its day and that - as some molecular biologists told us in the 1980s and 90s - all the anatomical work worth doing had been published in the days of Owen and Huxley. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you…
tetrapodzoology | April 24, 2008
The unusual fossil mammal skull posted here yesterday was, of course, that of the astrapotheriid astrapothere Astrapotherium magnum, as many as you said. But I'm a bit surprised that more people didn't get it straight away, given that astrapotheres were covered and covered again at Tet Zoo only a couple of months ago. However, I suppose that reading about something doesn't necessarily mean that you know how to identify its fossils... I'm still planning to post a write-up of the CEE Functional Anatomy meeting here ASAP, but haven't had time to finish it yet. Meanwhile...
... the modern animal…
tetrapodzoology | April 24, 2008
Yesterday I attended the Centre for Evolution and Ecology workshop 'Modern Approaches to Functional Anatomy', held at the Natural History Museum (and organised by the Royal Veterinary College's John Hutchinson). Whoah: what a meeting...
Bipedal chimps and orangutans, leaping lemurs, autralopithecines, 'When Komodos destroy', pliosaurs and marsupial lions, hominid wrists, elbows and ankles, over-engineered dwarf elephants, how elephants use their sixth digits, the non-conservativeness of Sphenodon, self-righting turtles, bat canines... and McNeill Alexander! Shock horror, even the talks on…
tetrapodzoology | April 21, 2008
You might have noticed very little/no activity here over the past two weeks: partly this is because I'm very busy (preparing for Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective, among other things), but it's also because I currently have no internet access at home. Sigh. In an effort to add something new, here's the long-planned, third and final part in the series on Europe's cat fauna, adapted from the Big Cats in Britain talk 'The deep time history of Britain's felid fauna'. In a previous article we looked at homotheres, lions and leopards, and in a second one at jaguars, pumas and cheetahs. This…
tetrapodzoology | April 15, 2008If you've been with Tet Zoo since the beginning (early 2006), you will know that, again and again and again and again, we've been coming back to the fact that large eagles, like Golden eagles Aquila chrysaetos, can and do kill surprisingly large mammalian prey (weighing over 100 kg in cases). And note that can kill does not mean 'can carry'. While many of the instances that have been filmed or photographed feature trained eagles, we know that wild Golden eagles can and do do this.
Now watch this video...
It seems to be doing the rounds again (it's not new): I just saw it mentioned here (…
tetrapodzoology | April 14, 2008
Before I begin, let me say: yay Raeticodactylus. Would say more but haven't had time (plus I've had no internet access for the last few days). Last year Dave Martill and I published part 1 of our review of the British dinosaur fauna (Naish & Martill 2007). While several published lists provide overviews of Britain's dinosaur assemblage (Swinton 1934, Olshevsky 2000, Weishampel et al. 2004), it seemed like a good idea to produce a more extensive review, especially given the substantial taxonomic confusion that surrounds British dinosaurs, and the large amount of recent work that has…
tetrapodzoology | April 8, 2008Here's that cute porcupine photo I mentioned (I think). It shows a group of Crested porcupines Hystrix cristata photographed at Marwell Zoological Park.... awww, look at the little baby. Many other blogs would stop there. But ooooh no, that's not how we do things round here. Here are some little known factoids about Old World porcupines, focusing mostly on the Crested porcupine*...
* Hystrix is traditionally divided into three 'subgenera': Thecurus, of Borneo, Sumatra and the Philippines (three species), Acanthion of China and SE Asia (two species), and the crested porcupines proper,…
tetrapodzoology | April 8, 2008
Well done everyone who had a go at identifying the lizards from yesterday. Dead easy, as both species are highly distinctive and easy to identify (and both were previously mentioned in the Tropiquaria article)...
The armour-plated lizard shown with and without the effects of the flash was a Sudan plated lizard Gerrhosaurus major, also called the Rough-scaled plated lizard or Great plated lizard. It lives up to the last name, reaching 48 cm in total length. Plated lizards eat arthropods and molluscs, with the larger species (like G. major) eating smaller lizards as well as some plant…
tetrapodzoology | April 6, 2008
It's going to be a busy month, what with the run-up to 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective', and other stuff. So I regret I haven't had time to knock up any new articles: but hey, I know you don't mind what with the recent 'mammals are amphisbaenians' article, and the panda stuff. So...
I figured I might try and get the whole 'picture of the day' thing going again. So here we go with some lizards, and the game - if you want to play - is to identify the species. It's dead easy and I've provided the answers before anyway! The pictures above show the same animal photographed with and without…
tetrapodzoology | April 5, 2008
In the previous article we looked at the discovery of the Red panda Ailurus fulgens, and also at some aspects of its biology and distribution. There's so much I didn't cover: Red panda physiology is bizarrely interesting, for example. In this article we're going to look at the Red panda's fossil relatives. As I implied in the last article, the Red panda's friends and relations once roamed far and wide. And remember that the term 'panda' belongs to the Red panda and its kin, not to the giant pandas (which are bears, and not close kin of pandas proper). The Red panda and its close relatives…
tetrapodzoology | April 3, 2008
They sit there, mostly curled up, mostly asleep, high up in tree-tops, sometimes chewing on bits of plants. But little known is that, deep within their furry little heads, they harbour an unknown desire: to take over the world...
Pet peeve # 113 concerns pandas: it's the generally held notion that 'the panda' is a big, bear-shaped black and white animal. In fact the Giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca is not the original panda: the Red panda is 'the panda', its name being derived (according to some) from the word 'poonya' (others doubt this: the names 'nigayla-ponya' or 'nyala-ponga' are…
tetrapodzoology | April 2, 2008
This picture borrowed from wikipedia. Full story later (about wahs, not wikipedia).
tetrapodzoology | April 2, 2008
As I've mentioned previously, 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective' happens on May 6th and 7th: pretty soon! This two-day conference will be held at the Geological Society's Burlington House in Piccadilly (London), and we now have all the required information available online: if you're thinking of attending it is mandatory that you check out the circular, look at the programme, and then deal with your booking. Read on for more details...
Events kick off on May 5th when we have a visit to Crystal Palace in Sydenham (trip costs £10). I've seen the Crystal Palace animals several times, but if…
tetrapodzoology | March 31, 2008
Among the most controversial and remarkable of living tetrapods are the bizarre amphisbaenians: a group of fossorial, long-bodied carnivorous animals with reduced or absent limbs, spade-shaped or bullet-shaped skulls strongly modified for burrowing, and an annulated body where distinct, regularly arranged transverse segments give the animals a worm-like appearance. Until recently it was generally thought that amphisbaenians are reptiles, and part of Squamata (the reptile group that includes the snakes and lizards). But, in a fascinating case of multi-disciplinary co-operation involving…
tetrapodzoology | March 29, 2008
I've mentioned on and off lately that Tet Zoo the book is now go. The manuscript is complete, and right now (when not working on other things) I'm dealing with the editorial tidying-up. The book won't, I'm sorry to say, be anything technically new: it's simply a compilation of the better articles from Tet Zoo ver 1, arranged chronologically. And, because of word-count, it only incorporates articles going up to September 2006, so there's still tons of stuff that can be used for later books (should book 1 prove popular enough that others are worthwhile)...
Adapting Tet Zoo articles for a book…
tetrapodzoology | March 27, 2008
Continuing the theme of discussing 'things in the news', we arrive, finally, at dinosaurs. The previous 'late news' pieces looked at fossil anurans and pterosaurs, and assorted mammals. So what news has been announced recently-ish in the world of dinosaurs? Well, frankly, there are always so many newly announced dinosaurs that it's difficult to keep up. But...
... particularly cool is the recent description of the basal abelisaur Kryptops palaios and the carcharodontosaurid Eocarcharia dinops, both from the Aptian-Albian Elrhaz Formation of Niger (Sereno & Brusatte 2008) [in adjacent…
tetrapodzoology | March 24, 2008
Maybe it's because I write too much, but I am frequently surprised and sometimes a little freaked out at the strange coincidences that have so often cropped up during my time here at Tet Zoo. Long-time readers will recall the several occasions when we've looked at hypothetical intelligent dinosaurs: it started back in 2006 with my contention that ground hornbills (bucorvids) should be regarded as the dinosaurs most convergent with hominins (here). Humanoid dinosaurs like Dale Russell's hypothetical big-brained troodontid - the 'dinosauroid' - are (in my opinion) utterly unrealistic, relying…