tetrapodzoology | January 9, 2008
The large black cats that people report from Britain and elsewhere in the world are sometimes said to look odd, being occasionally described as unusually gracile and less stocky than leopards (for an example in the literature see Trevor Beer's description and illustration: Beer 1988). If this is true it makes these creatures a total mystery as no leopard-sized species matches this description. But what do you make of this peculiarly gracile large melanistic cat? Compare it with the melanistic leopard shown below...
I'll explain what's going on here later; I do know the answer. Yet again no…
tetrapodzoology | January 8, 2008
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you read Tet Zoo, you're in very good - nay, famous - company. I've lost track of how many famous zoologists, palaeontologists, artists, TV personalities and Hollywood starlets are among the regular visitors. Among the many is Mike Skrepnick, who of course needs no introduction. Inspired by my previous article on that god-awful How to Keep Dinosaurs book, he told me about a similar project he's been working on himself...
And here are some pictures to prove it. The image above features a Daspletosaurus, a tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurid…
tetrapodzoology | January 6, 2008It always seemed too good to be true. The story goes that members of a team of Russian geologists from Moscow State University - led by Dr G. Rukosuyev - were, in 1964, surveying Yakutia in Siberia when, at Lake Khaiyr (or Lake Khainyr), they saw a lake monster. But not just any old lake monster: one of the best described lake monsters of all time...
'Lake monsters' the world over are generally amorphous humps or 'inverted boat' shapes, but this one, described in detail by qualified biologist Dr Nikolai Gladkikh, was a huge, long-necked, blackish-blue quadrupedal reptile with a stout tail, a…
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 | January 2, 2008
As a dinosaur specialist I often get asked about Robert Mash's 2003 book How to Keep Dinosaurs (Mash 2003). It seems that most people (usually those who haven't read it) think that this book is good, or funny. Don't get me wrong - I think a book dedicated to dinosaur husbandry is an excellent idea; the problem is that Mash didn't do it well.
I should explain to begin with that How to Keep Dinosaurs is set on a parallel Earth where Mesozoic non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other ancient reptiles live alongside humans. A while back I reviewed How to Keep Dinosaurs for Fortean Times and,…
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 22, 2007
Thanks to everyone for their comments on the previous article about island-endemic otters and canids. I was going to add a brief response to the comments section, but eventually the comments reached the length you see here, hence my decision to turn them into a brief article...
Yes, I should at least have mentioned Darwin's fox Pseudalopex fulvipes, originally described from Chiloé Island off the coast of southern Chile, and the endemic Cuban canids Cubacyon transversidens and Indocyon caribensis, both of which are now extinct. First collected by Charles Darwin in 1834 and regarded as a…
tetrapodzoology | December 20, 2007
Some people who come to Tet Zoo seem to absolutely despise all those annoying teasers, preemptives and references to things that are yet to come. Others regard these as one of Tet Zoo's key points of awesomeness. Whatever, I am pleased to say that I congratulate you all on your patience and tolerance, for there are some subjects that I advertise and am then unable to publish for weeks, or months, or months and months and months. Yes, unable... I don't delay things on purpose. Obscure island-dwelling, recently extinct animals are a case in point: there's this map from October, and there are…
tetrapodzoology | December 18, 2007
Over the weekend Neil Phillips, Richard Hing, Jonathan McGowan and I went into the field, in quest of tetrapods (Jon and Neil are shown in the adjacent image, as are other mammals). And we saw a bunch. In an effort to produce a post that is essentially an excuse to showcase some of Neil's photos (for the whole set go here), it occurred to me that this is a good chance to throw out some random facts about Britain and some of its wildlife... well, more random facts than I've already thrown out, anyway. Contrary to the idea that Britain lacks anything interesting, I still think we have a really…
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 13, 2007
In, as usual, a desperate effort to bring in the hits, I thought I'd go nuts and see what posting about the Loch Ness monster might do for my stats. Hey, maybe I could throw the word sex in there as well. There: sex, there, I said it again. But seriously... anyone who's anyone has heard of the Loch Ness monster. And most people know that various photos, allegedly depicting the Loch Ness monster, have been taken over the years. Many people have heard that some, or all, of these photos are dubious, or fake. But that's where it ends for the vast majority of people. I would imagine that - as…
tetrapodzoology | December 11, 2007
You can knock it
You can rock it
You can go to Timbuktu
But you'll never find a nessie in the zoo
You may see an anaconda, or giraffe and kangaroo
But you'll never see a nessie in a zoo
More soon, really. For now, I'm afraid all you get is this poxy teaser post... plus some of the lyrics to The Family Ness, staple viewing for my 9-year old self.
tetrapodzoology | December 11, 2007
I'd like to talk about the filming of long-eared jerboas Euchoreutes naso (after all, I covered them on ver 1 back here), about the reclassification of Brontornis (again, covered on Tet Zoo ver 1 here), about Aaron Filler's new paper on bipedality in hominoids (see the PLoS pdf here), and about astrapotheres, swimming giraffes, Loch Ness Monsters, British iguanodontians, proterosuchids and phytosaurs.. but right now I want to get this Australian murid thing finished. You'll need to have read part I before proceeding. Here we go, hold on to your hats...
Wurlies: time capsules of palaeoclimate…
tetrapodzoology | December 9, 2007
We are surrounded by annoying misconceptions about the diversity of animal life. For me, one of the most annoying and persistent of these is the idea that... drumroll... Australia is a 'land of marsupials' where - bar humans and introduced species like dingoes and rabbits - placental mammals have no presence. Well, it just ain't so...
In fact about 25% of Australia's mammal fauna is made up of placental mammals, and I'm not including marine mammals like sealions and cetaceans, nor bats, in this count. We are in fact talking about rodents, and specifically about murids at that (Muridae is the…
tetrapodzoology | December 9, 2007
If you read the ceratosaurid article from yesterday (here), you'll understand what's going on here. I drew it in a diary in 1992 (specifically, on Wednesday 29th April 1992, the day I learnt that Toby the cat had died, and also the day on which the borg [of Star Trek: The Next Generation] made their first appearance on British TV). The caption reads 'Ceratosaurus and Thylacinus contemplate their predicament'. Anatomical errors abound, but I can live with that.
tetrapodzoology | December 8, 2007
One of my most favourite dinosaurs has always been Ceratosaurus but, given that I mostly work on Lower Cretaceous dinosaurs, I've never had the chance to look at it much (Ceratosaurus is Upper Jurassic). Imagine my surprise then when, during a recent visit to Glasgow (Scotland), I was confronted with a complete mounted (replica) skeleton of this neat beast at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. First named by Othniel Marsh in 1884, Ceratosaurus is best known for the type species, C. nasicornis from the Morrison Formation of Colorado...
Less well known is that two additional Morrison…