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tetrapodzoology | March 21, 2008
Dr David Hone is well known for many scientific achievements. For the description of the new rhynchosaur Fodonyx (Hone & Benton 2007a). For his papers on Cope's rule and macroevolutionary trends in archosaurs (Hone & Benton 2005, Hone et al. 2005). For his PhD work on the phylogenetic position of pterosaurs (Hone & Benton 2007b). For the organisation of the awesome Munich pterosaur meeting. And for the philanthropic wonder that is the Ask A Biologist site. But even such a noble creator can spawn a monster. Yes world, I give you the horror that is lol-sauropods, brain-child of…
tetrapodzoology | March 15, 2008
Yes, the globally renowned internet phenomenon that is Ask A Biologist had its official first birthday on Friday 14th. All the AAB contributors got together and had a massive champagne lunch to celebrate...
... no, of course they bloody didn't, but it would be good wouldn't it. I need not say that AAB might be one of the most useful resources on the web: sigh, if only it were better known. So here I am doing my little bit: if you have a burning question that concerns the biological sciences, why not pop over and see if anyone can answer it. You know: how did sauropods sleep, what did…
tetrapodzoology | March 11, 2008
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll be saying it again: one of the best ways to invigorate your enthusiasm about a subject is to attend a conference on it, and to spend at least a couple of days talking with other people about that subject. I've (more or less) just returned from the third Big Cats in Britain conference, held at Tropiquaria at Watchet, north Somerset. What an amazing venue: picture, if you can, a 1930s BBC radio station [adjacent image shows the stonework above the main entrance] surrounded by gigantic towering antennae, the heat radiating from one of the antennae being…
tetrapodzoology | March 2, 2008
I spent much of my Saturday doing an interesting thing. Together with another 30 or so people, I went along to my local nature reserve (Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, Southampton) and took part in an effort to clear the shore of its tons upon tons of human crap. Unsatisfied with our constant use of resources, our epic, manic pollution, and our rampant annihilation of other species, we aim to cover as much of the planet's surface as possible in our waste: we are literally doing our very best to swamp natural environments with the discarded shit that we can't be bothered to deal with properly.…
tetrapodzoology | February 24, 2008
The third Big Cats in Britain (BCiB) conference is almost upon us: it happens from 7th-9th March 2008 at Tropiquaria (Watchet, Somerset). This time round, I'm speaking, and most of my research time is currently being eaten up as I prepare for the meeting (I'm also speaking in the first week of March on 'Britain's changing herpetofauna' for the Southampton Natural History Society... haven't really started preparing that talk yet). My talk is titled 'The deep time history of Britain's felid fauna' and is essentially a palaeontological/archaeological view of British cats. You could argue that…
tetrapodzoology | January 26, 2008
2007 - Tet Zoo's second year of operation - has come and gone. The previous article was a brief personal review of the year, and here's more of the same (sort of) if you can handle it...
As if Tet Zoo wasn't enough to deal with, in September my partners-in-crime Mike P. Taylor and Matt Wedel [shown here; Mike is the less big one] decided, with me, to start up a new zoological blog, but this time devoted to something a little more specific: namely, sauropod vertebrae (and nothing else, pretty much). So on October 1st, Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, or SV-POW!, was born. Despite…
tetrapodzoology | January 24, 2008
January 21st 2008 was Tet Zoo's second birthday, but due to its clashing with the launch of the EDGE amphibian site I didn't have the chance to write about it. So, better late than never, I'm doing that now. It's time to reminiscence on a year gone by, on a year when so much happened in the world of Tetrapod Zoology...
The move to Science Blogs
The real personal big deal for 2007 was, of course, the migration of this blog to the wonderful world of Science Blogs. I initially decided that this wouldn't change my blogging habits, but eventually it did, as the constant quest for more hits has…
tetrapodzoology | January 21, 2008
A major global conservation effort, aiming to bring to better attention the chronic plight of the world's amphibian species, was launched at the start of this year. You might have heard of it: the Year of the Frog movement. And, today, a second project aimed at conserving the world's endangered amphibians launches: the EDGE amphibian project, a website designed by the Zoological Society of London to draw attention to amphibian species that are not just globally endangered, but are also evolutionarily distinct...
As you might have guessed, 'EDGE' stands for Evolutionarily Distinct and…
tetrapodzoology | January 16, 2008
Or - alternative title to this article - 'It will be the best conference of all time' (no hyperbole at all). Do you like dinosaurs? Are you particularly interested in our changing ideas about dinosaurs, about key discoveries and concepts, or about the evolution of our ideas, reconstructions and theories about dinosaurs? If the answer is yes then get ready to come to London in May 2008 for Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective...
On May 6th and 7th this year, Burlington House in Piccadilly (London) will be hosting this most prestigious of meetings. We've arranged it through the History of…
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…
terrasig | January 4, 2008I can't believe I missed this earlier in the year: Colorado's Flying Dog Brewery created a beer based upon a basic recipe together with reader suggestions in what was called The Open Source Beer Project:
You are holding what we believe is the first Open Source Beer to hit the market in the United States. We started with a basic Doppelbock recipe and solicited suggestions from homebrewers on our blog. We took your comments and crafted this Doppelbock, aptly named Collaborator. The blog, the recipe, and the label are online at opensourcebeerproject.com, if you'd like to brew some yourself.…
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 7, 2007
Specializing on locomotor ecology*, my good, long-standing friend Mary Blanchard of the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology has been spending a lot of time on Madagascar over the past several years, and has been looking at a lot of wild lemurs. She has studied the ecology of wild indris Indri indri, Diademed sifakas Propithecus diadema and Grey bamboo lemurs Hapalemur griseus griseus, and has also collected data on the diets of wild Ring-tailed lemurs Lemur catta, Verreaux's sifaka Propithecus verreauxi and Black-and-white ruffed lemurs Varecia variegata…
terrasig | December 1, 2007Today is World AIDS Day but I wish to relay the need for a different kind of help.
Terra Sigillata has just learned that HIV/AIDS researcher Dr Sonia Napravnik and her daughter Sophia were among those whose apartments were destroyed by fire Wednesday night in Carrboro, NC. Sonia is a research assistant professor in the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Wednesday night Sonia Napravnik's apartment building caught on fire. Her
unit (3rd floor) was destroyed. It is presently unclear how much of her stuff will be retrievable but we are…
terrasig | November 23, 2007I'm a little late today with The Friday Fermentable. I wanted to be able to report back from a local beer tasting event called Black Friday Beer Fest. In deference to today's major shopping day in the US (named Black Friday to denote that many businesses come out of the "red" due to the brisk sales the day after Thanksgiving), NC's Pop The Cap organization conceived a tasting of dark beers (local, national, and even Polish) to welcome in the holiday season and provide an alternative to hunting for parking spaces at the local mall (Tagline above: "We'd Rather Drink Beer.").
Attendees were…
terrasig | November 11, 2007I've been giving a fair bit of thought to moving my laboratory back to Mac computers. I had a superb, Windows-savvy postdoc in the late 90s who convinced me to go to PC machines because the choice made our grant money go further. But I miss the elegant simplicity of Macs and, as an amateur musician, would love to give GarageBand software a whirl.
So, I read with great interest that jazz saxophonist, Branford Marsalis, will be speaking tomorrow (12 Nov, 6:30 pm) to the Triangle Macintosh Users Group at the NC Mutual Life Building in Durham, North Carolina.
The program format will be similar…
tetrapodzoology | November 7, 2007
Again, no time to complete any articles, sorry. Bloody annoying. Attended Witton pterosaur talk yesterday (it included revelations on winged hatchet-headed ptero-squirrels) as well as a Peter Burford talk on Gambian birds. Have found ten mins to post the above: fantastic pic from Matt Wedel (aka Dr Vector). Few quick factoids on Stegosaurus...
Stegosaurus is no longer unique to the USA (now known from Portugal too), it's not definitely the biggest stegosaur (European Upper Jurassic Dacentrurus might have been as big or bigger), it's possibly the only stegosaur that lacked parascapular spines…
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 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…