Stories by Darren Naish

Long-time readers of Tet Zoo might remember Sea Monster Week: a series of articles I ran at Tet Zoo ver 2 back in 2008. 2008? That’s, like, years ago.

The small feathered dinosaur Microraptor could probably glide - but how well? We aimed to find out...

I always hoped that, one day, I’d have time to talk at length about Odobenocetops, one of the strangest and most exciting of fossil cetaceans.

One of the Pleistocene mammals depicted without fail in popular books – encyclopedias of prehistoric life and the like – is the Woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis (the species name is written antiquus in many sources).

Due to the usual frustrating inability of being unable to finish any of the in-prep Tet Zoo articles (and… I’ve been away), I give you the following short article.

I’d like to talk to you about the recently announced ‘Yeti DNA’ discovery just featured on British television; I’d like to talk to you about tail feathers in Cretaceous maniraptoran dinosaurs (O’Connor et al.

The gamebird clade – properly called Galliformes – includes an enormous number of obscure and weird species that you rarely hear much about, nor see in zoological collections (unless you’re an obsessive who’s made a point of tracking them down).

Regular Tet Zoo readers (and listeners of the TetZoo podcast) will know that John Conway, C. M. Kosemen and myself are soon to publish the Cryptozoologicon, a beautifully illustrated work focusing on cryptids, the (sometimes mundane, sometimes bizarre, sometimes nonsense) creatures of the cryptozoological literature.

I like iguanian lizards – who doesn’t? Among the enormous number of taxa that you hardly ever hear anything about is the endemic Argentinean taxon Leiosaurus, type species of Leiosauridae.

Tet Zoo loves amphibians* (that’s anurans, salamanders, caecilians and their close relatives), and since 2008 I’ve been making a concerted effort to get through all the amphibian groups of the world.

Last year, John Conway, Memo Kosemen and myself published All Yesterdays (it also features skeletal reconstructions by the brilliant Scott Hartman), a book that focused specifically on the more speculative aspects of palaeoart: follow the links below for more on this project.

You all enjoyed the many Platyhystrix images featured here the other day (interesting discussion still going on in the comments section on that article, check it out).

Regular readers will know that I’ve been doing my best over the last several years to get through the temnospondyls of the world. Temnospondyli, for the one or two or you that don’t know, is an enormous and substantially diverse clade of anamniotes (‘amphibians’) that was an important and persistent presence between the Early Carboniferous [...]

This Friday and Saturday (20th and 21st September, 2013), the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, is hosting the Jehol-Wealden International Conference.

I said a while back that I intended to make some overdue headway into the diversity of lacertid lizards: Lacertidae being the clade that includes many of the more familiar, conventionally ‘lizard-shaped’ lizards of Europe, Asia and Africa.

I know the newts of my country… but that’s not hard, there are only three (or four if you count the alien one). The Palmate newt Lissotriton helveticus is Britain’s smallest species (reaching 95 mm in total length), though it’s not the smallest of all European newts, being exceeded by the 80 mm Italian newt L.

Come on, this is Tetrapod Zoology: you knew those asses would be of the equid kind, right? I don’t think there’s been much on Tet Zoo about equids yet, nor about perissodactyls at all (a crime, given my strong interest in fossil rhinos).

It’s time to crack open the champagne and hit the town because Tet Zoo ver 3 just hit the ‘200 article’ mark: specifically, Because caecilians are important was # 200.

This is the 200th article at Tet Zoo ver 3 – thanks, pass the champagne, donation cheque etc. (hint hint). The plan is to produce a lengthy introspective-type article that includes links to all the content that’s appeared on Tet Zoo ver 3 so far.

Regular readers of Tet Zoo will be familiar with two topics I’ve covered on and off over the years: azhdarchid pterosaurs, and palaeoart memes.

A few weeks ago John Conway and your humble blog-author visited the Natural History Museum (London) to see and review the new exhibit Extinction: Not the End of the World (thanks to Becky Caruana for organising this).

Last Thursday (August 8th, 2013) a Brazilian or Lowland tapir Tapirus terrestris at Dublin Zoo (Ireland) seriously attacked and injured a two-year-old girl that, believe it or don’t, was taken into the tapir’s enclosure.

One day in the not-too-distant future there will be a Tet Zoo Guide to Paleogene Mammals. I’m not kidding – it really will happen one day… hey, I’ve only been promising it since 2007 or so.

The other day I showcased some art and text from the upcoming Cryptozoologicon, a book currently being put together by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen and myself and scheduled to appear later this year.