Location

Bush House
30 Aldwych
London, WC2B 4BG

Announcing Events for the 2023 Meeting

The 2023 meeting will again be a two-day event (Saturday 2nd December and Sunday 3rd December), with an optional fieldtrip happening on Monday December 4th. For the first time ever, the meeting will consist of parallel sessions throughout. There will be panel discussions (on Mesozoic marine reptiles), a weekend-long palaeoart event that involves show-and-tell, a movie screening during lunchtime on Sunday, book signing events, a drinks reception, stalls, sales and a silent auction, cosplay, a meet-and-greet and talk from a celebrity guest, and more. TetZooCon 2023 will end with our famous quiz - the many winnings involving a whole stack of brilliant prizes - and a pub trip. We have an amazing list of confirmed speakers and presenters.

For the current draft schedule, see below.

Provisional Timetable for TetZooCon 2023

This may be subject to change.

Previous Years

Talks from previous years (2014 to 2019) have covered a huge range of subjects (the list below doesn’t include the events of 2020 and 2021 because they were zoom-based and thus a bit different)…

2014's meeting included talks on mermaids past and present (Paolo Viscardi, Horniman Museum and Art Gallery), the history of speculative zoology (Darren Naish, Tet Zoo Towers), the amphibian conservation crisis (Helen Meredith, ZSL), azhdarchid pterosaurs (Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth), Shakespeare and mystery primates (Carole Jahme, journalist and broadcaster), wildlife photography (Neil Phillips, UK Wildlife) and the biology of sauropod dinosaurs (Mike Taylor, University of Bristol). A write-up of the 2014 event is here.

At the 2015 meeting we had talks on urban birdwatching (David Lindo, aka The Urban Birdwatcher), Mesozoic marine reptiles (Jessica Lawrence-Wujek, University of Southampton), pygmy elephants (Matt Salusbury, freelance journalist), the story behind The Future Is Wild (Vicky Coules, writer and artist), the story behind The Unfeathered Bird (Katrina van Grouw, artist and writer), the science of sea monsters (Darren Naish again), and more. A write-up of the 2015 event is here.

2016 was similarly excellent and electric: speakers covered bears in Britain (Hannah O'Regan, University of Nottingham), the vital statistics of the Loch Ness Monster (Charles Paxton, University of St Andrews), the biomechanics of kneecaps (John Hutchinson, Royal Veterinary College), dinosaurs and the evolution of sex (Darren Naish, yet again), exotic sooglossid frogs (Jim Labisko, University of Kent), pterosaur biology (David Unwin, University of Leicester) and more. A write-up of the event is here.

The 2017 event was the first at our new, much larger venue: The Venue. The substantial extra space allowed much more as goes merchandise, products and artwork. Talks included Darren Naish on Hunting Monsters, Rose-Heather Mikhail on the history of zoos, Dani Rabaiotti on Does It Fart?, Aubrey Roberts on Triassic marine reptiles, Beth Windle on thylacines, and Ben Garrod on how things work in TV-land... A fuller account can be read here at TetZoo.

2018’s TetZooCon stepped things up to WHOLE NEW LEVEL with two full days of TetZooConiness… TetZooConity… TetZooCo— whatever. Unsurprisingly, it featured twice as much material as the TetZooCons of previous years, and the larger scope of the meeting meant space for loads more stuff. Events included a block of talks on bird evolution (with talks from Robyn Womack, Caitlin Kight, Albert Chen, Hanneke Meijer and Glyn Young), a panel discussion on bird evolution, a parallel palaeoart session that occurred separately from the other talks, talks from Steve Allain (snake fungal disease), Jennifer Jackson (baleen whale biology and evolution), Ian Redmond (‘The Reluctant Conservationist’), several book signings, an on-stage discussion devoted to speculative biology, a conference meal, a drinks reception, and lots more stalls. A fuller description of what happened is here at TetZoo.

2019’s TetZooCon was the biggest and bestest up to that time. Again, TWO WHOLE DAYS of TetZooCon-ness, including panel discussions on natural history film-making and the palaeobiology of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, a giant palaeoart event and exhibition (with talks from Rebecca Groom, Joschua Knüppe, Agata Stachowiak and Jed Taylor), and talks from Jack Ashby (unnatural history museums), Ellen Coombs (whale stranding records), Lauren McGough (hunting with eagles), Alice Pawlik (amphibian conservation), Ross Barnett (The Missing Lynx), Tim Haines (Walking with Dinosaurs to Dinosaurs in the Wild - 20 Years of Popular Digital Palaeontology) and Amy Schwartz (studying roadkill). It was epic! A TetZoo write-up is here.

TetZooCon 2022 - the first post-pandemic in-person TetZooCon and the ninth TetZooCon - occurred at our new epic venue: Bush House, King’s College, The Strand, London. Talks included Jack Ashby on Platypus Matters, Dean Lomax on Locked In Time, Jennifer Colbourne on bird intelligence, Darren Naish on the British herpetofauna, Cassius Morrison on theropod dinosaur ecology, both Liz Martin-Silverstone and Natalia Jagielska on pterosaurs, John Conway on A History of Painting (With Dinosaurs)…. and more! An on-stage discussion about All Yesterdays, marking ten years since its publication, occurred as John, Memo and Darren related events. Memo also sold original artwork from the project. Panel discussions were also hosted on Designing Aliens and Pterosaurs. Several book signings occurred, most notably that for Steve White and Darren Naish’s Mesozoic Art. Once again, attendance was up on the previous event… despite being a new, bigger venue, we just about filled up the space we had. A TetZoo write-up is here.

TetZooCon 2023 - the Tenth One - happened again at Bush House, King’s College. We’ve expanded to the point where parallel sessions simply have to occur for the whole duration of the event, and 2023’s meeting involved a Mesozoic marine reptile set of talks (with ichthyosaur talks from Dean Lomax and Emily Swaby, and plesiosaur talks from Judyth Sassoon, Richard Forrest and Luke Muscutt), a modern archosaur session (with talks from Todd Green on cassowaries, Jennifer Campbell-Smith on corvids, and Evon Hekkala on crocodiles), and a weekend-long palaeoart series of talks and discussions. Things started with a panel discussion on Friday evening devoted to extinction and the role of extinction studies in culture. Nigel Marven delivered to a packed house (see the adjacent photo) and additional talks covered extinct dolphins, scicomm projects, obscure frogs and more. Numerous stalls were there, and books, animal figures and art was on sale as well. A fieldtrip to London Zoo on the Monday was very well attended. This was by far the biggest and busiest TetZooCon so far, and in fact it was so busy that things will have to change for 2024 if we want to accommodate it all. A very lengthy write-up of 2023’s events can be found here.