Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s Saurian

One of the reasons you read TetZoo is because of the dinosaurs, and among the dinosaur-themed things I write about on fairly regular basis are new(ish) dinosaur-themed books.

Partly because I’m way overdue on the book reviews I planned to write during 2019, I’m here going to talk about some recently-ish published dinosaur-themed books that you’d do well to buy and read, if you wish, or can. I’ve written about recently-ish published dinosaur-themed books on quite a few recent occasions; see the links below for more. Let’s get to it.

Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: the Theropods, by Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi

I can say right out of the gate that this 2019 work is one of the most spectacular dinosaur-themed works that has ever seen print. Think about that for a minute, since it’s a pretty grand claim. Yes. This book is spectacular: big (288 pages, and 24.5 cm x 30 cm), of extremely high standard, packed with information, and containing a vast number of excellent and highly accurate colour life reconstructions. Originally published in Spanish, it has now been translated (by David Connolly and Gonzalo Ángel Ramírez Cruz) and published in English by London’s Natural History Museum. The book consists of eight sections, which variously go through the theropod cladogram, discuss geographical regions and the theropods associated with them, and review theropod anatomy, eggs, footprints and so on. And it’s packed with excellent illustrations… hundreds of them.

A selection of pages from Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019). At left, eggs depicted to scale (with a basketball). At right, just two of the many pages that feature theropod skeletal elements. Images: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

The art is great – the majority of colour images being by the phenomenally good and reliable Andrey Atuchin – and I’d recommend that anyone interested in the life appearance of dinosaurs obtain the book for its art alone. I have one criticism of the art though, which is that the colour schemes and patterns used for some of the animals are occasionally based on those of living animals (most typically birds).

Just two of the many UNNAMED theropod species reconstructed in the book. Exciting stuff! The humans that feature in the book are an interesting lot. Images: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

Familiar theropods of many sorts are illustrated, but a major plus point is that many of the animals depicted are either obscure and mostly new to the world of palaeoartistic depictions (examples: Spinostropheus, Dryptosauroides, Bonapartenykus, Nanantius, Gargantuavis) or are as-yet-unnamed species: animals which clearly represent something new (since they’re the only member of their group known from the relevant geographical region and segment of geological time) but have only been referred to by their specimen numbers or by a ‘cf’ attribution (a theropod called, for example ‘cf Velociraptor mongoliensis’ is being compared by its describers to V. mongoliensis and is clearly very much like V. mongoliensis, but quite possibly not part of the species and perhaps something new. The ‘cf’ is short for ‘confere’, as in: compare with).

If the reconstructions in the book are anything to go by, Spinostropheus - according to one specimen (an ulna) it could reach huge sizes - was among the most remarkable of theropods. Just look at it. Image: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

Two issues strike me as problematic though. One is that the arrangement is really difficult to get to grips with, and it’s taken me numerous attempts to understand and appreciate why the book is arranged the way it is. The second issue concerns what appears to be a suspiciously high degree of taxonomic precision for footprints. The authors depict footprints, said to be representative of the different theropod groups covered in the taxonomy section at the start of the book, and seem confident that the tracks concerned (which are often fairly nondescript) were made by species belonging to the relevant group. It’s hard to be convinced that this is reliable, except in a very few cases: I’m happy to agree that the giant Tyrannosauripus pillmorei track, for example, really was made by a member of Tyrannosauridae. Then again, maybe the authors have devised a new track identification method that isn’t yet known to the rest of us.

The several montages in the book are truly things of beauty. Image: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

And on that note, it’s obvious that a vast quantity of novel science was performed as part of the background research for this book. The methods and data used by the authors are explained up front. Impressive stuff, and stuff which should be published in the technical literature at some point. Are their results always ‘good’? Well, I have my misgivings about the idea that Dinornis the moa was the fastest (non-flying) theropod ever and capable of sprinting at a phenomenal 81 km/h…

So, so many diagrams of tracks and trackways. Image: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

Despite my minor misgivings, this book is attractive enough and interesting enough that it’s a must-have for those seriously interested in dinosaurs and in artistic depictions of them. Buy it if you can. This volume promises to be the first in a series. At the time of writing, the second of these – devoted to sauropods – is being advertised and is due to appear soon. Given that there’s every reason to assume that its artwork and overall quality will be similar to that of the theropod volume reviewed here, I have very high hopes and look forward to seeing it.

Molina-Pérez, R. & Larramendi, A. 2019. Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: the Theropods. The Natural History Museum, London. pp. 288. ISBN 9780565094973. Hardback. Here at publishers. Here at amazon. Here at amazon.co.uk.

Luis Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects

Luis Rey (who blogs here) has been active in the palaeoart world for a few decades now, and most people interested in the portrayal of dinosaurs in art will be familiar with his vibrant, bold and dynamic style. Luis’s work has appeared in museum installations, exhibitions, and in numerous publications, including books. Most notable among these are his own Extreme Dinosaurs (Rey 2001) and The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs, by Robert Bakker (Bakker 2013). I feel it would be wrong at this point to avoid mentioning the fact that Luis and I were regular correspondents back when the first of those books appeared, but that my dislike of the 2013 book – which I made clear in a TetZoo review – coincided with a cessation in any contact we used to have. But things have moved on; Luis’s art has continued to evolve and let’s put all of that behind us.

A collection of Rey works at TetZoo Towers. Image: Darren Naish.

Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects discusses the intellectual and artistic background to several dinosaur-themed museum installations which Luis has created, but does so in an evolutionary fashion such that they’re used to describe our improving knowledge of the Mesozoic world. Luis was illustrating colourful, fully feathered dromaeosaurs, oviraptorosaurs and so on at a time when the majority of relevant academics were dead against this, so it would be fair to see him as one of several artists who were predicting things that would prove correct in the end. I was on side too, and consequently was a vociferous Rey advocate in the early part of my academic career, deliberately using his reconstructions of dromaeosaurs – even the turkey-wattled, shaggily feathered ones – in conference presentations and publications. And for all the success of All Yesterdays and its associated movement, we have never forgotten that Luis was saying many of the same things already.

Some representative pages from Extreme Dinosaurs 2. At right, note the person wearing an oviraptorosaur costume while sat in a nest.

Maniraptorans, thyreophorans, ceratopsians, dinosaur eggs and nesting and the dinosaurs (and other Mesozoic reptiles) of Mexico all get coverage here as Luis explains the thinking behind new pieces of art and also how and why he’s modified older ones. Our understanding of feather arrangements in non-bird maniraptorans have improved a lot in recent years, plus we have so much new data on ankylosaur armour, ceratopsian skin and so on. If you haven’t been keeping up, this book would be a good primer. The text is concise and written in a friendly, informal style.

More representative pages, this time depicting therizinosaurs. Brightly coloured faces, bold patterns on the feathering, inflatable throat structures… what’s not to love? Image: Rey (2019).

I’m still not keen on the photo-bashing that’s now integral to the Rey style and don’t find it effective or successful. A few pieces included in the book don’t, therefore, work for me (examples: Santonian hadrosaur hassled by theropods on pp. 104-5, the Labocania scene on pp. 106-7). But can I please emphasise that I still find this a valuable book, and I very much recommend it as an interesting addition to the palaeoart stable, the autobiographical angle in particular being useful. My copy of Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects is an advance softback version but I understand that a hardback is available too.

Rey, L. 2019. Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects. Imagine Publishing, London/Metepec. pp. 139. ISBN 978-0-9933866-2-6. Softback/Hardback. Here at amazon.co.uk.

Parker et al.’s Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek

Even if – like me – you’re not a video game buff and have little interest in video games or the playing of them, chances are high that you’ve heard about Saurian, a role-playing, survival simulation experience in which you play the role of a dinosaur negotiating a Maastrichtian environment modelled on that of the Hell Creek Formation. You have to avoid predators, find and procure food, raise babies, and live as long as possible. I’ve played The Simms, back in the day, and recall the urge to sink hours of time into living a virtual tiny life, so I can understand the appeal.

Representative pages, here showing the raptor prey restraint model in action. Poor pachycephalosaur. Image: Parker et al. (2019).

The relevance of Saurian to the TetZooniverse is that the game has been designed and built according to an incredibly high scientific standard, the team behind it having done a vast quantity of research on everything relevant to the Hell Creek world. And the good news is that this work hasn’t been wasted. This book – written by Tom Parker, featuring the artwork of Chris Masna and RJ Palmer (of Detective Pikachu fame and much else), and produced following consultation with a long list of relevant palaeontologists – is the result: it includes a vast quantity of amazing concept art, detailed vignettes and scaled artwork of the organisms and environments that feature in the game, and is simply a joy to look at. The text is brief but functions well. The book is a sturdy softback (20 x 24 cm) of 182 pages, printed to excellent, glossy standard.

RJ Palmer’s T. rex is one of the stars of the show. Some of you will know that the Saurian team abandoned an earlier, more feathery version. Assorted humans function as scale bars; you can likely guess who this one is based on. Image: Parker et al. (2019).

As should be clear by now, the thoroughness of the project’s world-building means that there’s more information here on Maastrichtian North American trees, rainfall patterns, swamps, beaches, amphibians, lizards, crocodyliforms, fishes and so on than you’ve ever seen before. The result is one of the most interesting, detailed and attractive volumes dedicated to Late Cretaceous life. This book is a must-have for those seriously interested in palaeoart and in seeing prehistoric animals and environments depicted in detail, but it’s also good enough that those with a scientific or technical interest in Late Cretaceous life should obtain it too.

Oh wow, so much of the art in this book is just phenomenal. This scene depicts competition among scavengers at a carcass. You might just be able to see the anguimorph lizard inside the body cavity. Image: Parker et al. (2019).

Parker, T., Masna, C. & Palmer, R. J. 2019. Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek. Urvogel Games. pp. 182. Softback. Here at publishers [BUT CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK].

That’s where we’ll end for now. A few more dinosaur-themed book review are due to appear here soon, including of Donald Prothero’s The History of Dinosaurs in 25 Fossils and Michael Benton’s The Dinosaurs Discovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting Their Story.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see me do more, please consider supporting this blog (for as little as $1 per month) at patreon. The more support I receive, the more financially viable this project becomes and the more time and effort I can spend on it. Thank you :)

For previous TetZoo dinosaur-themed book reviews, see… (linking here to wayback machine versions due to paywalling and vandalism of TetZoo ver 2 and 3 articles)…

• Long and Schouten's Feathered Dinosaurs, a review, January 2008

• Luis Chiappe's Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds, January 2011

• What they’re saying about The Great Dinosaur Discoveries, November 2011

• Greg Paul’s Dinosaurs: A Field Guide, August 2012

• New Dinosaur Books, Part 1: Barrett on Stegosaurs, August 2018

• New Dinosaur Books, Part 2: Ben Garrod’s ‘So You Think You Know About… Dinosaurs’ Series, August 2018

• The Second Edition of Naish and Barrett’s Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, November 2011

Refs - -

Bakker, R. T. 2013. The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs. Random House, New York.

Rey, L. 2001. Extreme Dinosaurs. Chronicle Books, San Francisco.

The Mostly Arboreal African Gastropholis Lizards

TetZoo hasn’t had nearly enough lizards lately. If you’re a regular reader you might recall the slow-burn series on LACERTIDS, the Old World group that are the ‘typical’ lizards of western and central Europe and hence the first group to become known to European scientists.

Caption: if you’re European, lacertids are the lizards you know best. In the UK, we only have two natives, one of which is Zootoca vivipara, the Viviparous lizard. Here’s a wild individual. Image: Darren Naish.

European lacertids – thinking here of Zootoca (viviparous lizards), Lacerta (sand lizards, green lizards and kin) and Podarcis (wall lizards) in particular – are quite well known and it’s easy to find information on them; if, that is, you’ve combed through books on lizards in quest of hot lacertid info. But there are a whole bunch of African taxa within Lacertidae: what’s the deal with them, and why don’t we hear more about them? Well, comparatively little is known about them, good photos of them aren’t that abundant, and they’re rare in museum collections (Arnold 2004).

Caption: a captive Green keel-bellied lizard Gastropholis prasina, in repose. Check out that tail! Images: Darren Naish.

I recently got to see a live lacertid of a type I’d never seen before: a Green keel-bellied lizard Gastropholis prasina, a shockingly long-tailed, green, east African lacertid endemic to the coastal forests of Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. It reaches 40 cm in total (which seems pretty huge for a lacertid), but is more usually 25-35 cm. Most of this is formed by the slender, prehensile tail. These are diurnal lizards, and one of several things that makes them unusual among lacertids is that they’re arboreal, and do just about everything up in the trees. They sleep there, fight there, mate there and lay their eggs there (in damp hollows). Individuals of G. prasina have been found 12 metres up in trees (Spawls et al. 2018).

Caption: an 1886 illustration of the Striped keel-bellied lizard G. vittata, from J. G. Fischer’s publication. Image: J. G. Fischer, public domain.

Well…. the Green keel-bellied lizard lives this way, anyway. Animals refuse to be constrained by anatomy and not all members of this genus are arboreal. The Striped keel-bellied lizard G. vittata is apparently terrestrial despite being proportionally pretty much exactly like G. prasina and being equipped with a really long, prehensile tail (Spawls et al. 2018). What this most likely shows is that G. vittata has only recently transitioned to terrestrial life, and that its anatomy still harks back to an arboreal ancestry.

Caption: you can see why this species is called Gastropholis echinata (the species name meaning ‘spiny’). It’s from a 1919 description of the species by K. P. Schmidt. Image: K. P. Schmidt/AMNH, public domain.

Two other species are presently included in Gastropholis. G. echinata occurs throughout those countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea while G. tropidopholis is endemic to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Caption: another Gastropholis species: the Congolese G. tropidopholis. Again this image is from a 1919 paper by K. P. Schmidt. Image: K. P. Schmidt/AMNH, public domain.

Convergence with grass lizards…. and monitors? As implied by the name, one of the unusual things about these lizards is that their ventral scales are keeled. That’s pretty odd, since lizards (and other reptiles) ‘ordinarily’ have smooth ventral scales. Keeled ventral scales are also present in at least some species of Adolfus – another climbing African lacertid – and also in Takydromus, the east Asian grass lizards. Like Gastropholis, Takydromus has a strikingly long tail which it uses in climbing (albeit in grasses rather than high in trees).

These lizards also (together with Philochortus, another poorly known African lacertid) share especially tall, blade-like neural spines on some of their caudal vertebrae (Arnold 1997, 2004). Neither Takydromus nor Philochortus are at all close to Gastropholis in lacertid phylogeny, so any similarities have to be a product of convergence (Arnold 2004). If you want to learn more about Takydromus, I wrote about it here at ver 2, back in 2013.

Caption: a Takydromus - an Asian grass lizard - in captivity. These lacertids are similar to the African Gastropholis species in several respects, but are not that closely related to them. Image: Darren Naish.

On the subject of convergence, I can’t help but also regard these mostly arboreal, often green lacertids as convergent with the also long-tailed, also green prasinoid tree monitors of northern Australasia. Prasinoids – the Green tree monitor Varanus prasinus and its several close relatives – are larger than Gastropholis species (40 cm vs 60-110 cm, total length) and have several varanid-flavoured features lacking in lacertids (a long forked tongue, blade-like teeth, longer and more dextrous digits and – probably – enhanced cognition). Prasinoids seem more formidable as predators than is Gastropholis, since they predate on small mammals, big spiny insects and so on. This could just be a consequence of size though, and Gastropholis is reported to predate on smaller lizards so might well be quite formidable too (Spawls et al. 2018). If you’re wondering why there are both Varanus and Gastropholis taxa within the species name prasinus (or prasina), it’s because this means ‘light green’.

Caption: I’ve had reason to draw prasinoids - green tree monitors - on several occasions, and here’s a montage depicting several species. Can these varanids be considered convergent with the long-tailed, arboreal lacertid Gastropholis? Hmm, maybe. Images: Darren Naish.

I’ve written about prasinoids at TetZoo: please go here (reminder that I now link to wayback machine versions of my ver 3 articles, since SciAm has either mutilated my articles or paywalled them).

Where in the family tree? Where do the Gastropholis species fit within the lacertid radiation? None of these lizards are well known and they tend to be missed entirely from popular works that mention or discuss lacertids, this creating the impression that Lacertidae doesn’t really have a presence in the African tropics, which it totally does. Within recent decades it’s been widely agreed that these lizards are part of the equatorial lacertid clade that includes Adolfus and kin. This whole group is probably part of Eremiadini, the lacertid clade that also includes the fringe-toed lizards (Acanthodactylus) and racerunners (Eremias) (e.g., Peréz I de Lanuza & Font 2014)… though be sure to see the TetZoo article on racerunners and kin to get some perspective on the different phylogenetic proposals that have been put forwards for these animals.

Caption: a substantially simplified lacertid phylogeny, showing the approximate structure pieced together in assorted studies. Gastropholis by Darren Naish, Acanthodactylus by Richard Hing, Eremias by Yuriy75 (CC BY-SA 3.0; original here), Takydromus by Acapella (CC BY-SA 3.0; original here), Lacerta by Darren Naish, Gallotia by Petermann (CC BY-SA 3.0; original here), Psammodromus by Wolfgang Wüster. Image CC BY-SA.

Arnold (1989) examined anatomical features and found Gastropholis to form a clade with Bedriagaia, Holaspis and Adolfus, the four forming what he termed ‘the Equatorial African clade’. I have to mention in passing that Holaspis is especially interesting because it’s able to glide and has seemingly evolved this ability as an exaptation (Arnold 2002). That’s a story for another time though. Greenbaum et al. (2011), using data from several genes, found Gastropholis to be the sister-group to Adolfus sensu stricto (Adolfus of tradition is paraphyletic with respect to Holaspis, so some of its populations are now separated and in the 2011 genus Congolacerta).

A note on the future. What else do we know about these lizards? They’re suspected to be in decline, given that the forests they inhabit are being destroyed, but hints that they might be adaptable enough to persist come from the fact that they’ve moved into cash crop plantations in some places (Spawls et al. 2018). The individual shown in my photos above and below is a captive and part of the pet trade. The trade in exotic reptiles (and amphibians) is mostly evil, exploitative and the opposite of anything that can be considered sustainable and beneficial. Having said that, the fact that populations of animals endangered in the wild are now being bred in captivity might provide some kind of safeguard for the future. That’s where we’ll end for now, but we’ll return to lacertids - and other lizards - sometime in the near future.

Caption: Green keel-bellied lizard in profile. Image: Darren Naish.

For previous TetZoo articles on lacertids (linking here to wayback machine versions to avoid issues with the hosting sites, SciAm in particular), see…

• The New Forest Reptile Centre, August 2012

• It’s high time you were told about Psammodromus, July 2013

• Tale of the Takydromus, September 2013

• Racerunner Lizards of the World Unite, October 2014

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Refs - -

Arnold, E. N. 1997. Interrelationships and evolution of the east Asian grass lizards, Takydromus (Squamata: Lacertidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 119, 267-296.

Arnold, E. N. 1989. Towards a phylogeny and biogeography of the Lacertidae: relationships within an Old-World family of lizards derived from morphology. Bulletin of British Museum of Natural History (Zoology) 55, 209-257.

Arnold, E. N. 2002. Holaspis, a lizard that glided by accident: mosaics of cooption and adaptation in a tropical forest lacertid (Reptilia, Lacertidae). Bulletin of British Museum of Natural History (Zoology) 68, 155-163.

Arnold, E. N. 2004. Overview of morphological evolution and radiation in the Lacertidae. In Pérez-Mellado, V., Riera, N. & Perera, A. (eds) The Biology of Lacertid Lizards. Evolutionary and Ecological Perspectives. Institut Menorquí d’Estudis. Recerca 8, 11-36.

Greenbaum, E., Villanueva, C. O., Kusamba, C., Aristote, M. M. & Branch, W. R. 2011. A molecular phylogeny of equatorial African Lacertidae, with the description of a new genus and species from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 163, 913-942.

Peréz I de Lanuza, G. & Font, E. 2014. Ultraviolet vision in lacertid lizards: evidence from retinal structure, eye transmittance, SWS1 visual pigment genes and behaviour. The Journal of Experimental Biology 217, 2899-2909.

Spawls, S., Howell, K., Hinkel, H. & Menegon, M. 2018. Field Guide to East African Reptiles, 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury, London.

Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: the Isle of Wight Zoo

Regular readers might be aware of my ‘TetZoo Reviews Zoos’ series which hasn’t – so far – been all that active or successful when it comes to completeness of coverage or regularity of appearance. I aim to rectify that through the course of this year.

Caption: there are a few articles in the TetZoo archives on zoos, but not nearly as many as I’d hoped there’d be by now.

Today, I want to talk about a small zoo that’s close to me here on the southern coast of the UK: namely, the Isle of Wight Zoo at Sandown, Isle of Wight. The zoo has a very good website, and much of the information relayed here is derived from it.

Caption: the zoo’s website is here. It has a facebook page here.

Sandown is on the island’s south-west coast; the zoo itself is actually adjacent to the seafront and award-winning beach there and is just a few minutes down the road from Dinosaur Isle Museum. Indeed, it’s close enough to the sea for it to be in danger given the sea level rise that’s due to happen over the next few decades. Like so many zoos, the Isle of Wight Zoo started out as a small, family-run facility essentially created for profit and entertainment. It has more recently (2017) made the transition to being a conservation-oriented charity – termed The Wildheart Trust – devoted to education and animal rescue, and with ties to conservation projects in India, Madagascar and the UK.

Caption: it was wet, cold and misty when Will and I visited. Image: Darren Naish.

The zoo specialises in particular as a refuge for big cats – mostly tigers – who’ve been rescued from sad treatment and neglect at circuses, indeed I think it’s the UK’s largest collection of tigers. Most of the zoo’s tigers suffer from some degree of lameness or injury due to their life in inappropriate conditions and the zoo and its vets have done much to improve their quality of life. The bloodlines of the zoo’s tigers are unknown and there have never been any plans to breed them.

Caption: one of the zoo’s several tigers. Some of the tigers here have lived into their 20s, which makes them among the oldest tigers in the world. The world’s oldest tigers have variously been 22, 25 or similar. Image: Darren Naish.

The zoo’s surrounds are interesting in that it’s constructed within the ruins of a Victorian fort, the big concrete blocks that form the upper parts of its outer walls being distinctive parts of its architecture. A tiger statue, perched on one of the blocks, overlooks the zoo. This statue is unusual (it has a few flower-shaped blotches on its coat, not just stripes) and there’s some speculation that it was recycled from a life elsewhere where it played a very different role. Maybe it was previously a prehistoric cat in a theme park or a heraldic symbol or something; I’d love to know.

Caption: that’s a really interesting statue. Image: Darren Naish.

The zoo is not large and every exhibit can be observed and inspected within three hours or less. I visited, together with my son, Will, during February 2019, when the weather was less than ideal for zoo-going (it was cold, and foggy and raining).

Caption: the two white lions that were at the zoo when we visited in early 2019: Frosty (left) and Casper. Images: Darren Naish.

Among the most exotic and exciting of animals at the zoo are the white lions, two of which were present at the time of my visit (though read on): the male is called Casper, while the female is Frosty. White lions are recessive leucistic mutants and were first documented at Timbavati, South Africa, during the 1930s. They became better known to naturalists and zoologists at large thanks to Chris McBride’s book The White Lions of Timbavati (McBride 1977). The two I saw at the zoo are the only individuals I’ve ever seen. They’re not pure white, more like very pale blonde. Both came from West Midland Safari Park. Two other individuals – Vigo and Kumba – have joined the Isle of Wight Zoo since the time of our visit and both come from life in a travelling circus. Both were rescued by the AAP Animal Advocacy and Protection Primadomus, and you can read about the complex story of their rescue and transport to the zoo here. Both animals were castrated at an early age and this explains their unusual size and manelessness. I’ll have to revisit the zoo to see them some time, they sound fascinating.

Caption: Casper the white lion, exhibiting flehmen response, February 2020. Image: Darren Naish.

There are also a few smaller mammals at the zoo, namely Bennett’s wallabies Macropus bennetti, some extremely floofy Common raccoons Procyon lotor, South American coatis Nasua nasua (named Grant and Sattler, tell me you get the reference), Meerkats Suricata suricatta, a Crested porcupine Hystrix cristata, Lesser hedgehog tenrec Echinops telfairi, both African pygmy Atelerix albiventris and European Erinaceus europaeus hedgehog and several primates. The raccoon I watched (one of three) spent part of its time in its little house but eventually appeared for us and did the famous food-washing thing in textbook fashion. I’m sure that raccoons are tremendously familiar if you’re from certain parts of North America, but the same can’t be said of the UK, and indeed raccoons are not at all frequently encountered in British collections: I’ve only ever seen two or three, and I’m a regular zoo-goer.

Caption: one of the several raccoons at the Isle of Wight Zoo. So floofy. Image: Darren Naish.

A domestic animal section in the middle of zoo is home to especially big rabbits (they belong to a breed called the Giant European), goats, guinea-pigs, ferrets and pot-bellied pigs. Will and I were sufficiently impressed by the rabbits to spend some time looking at them. There’s supposed to be a single captive mouse in the zoo – called Mouse – who you can sometimes see rummaging in bags of hay, digging under turf or listening to the music of James Blunt. I see.

Caption: Harley (I think), a hybrid capuchin. These monkeys sometimes look like grumpy little people wearing thick fur coats. I’m following recent taxonomic proposals (Lynch Alfaro et al. 2012) in putting the ‘robust capuchins’ within Sapajus, and outside of Cebus. Image: Darren Naish.

The primates on show are Common marmosets Callithrix jacchus, spider monkeys, capuchins, Vervets Cercopithecus pygerythrus and members of six lemur species. The zoo’s spider monkeys are hybrids (between Black Ateles paniscus and Brown A. hybridus spider monkey) and the oldest of them are in their 30s and 40s. The zoo’s three capuchins were all born at the zoo and are also hybrids between Brown Sapajus apella and Black or Black-horned S. nigritus capuchin. The oldest of them – Timmy – is an impressive 31 years old. The hybrid nature of these various monkeys shows how different the philosophy on captive breeding was just 30-ish years ago.

Caption: spider monkeys at the zoo, February 2019. I’ve taken lots of photos of captive spider monkeys, usually because I’m trying to capture pictures where they look like de Loys ape. Images: Darren Naish.

The zoo also keeps a few birds, including owls and parrots, but the real highlight – the jewel is the crown – is the amazing…. Meller’s duck Anas melleri, a member of the mallard complex which I’ve written about on a few previous occasions. The zoo has five of these birds (all of which have very Madagascan names: Ambanja, Betafo, Itasy, Melaky and Sava) and is involved in the global conservation effort to replenish the population of this declining and endangered species. They successfully bred at the zoo in 2012.

Caption: could it be that I have before me…. a Meller’s duck? Such a fine bird. There’s a TetZoo review of knowledge on this species here at ver 2. Image: Darren Naish.

There’s also an education centre which also doubles as the home for various small animals kept in vivariums and cages. They include various insects, molluscs, amphibians and reptiles as well as a mouse lemur who only has one eye.

Caption: we’ve all seen Green iguanas Iguana iguana before (hey, the ‘Green iguana’ of tradition is a species complex that needs major revision). But they’re so great to look at that I never get bored of them. This big male was in the middle of eating. Image: Darren Naish.

While space is limited and the zoo is not large, you can see from some of the photos here that the larger animals have decent-sized enclosures. We were also told (while on a tour) that the cats are given a different form of behavioural enrichment every single day. On the day of our visit, the tigers had been given cardboard boxes and were carrying them around in their mouths. They seem to enjoy biting the cardboard and ripping the boxes to bits.

Caption: you can - in part - judge a zoo by its constructed installations. I approve of this rocky observation area for the tiger enclosures, opened by Chris Packham in 2004 (TV presenter Chris Packham is the partner of Charlotte Corney, the Wildheart Trust’s founder). Image: Darren Naish.

The Isle of Wight Zoo is not a spectacular or beautiful zoo. But it’s a good zoo, performing good work in terms of both animal rescue and welfare, in promoting connectedness between people and the natural world, and in conservation and education. It and its efforts should be supported, and I definitely recommend a visit if you’re interested in any of the animals I’ve mentioned here.

• Selection of species: 3 out of 10 (but see caveats)

• Zoo nerd highlights: white lions, hybrid capuchins and spider monkeys, raccoon, Meller’s duck

• Quality of signage: 7 out of 10

• Value for money: 9 out of 10

• Overall worthiness: 10 out of 10

My writing and research is dependent on crowd-funded support. Thanks to those whose patronage made this article, and the others you read here, possible. Please consider assisting me if you can, thank you!

For previous TetZoo articles on zoos and other relevant topics (I’m now routinely linking to the wayback machine versions, since those at SciAm have been ruined, or are paywalled. Yes, paywalled), see…

• ‘Revising’ the Siberian tiger, February 2009

• Lo, for I have seen the Meller's duck, and it was good, August 2009

• Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: Edinburgh Zoo, August 2016

• Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: Colchester Zoo, October 2017

• The Tiger Subspecies Revised, 2017, November 2017

Refs - -

Lynch Alfaro, J.W., Silva, J. S. & Rylands, A. B. 2012. How different are robust and gracile capuchin monkeys? An argument for the use of Sapajus and Cebus. American Journal of Primatology 74, 1-14.

McBride, C. 1977. The White Lions of Timbavati. Paddington Press, New York and London.

Tetrapod Zoology's 14th Year of Operation, 2019 in Review

Once again, it’s January 21st – hello, January 21st – which means that it’s Tetrapod Zoology’s birthday, or blogoversary or whathaveyou.

Caption: a montage of TetZoo-themed things relevant to 2019, read on…

TetZoo started life in 2006 and we saw last year how it became a teenager on its 2019 birthday. Today, TetZoo has hit the big 1-4. 14 years old. In keeping with tradition, let’s now look at the year’s TetZooniverous adventures, the caveat as always being that you should stop reading now if this sounds like it’s going to be too introspective. Because it will be. One final warning: this article is realllly long, I could have split into four or five different parts (but I didn’t want to).

Caption: we’ll start here. It depicts Joschua Knüppe, was taken at TetZooCon 2019, and was modified by Armin Reindl. I’ve lost track of who took the original, sorry.

From my own idiosyncratic perspective, TetZoo is – approximately speaking – as active as ever. I still manage to publish a few articles a month and report and discuss things relevant to my interests and thoughts, the site’s visibility and content continues to win me paying employment, its articles remain a (hopefully) valuable source of information on various arcane zoological topics, and – even in the age of Twitter and Instagram (I’m findable on both as @TetZoo) – it has a healthy community of regulars who help keep the site alive with discussion and comments.

Caption: TetZoo Towers, the scene of our story’s Act 1. Yikes, it was a mess at the time this photo was taken… Image: Darren Naish.

January 2019 started with me returning from a consultancy job in China – I work on occasion for Don Lessem’s DinoDon company – which I feel I’ve written about already. I visited Dinosaur Isle at Sandown (one of several trips made there during the year) for on-going work on Wealden theropod dinosaurs with Neil Gostling, Chris Barker and colleagues.

Caption: life-sized dinosaur models at Dinosaur Isle, Sandown. At left, one of Andrew Cocks’s Eotyrannus models (with cannon-fodder ornithischian in mouth). At right, the famous Dorling Kindersley Caudipteryx, with Luis Rey colour scheme. It was in a weird, crooked pose until Luis recently corrected it. Images: Darren Naish.

I also visited the Pulhamite Garden at Holly Hill. Pulhamite gardens – named for their designers, the Pulham brothers – are landscaped Victorian features, designed to include replica waterfalls, grottos, caves and so on. John Conway and I recorded a few episodes of the podcast and released episode 70… which we’d actually recorded back in September 2018. Yeah, we’ve had to abandon any plans to record episodes of the podcast at all regularly, not through choice but because workload no longer allows. And when we do get to record an episode, there’s no longer time or opportunity to edit it. Plus John is very, very lazy.

Caption: a cave - not a natural one, but one made by people - in the Pulhamite garden at Holly Hill, Hampshire, UK. I love this stuff. Reminiscent of the Prehistoric Court at Crystal Palace, of course. Image: Darren Naish.

The TetZoo review of 2018 (I mean, the 13th birthday article) was published at the end of January, a bit later than planned. Episode 71 of the podcast was released in early February and episode 72 – a Loch Ness Monster special – later in the month. A TetZoo article reviewing some recently-ish published books was published, and my recollections of the Dinosaurs Past and Present exhibition of the late 1980s and early 90s was published too. A technical paper I contributed to – on a Late Cretaceous eggshell assemblage from Romania, incorporating the eggs of several reptile species – was published in Scientific Reports in February (Fernández et al. 2019), and I wrote about it here at TetZoo. Will and I went to the Isle of Wight Zoo at the end of February. I mean to write about it. Internet potoos were also covered at TetZoo in February.

Caption: OH MY GOD IT’S MELLER’S DUCK. Yes, they have them at the Isle of Wight Zoo. Image: Darren Naish.

Also during February, I spent time at the BBC’s Natural History Unit – something that would take up an increasing part of my time for the rest of the year (no, I can’t talk about it) – and made tiny, incremental progress on the Eotyrannus monograph (it’s finished, and has been for months, ‘all’ I’m doing is making the post-review changes). My article on OroBOT appeared in BBC Focus magazine (Naish 2019a; an online version is here).

Caption: OroBOT! A mobile, articulated robot replica of Orobates. From the BBC Focus magazine article here.

Caption: the arrival of frogs and frogspawn in the early part of the year is always a significant annual event, and generally occurs round about the second week of February. Two clumps of spawn were produced in 2019; many of the tadpoles made it to froglet stage and some over-wintered and are still in the pond right now (January 2020). The species here is the European common frog Rana temporaria. Images: Darren Naish.

Books. The events of 2019 meant that I wasn’t able to write any new books during the year, nor finish any of the ones I’ve started. A few things happened though. The Dorling Kindersley book that I co-wrote with Chris Barker – part of their ‘What’s Where on Earth’, fully titled What’s Where on Earth: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Life (Barker & Naish 2019) – appeared in print in March. It’s been very warmly received in reviews. I did an interview on the book (and dinosaurs in general) for First News newspaper.

Caption: new books for 2019. A new edition of Dorling Kindersley’s Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life appeared during the year: I helped with the update but have yet to see a copy. What’s Where on Earth: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Life (Barker & Naish 2019) also appeared.

The Japanese edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved (Naish & Barrett 2018) arrived. This version of the book makes me appreciate Japanese respect for detail and intricacy: the cover features several of the cladograms I produced for the book, the boards of the cover are decorated with a beautiful image of a moa skeleton, and there are additional details like an Erlikosaurus on the book’s spine. I drew squamates for the Big Book, a huge project that’s still ticking away in the background (cough cough).

Caption: cover views of the new Japanese edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved (Naish & Barrett 2018).

Moving to March, I worked on a TV series for Wall to Wall, commissioned by Netflix. I may or may not talk about it when it’s out. An article on alternative timeline dinosaur evolution – featuring interview comments and thoughts from me – appeared in the Italian Focus magazine (Camardo 2019).

Caption: opening spread of Giovanni Camardo’s 2019 article on alternative timeline dinosaur evolution. I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: James Kuether’s dinosaurs are everywhere these days.

The dinosaur models I worked on in China at the start of the year were delivered to their new home in New York’s Bronx Zoo and put on show. Articles published at TetZoo during this part of the year include those on the cautious climber hypothesis, and the first and second of my Nessie-themed book reviews. I attended a beach clean event in late March, and as usual picked up many kilos of discarded plastic crap otherwise contaminating the environment. I’ve been doing litter-picks at beaches for years now. Things haven’t improved but have steadily gotten worse. The end of much of the natural world is in sight.

Caption: imagine trying to clean a beach like this of its plastic pollution. It isn’t going to happen: no-one is ever going to remove all of this waste. Chessel Bay, Southampton, March 2019. Image: Darren Naish.

I went to another local zoo (Marwell) in mid-April, highlights of this trip being lemurs in a pile, a rhino gang, good views of Mountain zebra Equus zebra, Crocodile monitor Varanus salvadorii and Blesbok Damaliscus pygargus phillipsi.

Caption: Marwell Zoo has so many great animals. At left, Crocodile monitor Varanus salvadorii in the new tropical house. At right, Mountain zebra Equus zebra (note the dewlap). Images: Darren Naish.

TetZoo articles from this time included those on sleep behaviour in non-human animals, phyllostomid bats, cocks-of-the-rock, and my fondness for Usborne’s 1977 All About Monsters. My latest technical contribution to the cryptozoological literature appeared (Paxton & Naish 2019), this being an article in which Charles Paxton and I aimed to determine whether popular knowledge of Mesozoic marine reptiles might have influenced 19th and 20th century sea monster sightings. We concluded that they likely had, to a degree. This research was covered here at TetZoo; Mike McRae also wrote about it here at ScienceAlert. I spent time at one of my local patches, Telegraph Woods.

Caption: while at Portsmouth Comic Con in May, I got to see several of Roger Dicken’s movie models; here’s a sauropod, I think from The Land That Time Forgot. Images: Darren Naish.

May was busy. I visited the Royal Veterinary College for a secret project I can’t talk about and, outside of work, attended Portsmouth Comic Con and Exbury Gardens, went to the several famous geological sites of Durdle Dor and its surrounds on the Dorset coast (my parents spend part of the year there), and visited the new Dogstival fair – a massive, dog-themed event devoted to everything about dogs – in the New Forest.

Caption: some summertime shots of the New Forest, UK. It really is the most spectacular location and I love spending time there. Images: Darren Naish.

On the subject of dogs, late May was difficult…  I and my family said goodbye to Willow on May 20th, an event which inspired me to write about Willow and her life. I made the mistake of thinking that I’d be able to launch back into work and carry on as if nothing had happened; I should have taken the rest of the month, at least, off work. Other articles appearing at TetZoo during May include those on the creatures of Star Wars, palaeoartistic depictions of Styracosaurus, birdwatching in China, and cases where animals have died after they’ve been hit by falling rocks or trees.

Caption: I visited Bob Nicholls of paleocreations.com during summer 2019. Wow, he has some cool stuff. One of the psittacosaurs is for sale… Images: Darren Naish.

Hunting Monsters and the tabloid press. In early June I attended, and spoke at, the Cheltenham Science Festival. My talk was the Hunting Monsters one, initially prepared to promote the book of the same name (Naish 2017) back when it was new. The talk is on the history of cryptozoological theorising, on the reliability or otherwise of people as reporters of information, and on how the supposed targets of cryptozoology – ‘cryptids’ – might be explained. I signed and sold a bunch of books and had a great time, but an interesting thing happened after my talk.

Caption: books and book signing at the 2019 Cheltenham Science Festival. Jules Howard books make a guest appearance. Images: Darren Naish.

Two journalists – one from The Sun, one from The Daily Mail – were in the audience, and both asked if I thought that the lack of compelling photographic data (especially in an age where huge numbers of people now carry cameras with them most of the time) was essentially the death-knell for the existence of monsters. While things are not necessarily as simple as all that (not all animals can be photographed given the brief duration of many encounters, camera-phone photos are not necessarily good enough to be convincing to those with critical faculties, and so on), I do think that the rarity if not absence of photographic data for most cryptids counts for something, and I hence agreed with this contention. Both journalists were interested, quizzed me further on this point during the book-signing event, and said that this point would be used as the ‘hook’ in the pieces they were going to write. Remember: this idea was raised, de novo, by them and wasn’t mentioned or alluded to in my talk.

Caption: quality, genius journalism from the rag known as The Sun, oh what fun.

How, then, did the journalists concerned deal with this information? Well, you can see for yourselves from the screengrabs used here: the whole thing was spun in the weirdest direction, the take being that I’d only just concluded that cryptids aren’t real, and that I’d hence admitted to wasting about 20 years of research (as if monster-hunting is all I’ve done across the better part of my adult life). Needless to say, this is a nonsense interpretation of everything I’ve done and published. I wrote a response (initially as a series of threaded tweets); you can read it here.

Things kicked off from here, by which I mean that there was substantial further media interest. I turned down most requests for interviews (I’m at that point in my career and experience where I no longer see any benefit in making unpaid appearances on radio or TV. The claim that media exposure helps you, or is useful, is bullshit in my line of work) but did – under duress – do a brief thing for Channel 5 news (you can watch it here, if you want). So I learnt a lot from this, the main thing being that I’d underappreciated how vile and disgustingly biased and manipulative British tabloid journalism mostly is. Newspapers like The Sun approach issues with a rancid anti-intellectual agenda, with a clear intention to inspire and promote disdain, hate and ill will and – while an article written to make me look like an idiot has no national or international relevance or importance and won’t be remembered by anyone excepting myself – the impact that these redtop rags have on important issues (like Europe’s refugee crisis and the infinitely bad Brexit shitstorm) can’t be understated. Everyone knows this already, of course; I merely wanted to state it in my own words.

Caption: at the 2019 Dinosaurs and Art event - hosted at Oxford University Museum of Natural History - David Button uses the mounted Iguanodon bernissartensis replica to make a point about iguanodontian anatomy and posture. Image: Darren Naish.

Whale Watching, Fortean Times, Monsters of the Deep, Anglesey. Also in June, I watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters and was sufficiently inspired to write about it. I attended Will Tattersdill’s Dinosaurs and Art event at the University of Oxford and enjoyed talks by David Button and Verity Burke. I visited Bob Nicholl’s studio in South Gloucestershire (see montage above) and got to see a great deal of amazing in-prep, embargoed work, what an honour. My reminiscences of Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World, some thoughts on books about woodpeckers and my thoughts on Mark Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook were published at TetZoo.

Caption: you need a really good camera to take good photos of distant whales, and I don’t have one. So what I’d sometimes do, as a temporary record of recording what we’d seen, was photograph other people’s camera screens. Here, you can see someone else’s photo of two Cuvier’s beaked whales. Image: Darren Naish.

During July I went on a whale-watching trip in the Bay of Biscay. This was a fantastic experience (bar the desperate rush to get to the ship on time, I only just made it) where we saw hundreds of dolphins, several Fin whales, Minke whales, Cuvier’s beaked whales, Harbour porpoises and so on and I fully intend to go again as soon as opportunity allows. I wrote about the trip here; thanks again to Alex Srdic for use of his photos.

Caption: a scene from the Pont Aven, July 2019. Our progress across the Bay of Biscay is charted, and we keep tally of the cetaceans (and other interesting animals) we see. Image: Darren Naish.

Topics covered at TetZoo included European cave art, British journalism’s misplaced and weird hatred of gulls (see above re the British tabloid press) and dunnocks, and I also published an article reviewing the FIRST YEAR of TetZoo at its home here at tetzoo.com. I drew lots of passerines and snakes for my textbook and TetZooCon tickets went on sale.

Caption: here’s something that’s kind of a big deal. I worked - as consultant - on the second edition of Don Lessem’s Ultimate Dinopedia book, published 2017. And - look - here it is, making a guest appearance in season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale (in an episode that I watched in July 2019). In the episode, Emily reads part of the section on Spinosaurus (but changes the wording slightly relative to what’s actually in the book).

A really interesting TetZoo-relevant article appeared in Fortean Times in July: namely, a whole article on Hunting Monsters (Naish 2017), published as part of their ‘building a Fortean library’ series. The article was penned by The Hierophant’s Apprentice (there’s a long backstory there which’ll mean something to followers of Forteanism) and emphasises the book’s value as a sceptical review of cryptozoological claims and ideas (The Hierophant’s Apprentice 2019).

Caption: Hunting Monsters is written about in Fortean Times 382, what an honour.

On to August. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned here my in-prep museum exhibition – Monsters of the Deep – which will open in March 2020 at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, Cornwall. At the time of writing it’s near-finished and we’re about ready to go, but in August there was lots to do and I spent time in Falmouth, pulling things together. More on the exhibition below.

Caption: Red-billed choughs Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax on Anglesey. As usual, my photos aren’t the best, but at least they show what I saw. Choughs are among the oddest of corvids. Images: Darren Naish.

I travelled from Falmouth to Wales, meeting en route with my family, for a brief holiday in Anglesey. We had a fantastic time and watched Common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus and Grey seals Halichoerus grypus (both within just a few tens of metres of our residence), Red-billed choughs Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, a huge raft of Goosander Mergus merganser and a ton of seabirds.

Caption: a Goosander raft in the Menai Straits, Anglesey. Image: Darren Naish.

At Breakwater Country Park we visited the outdoor Charles Tunnicliffe gallery, which was a great thrill to me as he’s one of my favourite natural history artists, the works he contributed to (Ladybird Books and PG Tips teacards) being among my earliest influences. The Anglesey Sea Zoo was also great; I used the life-sized leatherback model in an effort to make a homage to the 1988 photos of the giant Harlech leatherback, a century-old specimen that stranded (after drowning in a fishing net) in Gwynedd, Wales, in September 1988 and is today on show at the National Museum, Cardiff. We also visited Ironbridge in Shropshire where I managed to pick up a (super cheap!) copy of J. A. Moy-Thomas’s 1939 book Palaeozoic Fishes.

Caption: my best efforts to mimic what happened in photos depicting the famous Harlech Beach leatherback. This model is on show at Anglesey’s Sea Zoo.

My article on British tabloid journalism’s approach to KILLER SEAGULLS appeared in BBC Science Focus magazine (Naish 2019b) and a reprinted article on the rise of dinosaurs in the Triassic also saw print (Naish 2019c). TetZoo articles of August included those promoting TetZooCon 2019, my review of Angus Dinsdale’s Loch Ness Monster book on his father (Tim Dinsdale), and a report on whale watching in the Bay of Biscay.

Caption: I took so many photos on Anglesey that I have too many to share, but here’s one more. Green spaces are of vital importance to our well-being, we must do everything to preserve them. The humans are Emma, Will and Toni. Image: Darren Naish.

King of the Sex Lakes. While out shopping I discovered that Brian Ford’s wretched book Too Big to Walk had succeeding in winning a second edition. Here’s the explanation for the ‘dInOsAuRs NeEdED sEx LaKeS’ story – wherein it was, apparently seriously, proposed that dinosaurs needed lakes for the purposes of mating, and that a drying up of said lakes in the Late Cretaceous caused dinosaur extinction – which hit the newswires earlier in the year (in May): it was evidently released to drum up interest in Ford’s alt-universe dinosaur project. Ford is a science writer who seems to regard himself as the ultimate expert on everything and, prior to his efforts to reform our understanding of dinosaurs (he thinks that all non-bird dinosaurs were aquatic), might be best known for his takes on spontaneous human combustion and alternative energy weapons.

Caption: a now iconic image. Nothing says science like a full run of Encyclopedia Brittanica.

I’ve already written too much about him (Naish 2012, plus this 2015 article at TetZoo), and at least some of you will know that I gave a talk at his own book launch (held at Conway Hall during May 2018). I did my best in that talk to counter his writings on dinosaurs and out them as the steaming pile they are. Anyway, said second edition of Too Big to Walk includes various updates relative to the first edition, the most interesting of which are those pertaining to the events of Conway Hall. Ford’s take on what happened is dishonest and inaccurate and I did my best to more accurately report events in a series of threaded tweets which you can read here.

Caption: Mr Ford talks about Riley Black on a cruise liner (from this 2015 TetZoo article). This is an old photo that comes from TetZoo ver 3: I try not to link directly to the SciAm host of ver 3 but to the wayback machine versions of the respective articles, firstly because SciAm have removed most of the images; secondly because they’ve paywalled them too. Image: Darren Naish.

Too Big to Walk, incidentally, currently scores 2.5 on Amazon and the only positive reviews appear to have been written by Mr Ford’s friends and allies. This is despite the fact that Ford (and/or his publishers) successfully lobbied to get several fair – but harshly negative – reviews written by qualified palaeontologists removed for ‘being biased’. As I’ve said before, I don’t want to write or talk about Brian Ford and his aquatic dinosaur nonsense again – what a waste of my time and effort – but I’ll continue to do so if I have to.

Caption: the ‘sex lakes’ idea was mocked hilariously throughout the year. I am nothing to do with these images, widely shared online.

It is especially amusing to see Mr Ford lie about the way his claims have been received within the palaeontological community. He’s claimed (on one of his facebook groups) that young palaeontologists “love” his work, that his stuff is only being resisted by the ‘old guard’ – who are busy squatting on their piles of accrued palaeo-dollars at the tops of their ivory towers – and that scientists far and wide are accepting his writings with open arms. When challenged, he can’t name any such scientist, however. I asked on Twitter if anyone out there really “loves” his stuff. The responses were pretty amusing, in that the main “love” for Ford’s view of dinosaurs comes from its potential as meme-worthy nonsense that’s fun to mock.

On that note, early 2020 saw the release of Lemme Splash!, a game in which your aim is to get two amorous, love-struck sauropods to the sex lakes. An excellent review, with some exposition, is provided here at Dino Dad Reviews. “Brian Ford, this is your legacy”.

Conference World. September and October are conference season, and September kicked off with PopPalaeo (properly: Popularising Palaeontology), hosted at King’s College, London, and arranged by Chris Manias. The entire meeting was devoted to palaeontological representation via media, and my own talk was on Dinosaurs in the Wild. It’s online here. Ilja Nieuwland brought along one of the recently discovered replicas of the original Hydrarchos skulls and there was a public engagement event involving an art exhibition and some public talks.

Caption: a Dinosaurs in the Wild Tyrannosaurus model observes events at PopPalaeo 2019. Image: Darren Naish.

The season’s second conference was the 67th SVPCA, this year held at Ryde, Isle of Wight. Because I only had clearance to go at the very last minute, I didn’t have time to throw a talk together. But I really wish I had, since my continuing (and seemingly never finished) research on Wealden theropods would have been absolutely relevant given the biases of the audience. The meeting was made memorable by my locking our entire party out of our shared accommodation, what fun.

Caption: some scenes from the 67th SVPCA, Isle of Wight. At left, a 3D-printed Neovenator skeleton. At right, a table-load of John Sibbick originals. Yes, ORIGINALS. Images: Darren Naish.

The big TetZoo-relevant event of the year is TetZooCon of course, and September is the month where things really have to be sorted out (John’s hectic schedule demands that we leave everything to the last minute). And thus it was that we discovered that The Venue – our, err, venue – had double-booked the room we needed, their suggested solution being that we hold the event at one venue on the first day but at a second venue on the second. Needless to say, this was unworkable and another solution would be needed. We got things resolved eventually, but what a mess. Even after five years of running these events we have yet to find a venue which is (a) affordable and (b) actually interested and reliable when it comes to organisation and communication.

Back at TetZoo, I published my review of Phil Senter’s Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? as well as parts 1 and 2 in the extreme cetaceans series. Episode 74 of the podcast was released.

Caption: it turns out that Brisbane is absolutely full of these amazing animals. I photographed every individual I saw. They were Australian water dragons Intellagama lesueurii. Image: Darren Naish.

During early October, my wife Toni and I flew to Scotland for the wedding of our friends Jeff and Femke (I’m fundamentally opposed to the concept of short-haul flights but… ugh… if you need to get to Scotland from southern England, flying is massively cheaper than going by train, ffs). I was only back a few days before I attended conference number three: the 79th Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, this year hosted in Brisbane, Australia. This was my very first trip to Australasia. I saw loads of great animals (my article on the birds I saw – published in mid November – is here), hung out with friends old and new, and obtained books and animal figures that aren’t ordinarily available back home in the UK. I attended the meeting for the talks and posters on Cretaceous dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles but it was made especially memorable by the many excellent presentations on Cenozoic marsupials, lizards, crocodylians and birds. A dinosaur-themed presentation that inspired a lot of discussion was Kayleigh Wiersma and Martin Sander’s on the claimed presence of beak-like tissues in sauropods; I was one of the several palaeontologists interviewed by John Pickrell for his Science article on the proposal.

Caption: scenes from the excellent Queensland Museum, Brisbane. At left, the famous Perentie Varanus giganteus specimen that died while swallowing an echidna (there’s an old TetZoo article about it here). At right, a real live wombat! Images: Darren Naish.

Finally on the conferences, conference number four – TetZooCon 2019 – happened on the weekend of 19th and 20th October. It was the biggest and best TetZooCon so far and included a dinosaur palaeobiology session and roundtable, a natural history film-making panel and section of talks, Mike Dickison’s Wikipedia workshop, several book signings, a dedicated palaeoart event and exhibition, and a proper merchandise area. The TetZoo write-up is here. Other reviews of the meeting can be found here at LITC (and here’s part 2), here at Luis Rey’s blog, here at Talita Bateman’s blog, here at Steve Allain’s herpetological blog, and here at Albert Chen’s Raptormanics.

Caption: at left: Lauren, Laura, Sam and Kannan at London’s Zoo Reptile House. At right: your humble author with a giant penguin. Always with the giant penguins. This one might be a little too giant. Images: Darren Naish.

A bunch of us went on a post-TetZooCon fieldtrip to ZSL London Zoo on the Monday after the convention. We saw nearly all of the animals. At the time of writing, John and I are in the earliest stages of discussion about TetZooCon 2020. We still don’t have the finances resolved from last year, so I can’t yet be sure that it’ll definitely be happening. But it probably will.

Caption: at left: Dr Cox/BiPolarCosplay as SkekSo, Skeksis Emperor. At right: Naish and Reddish, together at last.

I got to see the first episode of the new BBC natural history series Seven Worlds, One Planet in the cinema and attended London ComicCon with the kids. Highlights included meeting Reddish from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, Spawn and Violator, a Skeksis, a wookiee and a Hoth wampa. An entire episode of the Natural History Channel Podcast devoted to TetZooCon 2019 was released in November 2019 and can be found here. At TetZoo, my review of Robert France’s book on the New England Sea Serpent was published.

Caption: some Naishes (Will at left) with a Wampa; junior Hoth rebel at far right.

The freshly renamed pterosaur Targaryendraco was published at the end of November; I work on pterosaurs sometimes (I certainly have enough unfinished manuscripts on them kicking around) and was quoted in this Nat Geo article by John Pickrell. I actually told John a bunch of stuff that (for obvious and understandable reasons) didn’t make it into the final article, namely that Targaryendraco was being worked on by a second team who – arguably – could be said to have ‘academic priority’ on this project, and that the systematics and taxonomy of ‘ornithocheiroid-type’ pterosaurs has been slowed and stalled for decades by the efforts (or otherwise) of a certain pterosaur worker who shall remain nameless. FINAL EVIDENCE that the Phylonyms: A Companion to the PhyloCode volume will appear in 2020 – only a few decades too late – was received in November. I have one contribution in said volume. I should have three but – funny story – two of them were rejected after having been accepted, substantially revised in a loooong running series of exchanges, and listed as ‘in press’.

Caption: my time in Bristol means that I’ve made numerous visits to the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, which has a ton of excellent stuff. Here’s a dodo model, and an Archaeopteryx. Images: Darren Naish.

I went on a Climate Strike march in Bristol… I still can’t decide whether these events are a total waste of time or not: when it comes to the action that’s so urgently required, we’re still being dismally and catastrophically failed by the so-called leaders of our various countries.

Caption: a Climate Strike march in Bristol, November 2019. We want our governments to instigate change. They mostly want to carry on as normal, because who cares about the future. Image: Darren Naish.

A series of TetZoo articles on ‘alternative timeline dinosaurs’ appeared (part 1, part 2, part 3), which was good (and not entirely coincidental) timing since a BBC World Service radio show on the very same subject was released in November, and featured myself in addition to Memo Kösemen, Anjali Goswami, Elsa Panciroli and Nicola Clayton. I got to see one of my favourite bands – Metronomy – live at Bristol’s O2 Academy. And, with the family, I visited Birdworld in Surrey, home to one of the UK’s most exciting bird collections.

Caption: an ‘alternative timeline smart dinosaurs’ montage, featuring various creatures written about in the TetZoo series. Images: Jim Limwood, CC BY 2.0 (original here), Norman (1991), John Sibbick/Norman (1985), Darren Naish, C. M. Kösemen, John McLoughlin, Matt Collins, Mette Aumala.

Caption: a selection of birds on show at Birdworld, Surrey. They have a lot of great stuff. Images: Darren Naish.

A spider story. While out one December evening at a busy restaurant, I saw a large dark spider on the floor, and – as you do – went to pick it up so that I could relocate it in a place of safety. Unlike any other spider I’ve previously handled, it immediately bit me hard, latching its giant fangs into my left thumb and leaving two small bleeding holes in my skin. I’d been envenomated, and the wound hurt for the next few hours. The pain was about similar to that of a bee sting. The spider was Segestria florentina (the Tube web or Mouse spider), a species I know well but have never previously been bitten by. Segestria, incidentally, isn’t native to the UK but is now so widespread that it’s an established part of our fauna. I captured the spider in a small bucket and released it outside. Remember that animals which bite you are (ordinarily) terrified and in fear of their lives, not ‘angry’ as is so often stated.

Caption: Flame the dragon, on this occasion being most upset about the look of the sky. Image: Darren Naish.

It was also in December that we went live on the advertising for the Monsters of the Deep exhibition which I mentioned earlier. This has been a big part of my life for the last few years and rest assured that I’ll be writing about it once the exhibition is officially open. It’s mostly about European sea monster lore and covers medieval ideas about the creatures of the sea, mermaids, kraken, the scientific exploration of the oceans and cryptozoology. There isn’t currently much online content about the exhibition but, right now, you can get a basic idea of what’s going on here.

Caption: Monsters of the Deep teaser - more info is available here, and watch the National Maritime Museum, Falmouth Twitter account too.

Pressures of time mean that nothing has been published at TetZoo this month – as in, January – bar this article and the one on the Loveland Frog, the latter written as a tie-in to our ongoing efforts to get Cryptozoologicon Volume 2 finished (the ‘our’ referring to me, John Conway and C. M. Kösemen). And that, just about, brings us up to date…

In keeping with tradition, it’s at this point that I list the TetZoo articles of the year by category, analyse said coverage with taxonomic bias in mind (how fair, or unfair, have I been to the various tetrapod groups?), and then self-flagellate given that the bias usually reveals massive skew to charismatic megafauna. Here we go…

Miscellaneous Musings

• TetZoo Bookshelf, February 2019, Part 1

• Sleep Behaviour and Sleep Postures in Non-Human Animals

• On May the 4th, Some Star Wars Musings

• Death by Falling Rocks and Trees

• Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Some Trivial But Monstrous Thoughts

• Mark Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook

• Five Famous Palaeolithic Rock Art Enigmas

• The First Year of Tetrapod Zoology Ver 4

• Announcing TetZooCon 2019 – the Biggest Yet

• Final Call For TetZooCon 2019

• The Sixth TetZooCon

Mammals

• The Cautious Climber Hypothesis

• The New World Leaf-Nosed Bat Radiation

• Lessons From a Dog: a Life With Willow

• Remembering Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World

• Whale Watching in the Bay of Biscay

• Extreme Cetaceans, Part 1

• Extreme Cetaceans, Part 2

• Extreme Cetaceans, Part 3

Non-avialan dinosaurs

• Recollections of Dinosaurs Past and Present, the 1980s Exhibition

• The Fate of Burian’s Styracosaurus

• Philip J. Senter’s Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs?, the TetZoo Review

Birds

• A Multi-Species Nesting Assemblage in the Late Cretaceous of Europe

• Potoos As An Internet Phenomenon

• Cocks-of-the-Rock, Extreme Cotingas

• Birdwatching in Suburban China

• The World’s Best Books on Woodpeckers

• Tell Me Something Interesting About Dunnocks

• Hacks Vs Wildlife: the Eternal Vilification of Gulls

• Suburban Birdwatching in Queensland, Australia

Cryptozoology

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 1: Ronald Binns’s The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 2: Gareth Williams’s A Monstrous Commotion

• Usborne’s All About Monsters

• Sea Monster Sightings and the ‘Plesiosaur Effect’

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 3: The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness

• A Review of Robert L. France’s Disentangled: Ethnozoology and Environmental Explanation of the Gloucester Sea Serpent

• Lore of the Loveland Frog

SpecBio

• Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 1)

• Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 2)

• Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 3): the Dinosauroid and its Chums

Why Are Things Like This. Ok, there’s a bit to unpack here. Long-time readers will know that my aim at TetZoo is to achieve some sort of taxonomic balance whereby I write fairly and equally about the major tetrapod groups. Somehow I stupidly expect that this will magically just happen, which I know is ridiculously flawed and dumb, but there it is. Have I ever achieved said balance? There was a time when I felt I was getting close to achieving it but… no, no I haven’t. And as we can see from TetZoo’s subject coverage across 2019, I’m further away from it than ever, utterly failing across the year to cover amphibians, stem-mammals, squamates and so many other groups. This failure is mostly down to two things, and those things are things that make the ‘fair coverage’ failure somewhat ironic, and hopefully understandable. Forgivable, if you will.

Caption: for levity, some toys. Images: Darren Naish.

First thing: now that TetZoo is hosted at its very own site, I feel freer, more able to write about whatever relevant topic I like, however sensational or semi-serious. And I won’t lie: writing about the Loveland frog, alternative timeline dinosaurs or the Loch Ness Monster is easier for me than is writing about obscure skinks of New Guinea or turtle phylogeny. Those more technical, scientific topics – while worthy and of great interest to me – require so much more research and checking of the literature, and thus time. Time is the great constraint on everything I do. Oh, and money, but I’m not here to complain about that.

Caption: which of these two articles do you think brought in more visitors: the one about bigfoot’s dick, or the one about mystery skinks from Tonga? The answer may depress you, but may also be very predictable.

Second thing: tetzoo.com is still a relatively new site where I’m trying to build an audience. Both ScienceBlogs and SciAm – the two previous hosting sites for TetZoo – came with captive audiences of many thousands of readers, any number of whom would hop over to TetZoo when the interesting title of a TetZoo article appeared in a sidebar. This new hosting site doesn’t have that ‘captive audience’: I’m relying either on people who come here on a regular basis because they’ve been rewarded in the past (hello), or those who find the site while googling ‘what do we know about bigfoot’s genitals’, or whatever (hello to you too, please visit again). Ergo, part of my thinking has been that I should concentrate on some of the rather more sensational things I write about: experience and data shows that they do bring in more readers. If you doubt that, here’s a visitor graph showing what happens when I write about ‘humanoid dinosaurs of an alternative timeline’. People are fickle, and I’m trying to take advantage of that.

Caption: this is what happens when I blog about speculative zoology… I mean the peak at far right. So don’t judge me.

In fairness to myself, I should also add that my assorted dealings, projects and paying gigs over 2019 mostly revolved around cryptozoology, dinosaurs, speculative biology and sensational, weird animals, and not the more academic side of herpetology or vertebrate palaeontology. So there’s also some genuine justification for the biases in coverage we’re seeing here.

Caption: Andrew Dutt produced this masterpiece. It reflects John Conway’s great love of movies like Pacific Rim and the unstoppable force that is the Category V kaiju Petersquama. Image: Andrew Dutt, used with permission.

And that about wraps things up. This article is huge: about five times longer than a typical TetZoo article, and I did toy with the idea of splitting it up. I opted not to because I prefer to avoid dragging the birthday thing out; I’d rather move on to other things. Despite an ever-increasing workload and a continuing decrease in the time available to me for blogging (I’m writing this while sat on a train: I’ve just seen a group of Roe deer in a frozen field), my aim is to continue to publish new content as and when I can throughout 2020 and beyond. I thank you for visiting and reading TetZoo and hope that you’ll continue to do so. And happy 14th birthday, little blog.

Caption: another personally relevant thing I haven’t discussed here at all: 2019’s maturation of pond 2. It and its surrounds proved a total wildlife haven. I dearly hope this small green area persists after we move away…

For previous Tet Zoo birthday articles, see...

• Happy first birthday Tetrapod Zoology (part I)

• Happy first birthday Tetrapod Zoology (part II)

• Happy second birthday Tetrapod Zoology (part I)

• Tetrapods of 2007 (happy birthday Tet Zoo part II)

• Happy THIRD birthday Tet Zoo

• Tet Zoo = 4 years old today

• 2009, a year of Tet Zooery

• Four years of Tet Zoo: to infinity... and beyond!

• It is with some dismay that I announce Tet Zoo's first hemi-decade

• Tet Zoo 5th birthday extravaganza, part II

• Happy Birthday Tetrapod Zoology: SIX YEARS of blogging

• Happy 6th Birthday, Tetrapod Zoology (part II)

• Tetrapod Zoology enters its 8th year of operation

• Today marks NINE YEARS of Tetrapod Zoology

• Tetrapod Zoology 10th-Birthday Extravaganza, Part 1: 2015 in Review

• Tetrapod Zoology 10th Birthday Extravaganza, Part II: the Rest of 2015 Reviewed

• Tetrapod Zoology 10th-Birthday Extravaganza, Part 3: Tet Zoo's Tetrapod Treatment in 2015

• Today Is Tet Zoo's 11th Birthday

• The 12th Year of Tet Zoo

• The Tet Zoo 12th-Birthday Event, Part 2

• The Much Belated Final Part of the Tetrapod Zoology 12th Birthday Event

• Tetrapod Zoology Is A Teenager Now, January 2019

Refs - -

Barker, C. & Naish, D. 2019. What’s Where on Earth: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Life. Dorling Kindersley, London.

Camardo, G. 2019. Se non si fossero estinti, avremmo vinto noi o loro? Focus 317, 51-55.

Fernández, M. S., Wang, X., Vremir, M., Lauren, C., Naish, D., Kaiser, G. & Dyke, G. 2019. A mixed vertebrate eggshell assemblage from the Transylvanian Late Cretaceous. Scientific Reports 9, 1944.

Naish, D. 2012. Palaeontology bites back… Laboratory News May 2012, 31-32.

Naish, D. 2017. Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Naish, D. 2019a. The walk of prehistoric life. BBC Science Focus 334, 52-55, 58-59 (online version here).

Naish, D. 2019b. Seagulls: are they getting more aggressive? BBC Science Focus 340, 38-39.

Naish, D. 2019c. How dinosaurs conquered the world. BBC Science Focus Magazine Collection 13, 42-47.

Naish, D. & Barrett, P. M. 2018. Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved. The Natural History Museum, London.

Paxton, C. G. M. & Naish, D. 2019. Did nineteenth century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports? Earth Sciences History 38, 16-27.

The Hierophant’s Apprentice. 2019. Building a Fortean library No 47. There ain’t so such animal. Fortean Times 382, 56-57.

Lore of the Loveland Frog

At least some of you reading this will know my 2013 book The Cryptozoologicon, produced in collaboration with John Conway and C. M. Kösemen (Conway et al. 2013).

Caption: at left, cover of the 2013 book The Cryptozoologicon. At right, a scene from the book’s interior, depicting yetis in a Himalayan scene; by John Conway. Image: Conway et al. (2013).

The Cryptozoologicon is devoted to cryptids; that is, to mystery animals. After describing a given cryptid and proposing how it might actually be explained (sadly, most cryptids now seem to be sociocultural phenomena or the products of fakery or human error, not valid biological entities; Naish 2017), we go on to indulge in a bit of speculative zoology: that is, a bit of ‘what if’ speculation whereby we imagine ourselves inhabiting a parallel universe where cryptids are real (Conway et al. 2013)…

TetZoo regulars will know that a sequel to The Cryptozoologicon – it’s working title is The Cryptozoologicon Volume 2, duh – has been planned for some time, and we still aim to complete it ‘soon’. Which creatures will be covered in this soon-to-be-published work? I’m not saying, but the article you’re reading now concerns one, just one, of the cryptids we’ve included.

Caption: I really think that some artists have made the Loveland Frog look substantially too frog-like, and this is one of the most extreme examples. But, hey, it’s a nice and technically very competent piece of art. Nice to see Pioneer Dork being used as a scale bar. Image: artist unattributed, Cryptid Wiki (source).

Books on ‘mystery animals’ – cryptids and the like – include a veritable panoply of the weird, unbelievable and ridiculous. Among these, one of my favourites is the Loveland Frog (sometimes called the Loveland Lizard, but that’s just silly): a bipedal, vaguely reptilian animal, similar in size to a child, and supposedly encountered several times in the vicinity of Loveland, Ohio, USA between 1955 and 1972… and there are a few more recent claimed sightings too. The sightings describe greyish, bipedal creatures, said to have a frog-like head, bulging eyes, a leathery, reptile- or amphibian-type skin, and a standing height of between 3 and 4 feet.

The Loveland Frog has been discussed and revisited several times in the mystery animal literature, the tales recounted here having previously been published in Bord & Bord (1989), Newton (2005) and Shuker (2008)*. I especially like Bord & Bord’s (1989) section on the case because it includes the wonderful illustration you see below, produced by Ron Schaffner, and evidently based on a pencil drawing produced by one of the witnesses.

* Confession: I didn’t have Loren Coleman’s Mysterious America to hand while writing, nor W. Haden Blackman’s The Field Guide to North American Monsters. I understand that these works also include coverage of this creature.

Caption: Ron Schaffner’s evocative illustration of the Loveland Frog, very obviously based on the pencil sketch shown below. Note the suggestion of cranial horns, the rows of parasagittal spines and the oval eyes. Image: Ron Schaffner, from Bord & Bord (1989).

Sources that discuss the Loveland Frog most usually recount the observation of police officer Ray Shockey (though spelt Shocke in some sources) who stopped to observe a creature seen crossing the road at 1am on March 3rd 1972, when it was cold enough for the road to be icy. Shockey’s creature was in a crouching position but then stood erect and stared in Shockey’s direction before climbing the guardrail separating the road from the ground that slopes down to the Little Miami River (Newton 2005, Haupt 2015). Other officers later came out to check Shockey’s observations. There’s some talk of them finding scratch marks on the guardrail but efforts to locate photos verifying the presence of said scratches haven’t been successful (Haupt 2015).

Caption: A pencil drawing of the Loveland Frog, I assume that made by Ray Shockey (though I’ve been unable to confirm this; I found it, unattributed, at various sites online and haven’t seen it in print). The artist evidently had quite some skill.

An account similar to Shockey’s was made by another police officer – Mark Matthews – two weeks later, and this again involved the animal being encountered on the road at night and seen from a patrol car. Matthews was concerned as the creature stood up from a crouched stance and fired his gun at it – yee-haw!! ‘Murica!! – and seemingly injured the animal. Again, it climbed out of sight over the guardrail.

Caption: another depiction of Shockey’s frogish encounter, this time showing the creature with a sumptuous butt and disturbingly human-like physique. This image is widely available online but I’ve been unable to find the artist’s name.

But Matthews later claimed that none of this was accurate, that he’d actually seen a big lizard (an escaped pet iguana?), and that he’d augmented the story as a way of making his colleague (Shockey) seem like less of a nut. I really like the deep investigation of this account provided by Ryan Haupt for the Skeptoid Podcast (here; Haupt 2015). It provides lots of additional information and is clearly substantially more reliable than the recountings of events provided in standard cryptozoology- and paranormal-themed websites and publications. Haupt states that there’s what appears to be an email confession from Matthews whereby the account was dismissed as being ‘blown out of proportion’, though its authenticity (it – the ‘confession’ – appears to have originated from this 2001 article from X-Project Paranormal Magazine) is doubtful. An implication that a big lizard might have been seen must also be considered doubtful in view of the icy conditions (and cold temperatures) of the time. A big lizard would be hiding away somewhere, not out and about. Apparently, there’s a sketch that accompanies either Shockey’s or Matthews’s account (Newton 2005; though his text seems to combine both accounts into a single sighting); I assume it’s the pencil one shared above. A local farmer is also said to have seen a Loveland Frog shortly afterwards but details are hazy.

Caption: images showing all three of Hunnicut’s Loveland Frogs together are rare, but at least there’s this fine piece of work by John Meszaros. Image: Cryptids State-by-State, John Meszaros (source).

The oldest Loveland Frog story pre-dates these 70s one and concerns a sighting made on an Ohio roadside during the early morning of May 25th 1955. The story goes that a businessman or travelling salesman – sometimes said to be unknown and sometimes specifically identified as Mr Robert Hunnicut (Newton 2005) – was driving home from work when, at 3.30am, he saw three bipedal, greyish reptilian creatures, each about 3 feet tall. The witness stopped and observed them for a few minutes. In some versions of the story, the creatures were seen ‘conversing’, in some they were observed under a bridge, and in some one of them held a cylindrical or wand-like device above its head. This released sparks and was frightening enough that it inspired the witness to flee.

Post-1972, the Loveland Frog has been rare. There’s a 2016 event in which two teenagers – out playing Pokémon Go, apparently (this isn’t a sexual euphemism) – supposedly saw and even photographed what appears to be the creature. But as you can see for yourself, this event is almost definitely a hoax.

Caption: a still from the 2016 footage taken by Sam Jacobs and his girlfriend. The actual footage is exceedingly dark and this image has been brightened as much as possible (by the people at Fox19 News). Some think that the photo actually shows a lawn decoration with added lightbulbs. Image: Fox19 News (source).

Explaining the Loveland Frog, or trying to. Given the several peculiarities of the 1955 ‘three creatures’ account, it’s not surprising that some authors have sought to identify the Loveland Frog as an alien rather than an unknown denizen of Planet Earth. Assuming that Loveland Frog accounts represent actual observations, an explanation mooted by some authors is that they could be confused descriptions of escaped pet iguanas or monitor lizards (Bord & Bord 1989). This is hard to accept given the bipedal postures that witnesses reported, plus the descriptions don’t recall big lizards at all. At a stretch we might consider that big lizards in fleeting bipedal or erect-standing poses were witnessed, with substantial embellishment and confusion resulting in substantially modified descriptive accounts, but the cold temperatures present during some of the sightings also count against this idea.

Perhaps, some might suppose, these fleeting glimpses of big escaped lizards were inadvertently (or deliberately) combined in the minds of the witnesses with their prior knowledge about the ‘big frog monsters’ already said to inhabit the Miami River region. Such stories go back to the 1950s at least and it should be noted that a similar-sounding entity, the ‘Lizardman’, was reported during the 1970s from South Carolina, New Jersey and Kentucky. In other words, there seems to be lore in the region about such creatures… which might mean that any fleetingly-glimpsed, unidentified weird animal could morph into a monster of this sort in the memories of witnesses.

Caption: this is the very best photo of the South Carolina Lizardman, though sadly I couldn’t find the version with the top hat and cane. Taken by a mysteriously anonymous source.

Also worth noting is that the 1950s were the time when amphibious fish-monster creatures were being depicted on the big screen. The sensational and highly popular Creature from the Black Lagoon premiered in 1954 and could well have inspired people – consciously or not – to think or pretend that they might really encounter ‘frog people’ or ‘lizard people’ of this sort.

Caption: is it really coincidental that the Creature from the Black Lagoon appeared the year prior to the first appearance of the Loveland Frog? Well, probably not. Image: public domain (original here).

One more thing. If we’re going to take seriously the idea that Hunnicut and the other alleged witnesses saw real animals and misidentified them, the possibility that they saw big reptiles has to be considered quite unlikely, as noted above. Deer, standing at the roadside and seen in front view, sometimes look like humanoid bipeds since their bodies, hindlimbs and snouts merge into invisibility. I came up with this idea myself after seeing a scary roadside ‘biped’ with a round body, wide neck and slender legs morph into a deer as the car I was in approached and passed it, and I think that a few very odd sightings of similar creatures (like John Irwin’s Wharton State Forest monster of December 1993; Coleman 1995) could be explained the same way. Could confused observations of this sort explain creatures like the Loveland Frog? It’s worth considering.

Caption: how do we explain (or attempt to explain) ‘monster’ sightings like the creature reported by John Irwin in 1993? Irwin’s drawing (from Coleman 1995) is shown at left. The ‘monster’ here has several deer-like features. Could it be that Irwin saw a foreshortened deer and misinterpreted it as a biped? The deer image at right (a Wapiti female) is from Geist (1999). Images: Coleman (1995), Geist (1999).

It came from the Squamozoic. The existence of metre-tall, bipedal reptile-like creatures has to be regarded as fairly unlikely, especially when those reptile-like creature are seen carrying mechanical devices that emit sparks. The real identity behind the creature is obvious, but only if we admit the reality of parallel universes, time travel, and the ability of some creatures to somehow move between disparate points in space and time.

The Loveland Frog was no giant, humanoid frog at all, but actually a giant, vaguely humanoid lizard, and specifically one of the short-faced, big-brained iguanians from the parallel Earth of the Squamozoic.

Caption: short-faced, tailless, bipedal body forms evolved on a few occasions among the iguanians of the Squamozoic, most famously in the terrameleons (this is a Terrible terrameleon). It’s not a big step from here to time-travelling, intelligent, tool-using iguanians in 20th century Ohio. Image: electriceel.

On Squamozoic Earth, squamates (lizards, snakes and amphisbaenians) evolved to dominate the large-bodied animal fauna of the planet, and heightened intelligence evolved on several occasions. We conclude that the Loveland Frog is one of the intelligent American iguanians, presumably one that comes from a point in time somewhere in the future relative to our own position in the timeline. Whether these intelligent, parallel-universe iguanians have learnt to master time-travel and hence are deliberately travelling to 20th century Ohio as part of an exploratory or invasive mission, or whether they are merely falling inadvertently through some sort of interdimensional window, we cannot know, but perhaps we will in time.

Caption: a large, intelligent iguanian from the Squamozoic surely explains the Loveland Frog (and likely Lizardman and similar cryptids too). Here are but a few of the Squamozoic’s many denizens. Image: Darren Naish.

Our conclusion that some mystery creatures encountered on Earth are actually travellers from parallel dimensions was unashamedly inspired by promotion of the same idea, presented as a serious possibility in some of the mystery animal literature (Keel 1975, Bord & Bord 1980) and clearly not contradicted by our understanding of the way reality works.

Caption: the Bords were surely right, and John Keel was too.

On that note, The Cryptozoologicon Volume 2 will appear one day, we promise.

For previous TetZoo articles on the Cryptozoologicon project and on cryptozoology and mystery creatures in general, see…

• Tales from the Cryptozoologicon: the Yeti, August 2013

• Tales from the Cryptozoologicon: Megalodon!, August 2013

• The Cryptozoologicon (Volume I): here, at last, December 2013

• If Bigfoot Were Real, June 2016

• Bigfoot’s Genitals: What Do We Know?, August 2018

• A Review of Robert L. France’s Disentangled: Ethnozoology and Environmental Explanation of the Gloucester Sea Serpent, November 2019

The publication of The Cryptozoologicon Volume 2 and other various in-prep TetZoo projects is in part contingent on crowd-funded support, as is the continued appearance of new articles at this blog. Huge thanks to those who support TetZoo at patreon. If you’re interested in pledging support and seeing in-prep work, please click here.

Refs - -

Bord, J. & Bord, C. 1980. Alien Animals. Granada, London.

Bord, J. & Bord, C. 1989. Modern Mysteries of the World. Guild Publishing, London.

Coleman, L. 1995. Jersey Devil walks again. Fortean Times 83, 49.

Conway, J., Kosemen, C. M. & Naish, D. 2013. Cryptozoologicon Volume I. Irregular Books.

Geist, V. 1999. Deer of the World. Swan Hill Press. Shrewsbury.

Haupt, R. 2015. The Loveland Frog. Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, 30 Jun 2015. Web. 11 Jan 2020.

Keel, J. 1975. Strange Creatures from Time & Space. Nevill Spearman, London.

Naish, D. 2017. Hunting Monsters. Arcturus, London.

Newton, M. 2005. Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology. McFarland & Company, Jefferson (N. Carolina) and London.

Shuker, K. P. N. 2008. Dr Shuker’s Casebook: In Pursuit of Marvels and Mysteries. CFZ Press, Woolsery (Devon, UK).

Extreme Cetaceans, Part 3

Hello faithful and noble readers. Recall the unfinished series on EXTREME CETACEANS? Today we continue with the next episode in said series.

Caption: Stenella longirostris, Phocoena dioptrica and Sousa chinensis, three of the cetacean species covered in the previous parts of this series. Image: Darren Naish.

If you don’t know what the deal is here, it’s that I’m writing about those cetaceans which I consider ‘extreme’, this meaning that they’re “weird, possessing anatomical specialisations and peculiarities that are counter-intuitive and little discussed, and most likely related to an unusual ecology, physiological regime, feeding strategy or social or sexual life”, to quote the first article in the series. And thus we get on with it…

Right whale dolphins. Many dolphin species are aesthetically pleasing because they’re of a beautifully streamlined, attenuate shape, and because they have clean, tidy colour schemes where contrasting blocks of colour are neatly separated, and sometimes augmented or marked by parallel, sweeping lines. This combination – an attenuate, streamlined form and a tidy, well-demarcated colour scheme – is carried to an extreme in the two Lissodelphis species, or right whale dolphins.

Caption: Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny’s 1847 illustration of the Southern right whale dolphin Lissodelphis peronii. The species is named for naturalist François Peron, the first European to report a sighting of this species. Image: public domain (original here).

Right whale dolphins are mid-sized as dolphins go (about 2-3 m long), short-beaked, and incredibly attenuate. Their pectoral flippers and tail flukes are small, a dorsal fin is absent, and the tailstock tapers to a ridiculous degree. They also have the flashiest, tidiest colour scheme of black and white. They look nothing like the enormous, super-bulky right whales, but do resemble them in lacking a dorsal fin. They’re also incredibly fast, among the fastest of all cetaceans,

Caption: a Southern right whale dolphin group, photographed in 2008. These dolphins are often seen in large groups of 100 individuals or more. Image: Lieutenant Elizabeth Crapo, NOAA Corp, public domain (original here).

Right whale dolphins, incidentally, are close kin of lags (the Lagenorhynchus and Sagmatias dolphins) and probably of the small, short-beaked Cephalorhynchus dolphins (the most familiar of which is the piebald Commerson’s dolphin C. commersoni) (McGowen et al. 2009). But in my headcanon they’re either miniaturised, late-surviving basilosaurids, or whale-mimicking, fully aquatic penguins that have time-travelled from the Dixonian Era to the present. Look at the pictures here and you’ll see what I mean.

Caption: old depictions of basilosaurs and other archaeocetes – those at top are from McEwan (1978) and Naish (1996) – reveal that right whale dolphins are actually descendants of a lineage outside of Neoceti. Or perhaps they’re future penguins, like the Vortex (from Dixon 1981). Images: McEwan (1978) and Naish (1996), Dixon (1981).

The Pesut. In 1989, I thought I knew all the extant cetacean species known to science at the time. So I was blown away when the Today newspaper, which I used to read, ran a two-page feature on a very odd cetacean which was touted as “the only new breed to be discovered in thirty-four years”, this being a reference to the number of years that had elapsed since the scientific naming of Fraser’s dolphin Lagenodelphis hosei in 1956. Evidently, the article was reporting a proposal – seemingly originating with Francois-Xavier Pelletier – in which the cetacean concerned was being considered a potential new species. Grey, toothless and prone to squirting jets of water for fun, it was said to be a freshwater inhabitant of Borneo’s Mahakam River, and was dubbed the Pesut. The what?

Caption: a Today newspaper article of 1989 reports ‘the Pesut’ as a new kind of dolphin. I regret that I don’t have the complete citation for this article; in my wisdom I clipped the date and other details at some point. Readers with exceptional memories might recognise the photo at upper right as the inspiration for a SpecZoo-themed piece of art…

Today, the Pesut isn’t regarded as a distinct species, but a local variant of the Irrawaddy dolphin Orcaella brevirostris. It’s known locally as the Pesut Mahakam, more formally as the Mahakam River dolphin, and is seemingly – with the rest of the Orcaella dolphins – an early-diverging member of the globicephaline clade (McGowen et al. 2009, Vilstrup et al. 2011), otherwise known for including killer whales, pilot whales and kin, the ‘blackfish’ [UPDATE: killer whales no longer appear to be part of Globicephalinae; see comments]. Pelletier’s proposal that the Mahakam River Orcaella population might be distinct is odd, since anyone familiar with the historical taxonomy of Orcaella knows (or should have known, even in 1989) that Pesut Mahakam is a local name for some riverine populatons of O. brevirostris (Marsh et al. 1989). Furthermore, there’s a long history of riverine Orcaella populations being considered distinct and of having their taxonomic status tested and re-evaluated.

Caption: an Irrawaddy dolphin photographed in Cambodia. Image: Stefan Brending, CC BY-SA 3.0 (original here).

Whatever, the Pesut does look kinda unusual. Books on whales very often say or imply that the Boto or Amazon river dolphin Inia geoffrensis and Beluga Delphinapterus leucas are the only two living cetaceans with an especially mobile neck, but this very probably isn’t true and Pesuts are often shown with the head being held at an obvious angle relative to the body. Other weird features that make the Pesut ‘extreme’ are its globular, short-snouted face and smiling mouthline, and the crease that runs along part of its dorsal midline.

Caption: an effort to portray an Irrawaddy dolphin in life. This dolphin can reach 2.75 m in length, males being larger. Image: Darren Naish.

If you know anything about cetaceans you’ll be aware of the fact that the Irrawaddy dolphin is superficially similar to the Beluga, and it’s this similarity which has led to the occasional suggestion that Orcaella might not be a dolphin but a tropical member of the same family as the Beluga (Monodontidae). This isn’t a ridiculous idea, but it isn’t supported by the detailed anatomy of this animal, or by molecular data.

Caption: I said the montage would become increasingly cluttered. And we’re not done yet. Image: Darren Naish.

And that’s where we’ll end things for now; the next article in the series will appear soon. And I’ll publish a lot more on whales here in the future. Here’s some of the stuff that exists in the archives (as always, much of the material at TetZoo versions 2 and 3 has been ruined by the removal of images, so I’m linking to wayback machine versions)…

• A 6 ton model, and a baby that puts on 90 kg a day: rorquals part I, October 2006

• From cigar to elongated, bloated tadpole: rorquals part II, October 2006

• Lunging is expensive, jaws can be noisy, and what’s with the asymmetry? Rorquals part III, October 2006

• On identifying a dolphin skull, July 2008

• Seriously frickin' weird cetacean skulls: Kogia, shark-mouthed horror, July 2008

• Scaphokogia!, July 2008

• Cetacean Heresies: How the Chromatic Truthometer Busts the Monochromatic Paradigm, April 2015

• Remembering Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World, June 2019 

• Whale Watching in the Bay of Biscay, August 2019

• Extreme Cetaceans, Part 1, September 2019

• Extreme Cetaceans, Part 2, September 2019

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Refs - -

Dixon, D. 1981. After Man: A Zoology of the Future. Granada, London.

Marsh, H., Lloze, R., Heinsohn, G. E. & Kasuya, T. 1989. Irrawady dolphin Orcaella brevirostris (Gray, 1866). In Ridgway, S. H. & Harrison, R. (eds) Handbook of Marine Mammals Volume 4. Academic Press (London), pp. 101-118.

McEwan, G. J. 1978. Sea Serpents, Sailors & Sceptics. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Henley & Boston.

McGowen, M. R., Spaulding, M., Gatesy, J. 2009. Divergence date estimation and a comprehensive molecular tree of extant cetaceans. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 53, 891-906.

Naish, D. 1996. Ancient whales, sea serpents and nessies part 2: theorising on survival. Animals & Men 10, 13-21.

Vilstrup, J. T., Ho, S. Y., Foote, A. D., Morin, P. A., Kreb, D., Krützen, M., Parra, G. J., Robertson, K. M., de Stephanis, R., Verborgh, P., Willerslev, E., Orlando, L. & Gilbert, M. T. P. 2011. Mitogenomic phylogenetic analyses of the Delphinidae with an emphasis on the Globicephalinae. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11: 65.

Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 3): the Dinosauroid and its Chums

Welcome to another article on alternative timeline dinosaurs.

Caption: what’s this? It’s an unfinished sculpt of the head of Paranthropoharpax, by Mette Aumala. Read on for more. Image: (c) Mette Aumala.

The previous two articles looked at recent and current ideas on those non-bird dinosaurs that might have evolved in alternative timelines where the end-Cretaceous extinction event never happened, and where the modern world is occupied by the descendants of groups that otherwise went extinct about 66 million years ago. You can see those articles here and here. And the most recent of those two articles looked at the ‘would there be humans anyway?’ argument, always a mainstay of alternative timeline dinosaur discussion.

Caption: a whole bunch of dinosauroids, variously by (left to right) Mette Aumala, C. M. Kösemen, John McLoughlin, Matt Collins, John Sibbick.

The other big question that everyone asks about post-Cretaceous, alternative timeline dinosaurs is also about the evolution of intelligence, but this time of a non-human sort. If non-bird dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, surely they’d give rise to animals of primate-like, if not human-like, intelligence… right? The ‘intelligent dinosaur’ meme has been covered quite a bit here on TetZoo before (see links below), the problem as always being that my older articles on this subject are today plagued by hosting issues. For this reason I’ve linked below to the wayback machine versions of the articles concerned.

Caption: if you’ve ever opened a post-1980s dinosaur book, chances are high that you’ve seen photos of Dale Russell and Ron Séguin’s troodontid and dinosauroid models. This is the commonest set of images, as reproduced in Russell (1987, 1989) and other sources.

Conversations about big-brained dinosaurs invariably revolve – as well they should – around Dale Russell’s ‘dinosauroid’ of the 1980s, an imaginary humanoid theropod which Russell posited as a possible evolutionary descendant of troodontid theropods had they continued to evolve beyond the end of the Cretaceous. I’m keen to avoid saying too much about the dinosauroid here for fear of repeating content, but it’s worth noting that Russell’s vision of the dinosauroid was more fleshed out and detailed than many assume, and that its anatomy was more complex and nuanced than might first appear (Russell & Séguin 1982). Anyway, please read the older TetZoo articles if you want to dig deeper.

Caption: a rare photo of Dale Russell (at left) and Ron Séguin in the company of the dinosauroid; this photo belongs to the archives of the Canadian Museum of Nature and was shared in September 2019 by Jordan Mallon. Image: (c) CMN.

The dinosauroid’s infamy was and is due to the construction of an amazingly good life-sized model by sculptor Ron Séguin, who collaborated with Russell on the project (Russell & Séguin 1982). I saw the model in person in 1990 when it came to the UK for the Dinosaurs Past & Present exhibition, but failed to take the illegal photos I now so wish I had. You can read about my recollections of that amazing exhibition here (and be sure to read the comments).

Caption: Ely Kish’s dinosauroid models, used as the basis for a large painting which she finished; it remains in storage and has never seen print. These images were shared on Michael Ryan’s blog (here). Images: (c) Michael Ryan.

Séguin’s construction is well known, but a revelation new(ish) to some of us is that the late Ely Kish – another artist who collaborated with Russell (Russell 1987, 1989) – produced several amazing pieces of art that depict dinosauroids in assorted novel settings. One (a clay sculpture) shows a parent playing with a baby-faced youngster, and another – a large painting – shows a 1980s-era dinosauroid drawing attention to a reconstruction of an artistic scene. That scene is a piece of palaeoart, produced by the dinosauroids, and depicting their own kind during its cave-dwelling, ‘Palaeolithic’ phase of evolution. To my knowledge, the painting has never been published, perhaps because Dale Russell gave up on any dinosauroid-themed projects following the negative response the idea received after appearing in print during the early 80s. It was apparently produced for Russell’s 1989 book An Odyssey in Time: the Dinosaurs of North America (Russell 1989) but eventually excluded.

Caption: some post-Russell versions of the dinosauroid. At far left: a life-sized model on display at Dorchester’s Dinosaur Museum (I think made by Dougal Dixon); at centre, two views of the suit made by Peter Minister for the 1991 TV series Dinosaur!; at far right, John Sibbick’s take on the dinosauroid, from David Norman’s 1985 book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. Images: Jim Limwood, CC BY 2.0 (original here), Norman (1991), John Sibbick/Norman (1985).

The dinosauroid has proved such a mainstay of post-1980s dinosaur pop-culture that it’s mentioned and discussed in a vast number of popular books on dinosaurs and prehistoric life, and has often been redrawn (often incorrectly); models and even suits worn by actors have been constructed too. One day I should compile a bibliography. And dinosauroid-like animals have been invented by several writers and authors beyond Dale Russell, among them John McLoughlin’s big-brained dromaeosaur (McLoughlin 1984), Magee’s Anthroposaurus (Magee 1993), the hadrosaurian Voth of Star Trek: Voyager, and Mette Aumala’s Paranthropoharpax naishi.

Caption: at left, John McLoughlin’s dinosauroid (which I opted to name Bioparaptor). At right: the cover of Magee’s unusual book on big-brained dinosaurs (which Amazon now values at about £200). Images: McLoughlin 1984, Magee 1993.

I still say that the dinosauroid sucks. Its entire look is dependent on the idea that the human shape is the ‘best’ one for an intelligent, big-brained animal, an idea that Russell appears to find palatable if not preferable (Russell 1987, p. 130; Psihoyos & Knoebber 1994, p. 252). But this doesn’t mean that the entire concept of big-brained smart dinosaurs is a bad one. As has now been said many times, birds (parrots and corvids, at least) overlap with primates in relative brain size and cognitive abilities, meaning not only that big-brained smart dinosaurs evolved for real in our own timeline, but also that it could happen again in a timeline where other bird-like lineages exist.

And if big-brained, smart non-bird theropods really evolved, they would – I think – more likely be shaped like birds and other theropods: not erect-bodied and humanoid, but horizontal-bodied, feathery, and with the long-snouted faces and inward-facing, clawed hands more typical of the group. This argument is old hat now since it got a lot of coverage back in 2006 when C. M. Kösemen (aka Memo) – inspired, I think, by my writings on alternative timeline smart dinosaurs – invented Avisapiens saurotheos.

Caption: for a change, I’m not going to share Memo’s Avisapiens (well, it’s already visible in the montage at top), but Mette Aumala’s Paranthropoharpax naishi. For an article on this creature go here. Mette has recently been working on a CG portraits of this species (go here on Twitter). Image (c) Mette Aumala.

In the years since 2006, Memo has invented additional big-brained hypothetical dinosaurs and – via collaboration with Simon Roy – has devised a parallel world where big-brained dinosaurs of more than one species possess their own culture, technology and art, and are depicted alongside beasts of burden and other contemporaries. Post-2006, we’ve also seen the coming and going of the 2007 kid’s TV series Dinosapien, the appearance of some surprisingly pro-dinosauroid commentary from Richard Dawkins (I wrote about that event here), and the coverage of the dinosauroid in numerous articles and books (e.g., Hecht 2007, Naish 2008, Socha 2008, Switek 2010, Losos 2017).

Caption: screengrabs of pages from two recent-ish articles discussing the dinosauroid: Hecht (2008) and Socha (2008).

And the big-brained dinosaur trope continues to raise its head in the popular and semi-technical sphere, often from people who seemingly aren’t aware of Russell’s dinosauroid and appear to be discovering it for the first time. The increasing popularity of ideas about humanoid reptilian aliens and a cryptic elite of shape-shifting lizard-people (good work, David Icke) mean that people whose idea of research starts and ends with Google are discovering dinosauroids and somehow working them into a world view that involves the Illuminati and high-level One World Government conspiracies. In short, it’s an idea that isn’t going away, and Jonathan Losos was right in saying that “… to my surprise … The dinosauroid hypothesis was alive and thriving in cyberspace” (Losos 2017, p. 323).

And that, effectively, brings us up to date…. for now. What might happen next in the world of Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs?

My writing and research is dependent on crowd-funded support. Thanks to those whose patronage made this article, and the others you read here, possible. Please consider assisting me if you can, thank you!

 For previous TetZoo articles on alternative timeline dinosaurs and related issues of SpecZoo, see…

• Dinosauroids revisited, November 2006

• Dinosauroid cave art discovered, March 2007

• How intelligent dinosaurs conquered the world, March 2008

• Come back Lank, (nearly) all is forgiven, September 2008

• Belatedly, Nemoramjetia (= Avisapiens), November 2008

• Richard Dawkins and the crappy 'humanoid dinosaurs' that just won't die, November 2009

• Dinosauroids revisited, revisited, October 2012

• Of After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Greenworld: an interview with Dougal Dixon, April 2014

• Speculative Zoology at Tet Zoo, The Story So Far, May 2015

• Speculative Zoology, a Discussion, June 2018

• Could We Domesticate (Non-Bird) Dinosaurs?, August 2018

• The Dougal Dixon After Man Event of September 2018, September 2018

• TetZoo Bookshelf, February 2019, Part 1, February 2019

• Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 1), December 2019

• Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 2), December 2019

Refs - -

Hecht, J. 2007. Smartasaurus. Cosmos 15, 40-41.

Losos, J. B. 2017. Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution. Riverhead Books, New York.

Magee, M. 1993. Who Lies Sleeping: the Dinosaur Heritage and the Extinction of Man. AskWhy! Publications, Frome.

McLoughlin, J. 1984. Evolutionary bioparanoia. Animal Kingdom April/May 1984, 24-30.

Naish, D. 2008. Intelligent dinosaurs. Fortean Times 239, 52-53.

Norman, D. 1991. Dinosaur! Boxtree, London.

Psihoyos, L. & Knoebber, J. 1994. Hunting Dinosaurs. Cassell, London.

Russell, D. A. 1987. Models and paintings of North American dinosaurs. In Czerkas, S. J. & Olson, E. C. (eds) Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume I. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County/University of Washington Press (Seattle and Washington), pp. 114-131.

Russell, D. A. 1989. An Odyssey in Time: the Dinosaurs of North America. NorthWord Press, Minocqua, WI.

Russell, D.A. & Séguin, R. 1982. Reconstruction of the small Cretaceous theropod Stenonychosaurus inequalis and a hypothetical dinosauroid. Syllogeus 37, 1-43.

Socha, V. 2008. Dinosauři: hlupáci, nebo géniové? Svĕt 3/2008, 14-16.

Switek, B. 2010. Written in Stone: the Hidden Secrets of Fossils and the Story of Life on Earth. Bellevue Literary Press, New York.

Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 2)

In the previous article we looked at alternative timeline dinosaurs, and in particular at Dougal Dixon’s The New Dinosaurs, at the Speculative Dinosaur project, and at a few things that connect these two endeavours.

We finished that article by introducing an idea mentioned or discussed several times in discussions about SpecZoo: given that mammal evolution would surely continue in a dinosaur-dominated, post-Cretaceous world, could big-bodied mammals evolve, and could they give rise to humans... or, at least, to human-like primates?

Before I continue, I should add that this issue is especially topical at the time of writing (early December 2019) since a BBC World Service radio programme featuring this very issue has just appeared. It’s part of the CrowdScience series, is titled ‘Would humans exist if dinosaurs were still alive?’ and can be found here. It features me, Memo Kosemen, Elsa Panciroli, Anjali Goswami and Nicola Clayton.

Caption: a whole radio show on speculative dinosaurs! You need a BBC account to access it. Image: BBC (from here).

Could there be humans? Well, this would require the (mostly) terrestrial evolution of a big-bodied primate group, and I said in the previous article (where I called it the no megamammals rule) that that might not be possible in a dinosaur-dominated world (and I mean because dinosaurs and other archosaur groups were filling up the available niche space, not because predatory species were perpetual eliminators of animals that dared set foot on the ground or anything like that). Could, then, we have hypothetical ‘human-level’ apes (thinking here of cultural and technological sophistication, and/or relative intelligence) evolve in an arboreal setting?

Here it’s worth saying that the existence of hypothetical climbing and flying predatory archosaurs might not be an evolutionary obstacle to the existence of relatively big arboreal mammals. I say this because large, scansorial and arboreal mammals have already evolved in a world where they’re predated upon by large, predatory flying theropods, some of which can reach into cavities with flexible legs and feet, or pull relatively big prey items (like sloths and big monkeys) from treetops and branches.

But… if I let my archosaur bias run away with me, I might propose that the existence of arboreal mammals in a dinosaur-dominated world could encourage the evolution of specialised scansorial or arboreal archosaurs (presumably theropods) that have somehow influenced primate evolution, and ultimately derailed any potential evolution of proto-humans. I like this idea, and it isn’t entirely without precedent in our own timeline, since it’s been formally suggested that the predation pressure exerted upon primates by large predatory reptiles – snakes, specifically – has indeed shaped primate evolution (Isbell 2006).

Caption: a speculative arboreal maniraptoran from an alternative timeline. It runs and leaps about in tropical tree-tops, has extremely powerful, prehensile feet, and predates on primate-like mammals. Image: Darren Naish.

Here’s another possibility: could human-like apes evolve on an island refugium where archosaurs weren’t dominant? The idea that ‘unusual’ animals can evolve and persist on islands is already a mainstay of island biogeography theory and verified by many real-world examples. A dinosaur-dominated post-Cretaceous world must be allowed to include similar diversity, and maybe this is where you find your big, atypical mammals (and perhaps big tortoises, arthropods and whatever else).

Could human-like primates evolve on islands? Well, this would require that your ancestral primates occurred in such places in the first place, and that the relevant selection pressures would have led to the evolution of human-like animals. While this isn’t impossible, it seems unlikely: there are good reasons for thinking that the ecological conditions specific to certain regions of Neogene continental Africa are what ultimately resulted in the emergence of hominins and hence humans (Kingdon 2003). My conclusion here is that an alternative evolutionary pathway for primates doesn’t give you humans as one of its ‘products’.

Finally, if we have an alternative timeline where apes evolve, is it conceivable that human-like primates, and, ultimately, alternative timeline humans, evolve anyway, dinosaurs or not? After all, humans and human ancestors spent their entire history living alongside formidable predators and competitors which either had to be avoided, defeated or out-smarted, and we might argue that the technological and other behavioural sophistications of hominids could make them exempt from the ‘no megamammal rule’ introduced above. The result would be what I’m going to call a Flintstones Universe.

Caption: non-bird dinosaurs and humans live alongside one another in the episode In Dino Veritas (season 2, ep 7) of the TV series Sliders, which aired in April 1996.

As appealing as this model might be for the purposes of human-oriented drama and adventure (it’s been done before, in Sliders - a TV series about travel between alternative timeline versions of Earth - and I’m sure elsewhere), I’m worried, since it also sounds a lot like the ‘inevitable humans’ model promoted  by those who seem to regard humans as The Best Animals. Some of you might have seen the 2010 episode of the BBC TV series Horizon (it’s here) where Simon Conway Morris – who’s well known, these days, as something of an opponent to the late Stephen Jay Gould’s argument that nothing in evolution is inevitable and that events wouldn’t have run the way they did if we were to “replay life’s tape”* (Gould 1990, p. 48) – proposed both that humans could well have evolved in a dinosaur-dominated world and that smart humanoid dinosaurs could well have evolved as well. Even better, Conway Morris suggests in the same TV show that humans and big-brained dinosaurs could have forged an alliance. True, true, symbiosis is not uncommon in the living world – ants and aphids, cleaner fishes and big reef fishes, Godzilla and Mothra – but the real-world history of humans shows either that we smashed competitors into bloody fragments or absorbed them into our collective via sexy, sexy ways. The latter option is unlikely to play out in a world where humans and humanoid dinosaurs live together, but the former suggests a less than happy outcome for one of the players.

Caption: some of the key books relevant to the discussion here.

So, excuse me if I’m a little sceptical of any proposed human-dinosauroid buddy-flick partnership. And am I sceptical of the idea that hominids, hominines and hominins were indeed exempt of the ‘no megamammals rule’? Yes. Incidentally, Conway Morris’s inevitability vs Gould’s contingency formed the subject of a long-running dispute: Riley Black wrote about this discussion here.

* Does this analogy still work given that hardly anyone uses recording tape anymore?

Caption: Simon Conway Morris talks about the evolution of intelligence while a dinosauroid reads a newspaper in the background. This is a screengrab from the 2007 episode of BBC Horizon titled My Pet Dinosaur.

Other, more recent alternative timeline dinosaur thoughts. As should be clear from this article and its predecessor, interest in alternative timeline dinosaurs is at an all-time high. The current resurgence of monster movies that feature King Kong, Godzilla and the like also means that such creatures have appeared in big-budget, mainstream movies. Peter Jackson’s 2005 movie King Kong featured several post-Cretaceous dinosaurs (among them Vastatosaurus rex, Brontosaurus baxteri and Venatosaurus saevidicus), the design and backstory of which makes at least some sense on the basis of things that happened in the real timeline… though the idea of a dinosaur genus persisting relatively unchanged for 150 million years or so can’t be considered sensible in view of what we know.

Caption: I don’t especially like the dinosaurs of Jackson’s King Kong (they’re too conservative), but a lot of the artwork is neat. This concept art depicts Vastatosaurus rex, a giant Holocene tyrannosaurid that evolved from Tyrannosaurus. Image: The World of Kong (here).

Pixar’s 2015 The Good Dinosaur also has to be mentioned, but I wish it didn’t because I think it’s a terrible film and an abhorrent waste of an opportunity. It’s supposed to be an alternative timeline movie but instead it just seems like a Flintstones reboot without the Flintstones.

Caption: opening spread from Pickrell (2017), art by James Gilleard. Some of the creatures here are based on those of TND and the Speculative Dinosaur Project. Image: BBC Focus magazine.

A 2017 article by John Pickrell is one of the newest published pieces on alternative timeline dinosaurs, and it’s well worth tracking down for those seriously interested in this stuff (Pickrell 2017: there’s an online version here which includes some extra stuff relative to the printed one). It features some fairly outré artwork (by James Gilleard; it’s not included in the online version) depicting creatures inspired by those of The New Dinosaurs, and include quotes from Steve Brusatte, Tom Holtz, Andrew Farke, Matthew Bonnan and Victoria Arbour (and Paul Barrett and me, but in the online version only) (Pickrell 2017).

Caption: the Gourmand Ganeosaurus tardus, a carrion-feeding tyrannosaur whose ancestors migrated to South America during an alt-timeline version of the Great American Biotic Interchange. I’ve never been able to figure out what it’s eating. Image: art by Steve Holden, from Dixon (1988).

A few interesting, specific speculations are made in John’s article. Tom notes that the Gourmand of TND is maybe not so ridiculous given recent discoveries concerning abelisaurs (rather than tyrannosaurs), Matthew suggests that arboreal (non-bird) dinosaurs might have co-evolved with flowering plants, and Victoria proposes that the neornithine bird radiation might not have been as bushy and explosive if pterosaurs had never died out (Pickrell 2017). Other ideas mooted in the article are that climbing, monkey-like theropods might evolve, and that there might be shaggy-coated Arctic specialists, speedy grassland herbivores and whale-like descendants of spinosaurs; in part, they’re seemingly inspired by the Dixonian creatures of TND.

Caption: more art from Pickrell (2017), by James Gilleard. Image: BBC Focus magazine.

The online version of the article includes comments on some of the events of post-Cretaceous times that – if they happened in an alternative timeline – would likely have some impact on the evolution of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and so on. Examples: what would the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum mean for dinosaurs, how might dinosaurs and pterosaurs respond to the cooling and drying of the Miocene, the spread of grasslands and so on, and what might happen in the cool, dry conditions of the Pleistocene? There’s vast scope for speculation here and even for some actual science, since we have enough data to show that organisms evolve in predictable directions when faced with increasing or decreasing temperatures and other such changes.

It's at this point that I have to stop – but there’s more to come. The next article (last in this series) covers ‘dinosauroids’ and other hypothetical big-brained dinosaurs.

My writing and research is dependent on crowd-funded support. Thanks to those whose patronage made this article, and the others you read here, possible. Please consider assisting me if you can, thank you!

 For previous TetZoo articles on alternative timeline dinosaurs and related issues of SpecZoo, see…

• Dinosauroids revisited, November 2006

• Dinosauroid cave art discovered, March 2007

• How intelligent dinosaurs conquered the world, March 2008

• Come back Lank, (nearly) all is forgiven, September 2008

• Belatedly, Nemoramjetia (= Avisapiens), November 2008

• Richard Dawkins and the crappy 'humanoid dinosaurs' that just won't die, November 2009

• Dinosauroids revisited, revisited, October 2012

• Of After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Greenworld: an interview with Dougal Dixon, April 2014

• Speculative Zoology at Tet Zoo, The Story So Far, May 2015

• Speculative Zoology, a Discussion, June 2018

• Could We Domesticate (Non-Bird) Dinosaurs?, August 2018

• The Dougal Dixon After Man Event of September 2018, September 2018

• TetZoo Bookshelf, February 2019, Part 1, February 2019

• Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 1), December 2019

Refs - -

Dixon, D. 1988. The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution. Salem House Publishers, Topsfield, MA.

Gould, S. J. 1990. Wonderful Life: the Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Hutchinson Radius, London.

Isbell, L. A. 2006. Snakes as agents of evolutionary change in primate brain. Journal of Human Evolution 51, 1-35.

Kingdon, J. 2003. Lowly Origins: Where, When, and Why Our Ancestors First Stood Up. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.

Pickrell, J. 2017. What if the dinosaurs had survived? In Bennett, D. (ed) Dinosaurs: the Ultimate Guide to the Prehistoric Beasts. Immediate Media, Bristol, pp. 74-83.

Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs, the View From 2019 (Part 1)

Speculative Biology, Speculation Zoology and Speculative Evolution (technically speaking, they’re not all the same one thing) have been perennially popular here at TetZoo, and I think it’s fair to say that interest in these issues is currently at an all-time high. And among the various branches of the SpecVerse that enjoy the most attention and interest is that concerning Alternative Timeline Dinosaurs… and pterosaurs, and marine reptiles, and their contemporaries. These being those hypothetical animal lineages that might have evolved in a timeline where the end-Cretaceous extinction event (properly the KPg Event) didn’t occur.

Caption: a montage of speculative dinosaurs, and one pterosaur. From left to right: McLoughlin’s Bioparaptor, Dixon’s Lank (at back), Kosemen’s Avisapiens, Dixon’s Balaclav, and a tree maniraptoran from Pickrell’s 2019 article. Some of these animals will be discussed in future TetZoo articles.

Such is the popularity of alternative timeline dinosaurs that new articles, opinions, ideas and artworks devoted to them are published on a fairly regular basis. At least some of these projects tend not – in my opinion – to give appropriate credit or mention to what’s happened before, but others certainly do. My aim in this article here (and its successors, to be published later this year) is to discuss most of the key ideas that have been covered in takes on alternative timeline dinosaurs, and to review and cite relevant literature old and new. To work.

Caption: the benchmark in the world of alternative timeline dinosaurs is this book, appearing in 1988… the same year that one or two other influential books on dinosaurs appeared in print (looking at you, Predatory Dinosaurs of the World). Image: Darren Naish.

It’s fair to say that hypothetical post-Cretaceous non-bird dinosaurs have featured in fictional scenarios for almost as long as non-bird dinosaurs have been known to science, such that they star in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs and others since well prior to the dinosaur renaissance. As significant as these works are, however, they mostly don’t get classed as SpecZoo given that they aren’t contingent on the idea that the animals have changed since Mesozoic times. With that in mind, we mostly owe the genesis of the alternative timeline dinosaur trope to two pieces of literature: Dougal Dixon’s The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution of 1988, and Dale Russell and Ron Séguin’s 1982 Syllogeus article on hypothetical big-brained theropods.

Caption: my introduction to alternative timeline speculative dinosaurs was in part thanks to David Lambert’s Dinosaur Data Book (Lambert 1990), which features this really nice montage: there are Dixonian dinosaurs from The New Dinosaurs, and Russell and Séguin’s dinosauroid at far right. The brief BBC Wildlife magazine ad on The New Dinosaurs - featuring the Kloon (top right) - also caught my imagination. For all kinds of reasons, I never saw The New Dinosaurs in bookshops. Images: Dixon 1988, Lambert 1990.

Dixon (1988) – the sequel to Dougal’s hugely successful and highly popular After Man of 1981 – portrays a modern world where dinosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and other groups occupy the roles taken today by placental and marsupial mammals, as well as by various snakes, birds and so on. I won’t start reviewing the pantheon of creatures covered in the book here, but the illustrations below gives some idea of what we get.

Caption: a montage that depicts various of the creatures of Dougal Dixon’s TND. We see here a combination of flightless pterosaurs, climbing and terrestrial, predatory theropods, aquatic ornithischians, amphibious pterosaurs and theropods, and others. These illustrations are redrawn from those featured in Dixon (1988). Image: Darren Naish, colouring by Ethan Kocak.

I think it’s fair to say that The New Dinosaurs (TND) enjoyed a mixed response, with some reviewers hating it and others praising it (e.g., Gee 1988, Tudge 1988, Unwin 1992). The most interesting and detailed review (and, for a long time, the most difficult to obtain) is that by Greg Paul (1990). Paul was highly critical (perhaps ironically, given that his own writings and illustrations were partly inspirational) and made the interesting point that some of the most embracing of Dougal Dixon’s colleagues – Desmond Morris was one of them (he wrote the foreword) – were neither palaeontologists nor especially connected to studies of Mesozoic life. A bonus feature of Paul’s review is that it includes a novel illustration depicting his own take on alternative timeline dinosaurs, his ideas (Paul 1990) being interesting and innovative enough that they’ve inspired more recent views, on which read on.

Caption: alternative timeline dinosaurs of the modern era, as imagined by Greg Paul (1990). Plains-dwelling hadrosaurs and ceratopsians are hunted by cursorial tyrannosaurs. They live alongside small, cud-chewing bipedal ornithischians, burrowing mammals and geese. Image: (c) Greg Paul.

But enough on the critical reception. If anything, the pendulum has swung the other way in recent years, it being increasingly recognised that at least some of the creatures invented for TND were actually insightful and predictive. The Lank – a flightless, giraffe-like, striding pterosaur adapted to life on the grasslands – now appears oddly prescient in view of our thoughts on the ecology and lifestyle of the long-limbed, terrestrially competent azhdarchids (Witton & Naish 2008), and I wrote a 2008 article making this point. The well insulated, cool climate maniraptoran theropods and chubby, insulated ornithischians of TND also no longer look as weird as they might have in 1988 given recent fossil finds, and real-world discoveries like alvarezsaurids, scansoriopterygids, Halszkaraptor and Liaoningosaurus certainly have a Dixonian vibe to them. This was Riley Black’s point, made in this 2011 article at Laelaps.

Caption: the Lank has sometimes been criticised as one of the worst creatures of TND. But maybe this isn’t at all fair… Image: (c) Dixon 1988/Steve Holden.

Of Manga and SpecWorld. There are two other things worth saying about TND before we move on. One is that several of the species in the book appeared in a 2006 Manga volume, illustrated by Takaaki Ogawa (Dixon & Ogawa 2009). I tweeted about the book here; it’s hard to get but is a must-have if you’re a serious SpecZoo aficionado.

Caption: at left, the cover of Dixon & Ogawa (2009). At right, one of the several colour pieces included within. Images: (c) Dixon & Ogawa (2009).

The stories in the book are great fun (and you don’t need to read Japanese to follow them), but often very odd because they show the animals of the book living alongside, and interacting with, real-world animals, including crows, arapaima and Passenger pigeons Ectopistes migratorius! That’s a no-no if we’re keeping to canon, since TND actually describes a world where ‘Mesozoic’ animals have evolved to fill the niches occupied in our timeline by other animals. The second thing worth saying is that Dougal’s visions of alternative timeline dinosaurs inspired others to do the same, but in different fashion.

Caption: scenes from Dixon & Ogawa (2009), one from a Harridan-themed story (the Harridan is a raptor-like, mountain-dwelling pterosaur), and one from an Amazon-themed story involving a Pangaloon and a Watergulp. Images: (c) Dixon & Ogawa (2009).

The Speculative Dinosaur Project kicked off in 2001 and involved the invention of a substantial number of speculative animals. The website is impressive and well designed, and it’s clear that a lot of thought and discussion went into the various animals. They include long-legged, often shaggy-coated tyrannosaurs, the artiodactyl-esque ungulapedes, the sometimes gigantic cenoceratopsians (which, like Greg Paul’s alt-timeline ceratopsians, descend from non-ceratopsid ceratopsians) and many others. There’s always been talk of a Speculative Dinosaur Project book, interest in the site remains high, and there are indications right now from various minor tweaks and updates that it might be undergoing an upgrade or something sometime soon.

Caption: brilliant artwork appears throughout the Speculative Dinosaur Project. This illustration depicts a group of Eastern balundaurs, with mulongs, perfects and jaubs in attendance. Image: CC BY-SA 2.5, Speculative Dinosaur Project (original here).

A nice thing about the Speculative Dinosaur Project is that it never was devoted to non-bird dinosaurs alone, but also covered birds, crocodylomorphs, squamates and mammals in appropriate detail too. In fact, the pages on those groups were among the best parts of the site. This leads us nicely to the next area I want to discuss.

Don’t Ignore the Mammals. Of the several questions always asked in discussions about alternative timeline dinosaurs, one is ‘would humans have evolved, even in a world still dominated by non-bird dinosaurs?’. This is a good question, even if its motivation is that we might get to imagine medieval knights using dinosaurs as mounts, a line of armour-plated war ceratopsians at the Battle of Ipsus, or wonder about the role of giant dinosaurs as beasts of burden or quarry hunted by intrepid human bands equipped with specialised weapons.

The human/dinosaur coexistence thing formed the focus of a 2019 Italian magazine article by Giovanni Camardo (Camardo 2019) – titled ‘If they hadn’t died out, who would have won: us or them?’ – for which I was interviewed (the full text of my interview – in Italian – is here).

Caption: opening pages of Camardo (2019). By now, James Keuther’s CG dinosaurs might be somewhat familiar (I’ve worked with James on several projects, most notably various recent Dorling Kindersley books). Image: (c) Focus magazine.

My suggestion – which was inspired by the Greg Paul article discussed above – is that the Cretaceous record of fossil mammals shows us both that interesting things were happening in mammal evolution late in the Mesozoic, and that at least some of the major mammal lineages were already in existence before the end of the Cretaceous. Ergo, at least some of the things that happened for real in our own timeline might still have happened in a dinosaur-dominated post-Cretaceous world. Because non-bird dinosaurs would have occupied most terrestrial niches in post-Cretaceous world, it might – I suggest, with caveats – have been difficult or impossible for mammals to get an evolutionary toehold at large body size (say, above 30-40kg or so). I’m going to call this the no megamammals rule (we’ll come back to it in the next article).

Caption: the Speculative Dinosaur Project was and is particularly good on mammals. Here are two I chose at random: the Amazonian Nekopossum (left) and the apocryphal Drop-bear, also native to South America (unlike our own timeline’s Drop-bear). Image: Speculative Dinosaur Project.

Lineages producing species below this size, however, could still have evolved pretty much as they did in our own timeline. Which means that burrowing, swimming, climbing, gliding and flying mammals – monotremes, placentals and marsupials – might still have evolved in a dinosaur-dominated world, and that a post-Cretaceous world dominated by dinosaurs might still have pangolins, shrews, moles, bats…. and primates. And if there are primates, there might still be tarsiers, lemurs, monkeys and even apes. And if there are apes, could there be the apes we call humans?

This is where we’ll pick up next. Come back soon for Part II.

We’ll finish with the usual reminder that I basically have an infinite number of articles I want to write for TetZoo, but workload and the quest for solvency prevents me from being more productive. If you like what I do, you can help by supporting me at patreon. Thank you!

For previous TetZoo articles on alternative timeline dinosaurs and related issues of SpecZoo, see…

• Dinosauroids revisited, November 2006

• Dinosauroid cave art discovered, March 2007

• How intelligent dinosaurs conquered the world, March 2008

• Come back Lank, (nearly) all is forgiven, September 2008

• Belatedly, Nemoramjetia (= Avisapiens), November 2008

• Richard Dawkins and the crappy 'humanoid dinosaurs' that just won't die, November 2009

• Dinosauroids revisited, revisited, October 2012

• Of After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Greenworld: an interview with Dougal Dixon, April 2014

• Speculative Zoology at Tet Zoo, The Story So Far, May 2015

• Speculative Zoology, a Discussion, June 2018

• Could We Domesticate (Non-Bird) Dinosaurs?, August 2018

• The Dougal Dixon After Man Event of September 2018, September 2018

• TetZoo Bookshelf, February 2019, Part 1, February 2019

Refs - -

Camardo, G. 2019. Se non si fossero estinti, avremmo vinto noi o loro? Focus 317, 51-55.

Dixon, D. 1988. The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution. Salem House Publishers, Topsfield, MA.

Dixon, D. & Ogawa, T. 2009. The New Dinosaurs. Futanasha, Tokyo.

Gee, H. 1988. Tales of future past. Nature 335, 505-506.

Lambert, D. 1990. Dinosaur Data Book. Facts on File, New York.

Paul, G. S. 1990. An improbable view of Tertiary dinosaurs. Evolutionary Theory 9, 309-315.

Tudge, C. 1988. End points of an alternative evolution. New Scientist 120 (1641), 65-66.

Unwin, D. M. 1992. The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution (review). Historical Biology 6, 61-71.

Witton, M. P. & Naish, D. 2008. A reappraisal of azhdarchid pterosaur functional morphology and paleoecology. PLoS ONE 3 (5): e2271.

Suburban Birdwatching in Queensland, Australia

I recently spent time in Australia, and specifically in Brisbane, Queensland (this was for the 79th Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting), and, while there, I got to see a pretty good selection of birds. I photographed as many as I could, and in this article I’m going to talk about them. All the birds I’m going to discuss here were encountered in urban and suburban settings in close proximity to people, and none are especially exotic or obscure. But they were entirely novel to me, and I was hugely excited to encounter them in the wild. I hope you’ll enjoy reading about them.

Caption: Dusky moorhen, Australian white ibis and Little black cormorant captured in the same one shot (at left). At right: a wonderful Torresian crow. Images: Darren Naish.

One more bit of preamble: if I had the time and foresight, I could have organised a special birdwatching tour, in which case I could have been taken to various specific locations at which I might have seen a rather more impressive list of Australian birds not ordinarily encountered by mere chance. But… I didn’t. I wish I had.

Caption: if you’re truly interested in animals, you’re interested in invasives, aliens and introductions, and there’s no shame in paying attention to them or studying them. So go ahead and photograph that feral pigeon. Image: Darren Naish.

My very first Australian bird sighting was of Welcome swallows Hirundo neoxena, seen flying around the outside windows of Perth Airport. I was to see this species on several subsequent occasions (it occurs across virtually the whole of Australia except for some north-central sections), but no photos, sorry. My second species: the feral Rock dove or Rock pigeon Columba livia! I don’t care what anyone says: I always take time to look at feral pigeons, and one thing you notice is that populations differ from place to place, mostly because they descend from different founding populations of escapees or released birds. Brisbane pigeons were especially dark relative to the majority of familiar urban pigeons in Europe, and on the large size too. Brisbane: make of that what you will.

Caption: my first bin chicken. This individual spent time probing into the gap between the pavement and a retaining wall, searching for arthropods. Image: Darren Naish.

My second Aussie bird was something far more exotic (to me): an ibis, and specifically an Australian white ibis Threskiornis molucca. This species was included within T. aethiopica – the species currently referred to as the African sacred ibis – until the mid-2000s, and some authors still regard the two as conspecific. The Black-headed ibis, Black-necked ibis, Oriental white ibis or Indian white ibis T. melanocephalus is part of this complex too (all three are regarded as part of the same superspecies). Apparently, there are Australian people who still refer to T. molucca as the Sacred ibis but --- as any Australian will tell you within 0.5 seconds of you expressing interest in this bird, it’s not ‘the Australian white ibis’ to the vast majority of urban Australians but ‘the bin chicken’: an animal that people associate with rubbish, waste food and urban filth in general. I get the impression that Aussies love to hate the ibis the same way people also dislike urban gulls and pigeons. Hey idiots... the shitty trash the bird is eating is, like, YOUR trash and YOU put it there.

Caption: Australian white ibis out and about in town. Image: Darren Naish.

Australian white ibises seem to be both abundant in Brisbane and extremely bold. Large groups are present in the parks throughout the city, groups can be seen nesting at the tops of palms and other trees in the parks, and individual birds can be seen walking around in crowded pedestrianised areas and even right into cafes and restaurants… though they aren’t exactly welcome in such places.

Caption: large numbers of ibises are readily visible in parks and other green places in Brisbane. The birds stand or sit on the grass and rest in trees. The first individual I saw (the one probing in the paved area, shown above) was initially sat on the grass, chest against the ground. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: aaaand… even more ibises. Image: Darren Naish.

Go near the water most places in the world, and you’ll very likely see members of the duck, goose and swan family Anatidae, and such it is in Australia. I saw three species, all new to me, all in close proximity to the ponds in Brisbane’s Botanical Gardens. We’ll start with the Australian wood duck, Maned duck or Maned goose Chenonetta jubata, a heavily terrestrial, pan-Australian, cavity-nesting duck that might be a member of the shelduck clade Tadorninae. The birds I saw were asleep (or pretending to be asleep) and thus standing and sitting still with their eyes closed.

Caption: at left, two Australian wood ducks. resting or sleeping. At right: a Hardhead heads across the water towards me. Presumably, it (and its partner) was used to being fed by people. Image: Darren Naish.

Pacific black ducks Anas superciliosa – PBDs in birding vernacular – were also seen; this is an especially handsomely marked member of the mallard complex, the different forms of which are quite variable across its southwest Pacific/Australasia range. Another first for me was Hardhead or White-eyed duck Aythya australis, a Pacific/Australasian member of the scaup and pochard lineage (Aythyini).

Caption: Pacific black duck. Of the three recognised subspecies, the Australian one is A. superciliosa rogersi. This subspecies also occurs in Indonesis and New Guinea. Image: Darren Naish.

My biggest surprise at the ponds, however, was an Australian darter or anhinga Anhinga novaehollandiae (here I’m following recent studies in recognising this as a distinct species from African and Asian anhingas), which I watched for some time as it foraged and hunted close to the water’s edge. On occasion, it would disappear entirely from view before stretching its long, slender neck out of water while swallowing a fish. And on other occasions, its long tail could be seen part emerging above the surface while the bird was part swimming, part floating, just beneath the surface. I’ve never seen a live anhinga before. This one was smaller than I expected.

Caption: an anhinga surfaces and swallows what I presume is a fish. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: more swimming anhinga action. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: Little pied cormorant, foraging in a shallow pool with abundant algae and other aquatic plants. Its appearances at the surface were really brief compared to the other cormorants I’ve watched, and this is the only photo that clearly shows its head and bill. Image: Darren Naish.

Two cormorant species were also present at the ponds: Little black cormorant Phalacrocorax sulcirostris (see photo at the top of the article) and Little pied cormorant P. melanoleucos (or Microcarbo melanoleucos, if you follow Siegel-Causey’s (1988) taxonomy). The one individual of the latter I saw was diving for food in a heavily vegetated pool. A group of three Dusky moorhens Gallinula tenebrosa were paying close attention to its activities, and would circle and peck at the surface every time the cormorant would dive. I assume that they were interested in bits of vegetation and small animals brought to the surface by the cormorant’s activities. Indeed, numerous small fish and tadpoles were present in the pools. The tadpoles looked like those of a toad and I presume they were Cane toad Rhinella marina larvae, indeed I know that Cane toads were present since I found two dead ones in the park grounds.

Caption: Dusky moorhens search for food in an area where the water is being disturbed by a swimming Little pied cormorant. Image: Darren Naish.

Dusky moorhens were frequently encountered and easily approached. As suggested by the name, they looked darker than the Eurasian moorhens G. chloropus I know well, and they appeared larger and chunkier too. I watched them foraging on lawns, and a bit of squabbling, chasing, fighting and mating was seen as well.

Caption: Silver gulls look similar to Northern Hemisphere species like the Black-headed gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus, and there’s a reason for that. Image: Darren Naish.

Finally on birds associated with watery places, I also visited an artificial beach close to the Brisbane River where there were numerous Silver gulls Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae. This is Australia’s most widespread gull and occurs around the country’s entire coast as well as in many inland locations. The Silver gull is surrounded in phylogeny by species that have grey, black or brown heads (Chu 1998) and is thus generally agreed to be part of the Chroicocephalus group (and is thus not part of Larus in the new, restrictive sense). At least a few other Chroicocephalus species are like the Silver gull in being white-headed too, so it might be that a transition from a dark head back to a white one happened a few times in this group. The Silver gull is a mid-sized, slender-billed gull.

Caption: Masked lapwing, or Black-shouldered lapwing if you’re so inclined. Note that the carpometacarpal spurs aren’t readily visible here. Image: Darren Naish.

I also saw a single plover, specifically a Masked lapwing Vanellus miles… and, more specifically, the black-shoulder form V. m. novaehollandiae (jeez, colonial Europeans: couldn’t you be a bit more creative with the scientific names?) sometimes recognised as the distinct species V. novaehollandiae, the Black-shouldered lapwing. This bird was wandering around on a lawn close to a restaurant. Lapwings – technically called vanellines – are conventionally included within Charadriidae, the plover family. Lapwings are interesting in that they possess large spurs on the carpometacarpus, which are typically (but not always) visible when the wings are closed. These are used in defence against predators (like cats, dogs and corvids) and also in intraspecific fights. There’s an apparent common folk belief that the spur is venomous! Here’s your regular reminder that TetZoo ver 3 includes two fairly comprehensive articles on the spurs, claws and clubs present on the wings of birds (part 1 here, part 2 here; I’ve linked to wayback machine versions as they include the illustrations).

Caption: a Laughing kookaburra in the wild, perched and vigilant. Image: Darren Naish.

I was surprised (hey, I’m from Europe) to see a Laughing kookaburra Dacelo novaeguineae in an urban park, sat on top of a streetlight and also in flight in the same park. I gather than kookaburras are pretty typical park and garden birds in parts of Australia, well known for their habit of grabbing food from tables and barbeques and such. Most of you will know that kookaburras are especially big kingfishers, closely related to Halcyon kingfishers and kin, and that the bulk of kingfisher diversity exists in the islands and coastal regions of Australasia. Kingfishers have conventionally all been included within the same one family (Alcedinidae), and this is still a popular view. However, the idea that lineages within the group are ‘distinct enough’ that several kingfisher families should be recognised is also popular, in which case kookaburras and their close kin belong within Halcyonidae (previously known, incorrectly, as Dacelonidae; Sibley & Ahlquist 1990). Miners (more on them in a minute) are not fans of kookaburras and a few individuals took time to mob the individual sat on top of the streetlight.

Caption: a Noisy miner (at left) arrives to harass a Laughing kookaburra. Image: Darren Naish.

I was also pleased to see Rainbow lorikeets Trichoglossus moluccanus at a few places, though none of my photos are at all good. Lorikeets mostly eat pollen and nectar and their specialised brush-like tongues explain their generic name – Trichoglossus means ‘hair tongue’. I actually saw parrots of a few other species as well, but they were right at the top of really tall trees and mostly seen in silhouette, so I never saw any of the detail that might allow them to be identified.

Caption: Rainbow lorikeet at the top of a palm tree. The green collar confirms the identification, since similar lorikeet species (like the Red-collared lorikeet T. rubritorquis) lack this feature. Image: Darren Naish.

As everyone who knows anything about birds knows, the majority of living bird species (over 60% of them) are passerines (or perching birds), and most of the Australian species I saw were members of this enormous group. I didn’t see any feral European starlings or sparrows, or indeed any introduced European species at all, and nor did I see any small endemic Australian endemics, like fairywrens, pardalotes or sunbirds.

Caption: a Noisy miner, eating parts of a Mexican burrito on a restaurant table. Image: Darren Naish.

We’ll start with Noisy miners Manorina melanocephala. These are mostly grey, thrush-sized passerines – happy to take to the ground as well as forage in trees and shrubs – that have a robust bill and naked yellow patch of skin behind the eye. They’re bold and look to have made the full transition to life in urban settings. I saw them jump around on tables and eat food from plates just moments after people had left, and I also saw them waiting for dropped food scraps right next to a person sat on the grass. In one case, a man eating his lunch while sat in the park was literally slapping the birds out of the way.

Caption: Common or India mynas are one of the most important alien birds in Australia (‘important’ in economic and ecological terms). Note that this individual is afflicted by a problem most commonly associated with urban pigeons: mangled toes and missing toe segments (the hallux claw is missing on the left foot). Image: Darren Naish.

The fact that these birds are called ‘miners’ is a bit confusing, since this makes it sound as if they’re ‘mynas’ (also spelt ‘mynahs’); that is, members of the starling and myna family Sturnidae. But they’re not, they’re honeyeaters (Meliphagidae). There are, incidentally, proper mynas in Australia: namely, the introduced Common or Indian myna Acridotheres tristis from tropical southern Asia. I saw some of these as well (I also saw them while on the journey home, in Singapore). Back to honeyeaters: Australia is the land of honeyeaters, the country being home to about half of the c 190 extant species. For all that I only saw one other meliphagid species: the Blue-faced honeyeater Entomyzon cyanotis.

Caption: a Blue-faced honeyeater, photographed at distance while it was on the top of a building. The area of blue facial skin is variable in these birds; this individual seemed to have only a small amount of blue. The skin is green in juveniles. Image: Darren Naish.

Moving on, Australia is also home to a really exciting assortment of sometimes large, omnivorous and predatory, superficially crow-like passerines, namely butcherbirds, currawongs and Australian magpies. I bet most people assume that these are corvids, but they aren’t: they’re conventionally allied within the family Cracticidae but a close relationship with woodswallows and kin means that the best course of action might be to include them within Artamidae, the woodswallow family. These birds are part of Corvoidea – the large passerine clade that includes shrikes, vireos, birds-of-paradise and corvids proper – but they’re some distance away from corvids, instead belonging to Malaconotoidea (also written Malaconotidea), a group that includes African bushshrikes and vangas (Cracraft et al. 2004, Cracraft 2014, Selvatti et al. 2015).

Caption: a Grey butcherbird (at left) waits for food in a park; to the right are a group of Noisy miners. Image: Darren Naish.

I saw a single Grey butcherbird Cracticus torquatus, hanging out in a park in close proximity to a group of miners. It was part of the group mentioned above, seen waiting near a person eating their lunch.

Caption: a (slightly blurry) Pied currawong caught in the middle of a run, just prior to takeoff. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: Pied currawong from below. There are supposed to be three currawong species, but there are so many local variants, intermediate grades and island endemics that the story is quite difficult to resolve. Images: Darren Naish.

Pied currawong Strepera graculina were seen in trees, on tall buildings and structures attached to buildings, and on the ground. A pair were actually nesting on metal support structures just outside the conference venue but their nest was so high up and far from the ground that they were constantly at the edge of my camera’s range. Anyway, some of my photos aren’t terrible. And I did see Australian magpies on several occasions, but it was always while I was in cars, away from the city, and I never had the chance to get a photo.

Caption: Torresian crow, what an excellent bird. Image: Darren Naish.

Finally, Australia is also home to corvids proper. Australian crows are weird. To a European eye, they don’t look quite right – as if they might not be crows proper (which they are) – and yet they all look about enough alike that they could conceivably be close relatives (which they are: Jønsson et al. 2012). I saw members of two species, the first being a beautifully glossy, iridescent  bird, about similar in size to typical Corvus crows like the Eurasian Carrion crow C. corone, and with a prominent pale iris. This was the Torresian crow C. orru, I assume named for the Torres Strait (the stretch of water between New Guinea and Australia). I saw this species both as a singleton and in a large group, often right in the middle of town.

Caption: more Torresian crows, both in a group, in a tree, and foraging on the ground in an urban area. Images: Darren Naish.

Caption: Torresian crows and flowers. I like the artiness of this photo. Image: Darren Naish.

The second crow species I saw was the larger, bulkier Australian raven C. coronoides. I saw a group of three of these, walking around together on a lawn. The large group of Torresian crows I saw appeared to be gathered together because they were unhappy about the proximity of these ravens, and they were peering in the ravens’ direction while noisily calling. I wanted to watch all of these corvids for longer, but my time was short and I had to run.

Caption: a pair of Australian ravens forage on a lawn, to the displeasure of nearby Torresian crows. Image: Darren Naish.

And that brings things to an end. There’s a vast amount of stuff that I never saw, much of it living in very close proximity to the part of Brisbane in which I was staying. But it wasn’t to be. One day I’ll visit Australia again, and I hope for better luck, more time, and more experience of the region’s remarkable wildlife.

For previous TetZoo articles on birds and birdwatching, see…

• To the Sahara in quest of dinosaurs (living and extinct), December 2008

• From Morocco, with larks, babblers, gazelles, owls and GIANT DINOSAUR BONES, December 2008

• Birding in Brazil: a view from suburban Rio de Janeiro, June 2013

• Birdwatching in Suburban China, May 2018

• Avocets in Flight and Phylogeny, October 2018

• Cocks-of-the-Rock, Extreme Cotingas, April 2019

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

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Chu, P. C. 1994. 1998. A phylogeny of the gulls (Aves: Larinae) inferred from osteological and integumentary characters. Cladistics 14, 1-43.

Cracraft, J. 2014. Avian higher-level relationships and classification: Passeriformes. In Dickinson, E.C. & Christidis, L. (eds) The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (fourth edition), Volume 2: Passerines. Aves Press, Eastbourne, pp. xvii-xlv.

Cracraft, J., Barker, F. K., Braun, M., Harshman, J., Dyke, G. J., Feinstein, J., Stanley, S., Cibois, A., Schikler, P., Beresford, P., García-Moreno, J., Sorenson, M. D., Yuri, T. & Mindell, D. P. 2004. Phylogenetic relationships among modern birds (Neornithes): towards an avian tree of life. In Cracraft, J. and Donoghue, M. (eds) Assembling the Tree of Life. Oxford University Press (Oxford), pp. 468-489.

Jønsson, K. A., Fabre, P.-H. & Irestedt, M. 2012. Brains, tools, innovation and biogeography in crows and ravens. BMC Evolutionary Biology 12: 72.

Selvatti, A. P., Gonzaga, L. P. & Russo, C. A. de M. 2015. A Paleogene origin for crown passerines and the diversification of the Oscines in the New World. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 88, 1-15.

Sibley, C. G. & Ahlquist, J. A. 1990. Phylogeny and Classification of Birds. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Siegel-Causey, D. 1988. Phylogeny of the Phalacrocoracidae. The Condor 90, 885-905.

The Sixth TetZooCon

The sixth TetZooCon – the annual TetZoo-themed meeting of people relevant to the TetZooniverse – happened on the weekend of the 19th and 20th October, 2019, and was held at University College London’s The Venue. As predicted, this year’s was the biggest and best so far, and that opinion isn’t just down to me but also to many of the people in attendance. As per usual, this article is going to include a brief review of what went down at the meeting as well as more general thinkings on where TetZooCon is heading and what the future holds.

Caption: TetZooCon 2019 was merchandise heaven… or maybe hell if you wanted to limit your spending. Here’s a shot of just some of the palaeoplushies on sale at Rebecca Groom’s stall. I’m now the proud owner of a Yellow-legged gull. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Caption: it was a busy event: here’s a scene from the palaeoart workshop. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

My intro out of the way, we were into talks proper, the first being Ellen Coombs’s brilliant review of her work on stranding records of whales and what they tell us about whale distribution, population trends, and biology. Ellen’s recent publications include those on True’s beaked whales Mesoplodon mirus in the Bay of Biscay (Robbins et al. 2019) (recall that I myself was watching beaked whales – albeit not True’s – in the Bay of Biscay back in August) and the life history of Hope, the Blue whale Balaenoptera musculus currently on display in the main entrance hall of London’s Natural History Museum (Trueman et al. 2019).

Caption: Ellen Coombs talks whales at TetZooCon 2019 - a fantastic talk. Image: Darren Naish.

Jack Ashby was next and discussed natural history museums, specifically on biases in what gets put on display. He also focused on various remarkable animals with really interesting histories, including echidnas, walruses and beavers, and finished with a book signing (the first of several). Jack’s book is Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects (Ashby 2017), and very nice it is too. We followed with our roundtable event on dinosaur and pterosaur palaeobiology, involving myself, Chris Barker, Jordan Bestwick, Dave Hone and Rebecca Lakin. Topics covered included the biology of ‘super-powered’ extinct animals, the reliability (or not) of phylogenetic bracketing, the dinosaur sex wars, and the All Yesterdays movement.

Caption: a dinosaur and pterosaur palaeobiology discussion roundtable. It went alright.. Left to right: Chris Barker, Jordan Bestwick, Dave Hone, Rebecca Lakin, Darren Naish. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Mike Dickison followed up with his ‘What Is a Native Bird?’. Birds in places like New Zealand are conventionally regarded as either ‘native’ or ‘introduced’, but things are actually much more complex and this dichotomous view is not accurate nor representative of historical events. Mike’s talk included diversions on Haast’s eagle and its life appearance and much else. Alice Pawlik discussed Adventures in Native Amphibian Conservation and told us about her work on Pool frog Pelophylax lessonae reintroduction to the UK.

Caption: Mike Dickison’s talk on New Zealand’s birds was full of up-to-the-minute science and surprises from the world of palaeontology and genetics. Image: Darren Naish.

Another excellent talk on extant British wildlife was given by Amy Schwartz who told us about Project Splatter, a citizen science project devoted to the monitoring of roadkill. The project has accrued tens of thousands of records and revealed significant new information on how wildlife is being affected by roads, and which species are being affected in particular. A technical publication on this work is due to appear soon.

Caption: this picture conveys some idea of how much palaeoart-themed stuff there was at TetZooCon 2019. Look: poster boards with actual art, people like Steve White (with glasses, on left), and stands and stalls covered in art for sale. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Palaeoart at TetZooCon. Two parallel sessions happened after lunch on the Saturday. Away from the main hall, our Palaeoart Workshop occurred, with short talks from Joschua Knüppe, Agata Stachowiak, Rebecca Groom and Jed Taylor. These were followed by a practical session in which people were invited to create art in a given style. As ever, I was unable to attend, so missed out. 3D art was a theme for part of the workshop: Rebecca discussed the making of her palaeoplushies (which, as usual, were on sale this year), Jed spoke about the contruction of theropod models, and Agata’s talk was on the construction of her amazing Megaloceros model. The look of this model is very much inspired by 2018’s TetZoo article on the life appearance of this animal. Several depictions of Megaloceros, actually, are based on the information provided in that article. I’ll write about them here, in time. Finally as goes the palaeoart session, Joschua spoke about his #Paleostream project.

Caption: I absolutely adore Agata Stachowiak’s Megaloceros model, and was extremely pleased to see it at TetZooCon 2019. Images: Darren Naish.

I should add that palaeoart was a major theme of this year’s TetZooCon. We not only had a ton of palaeoart-themed stalls, we also had an evening event on the Saturday – featuring, in cases, original art (Luis Rey’s many originals being especially memorable) – as well as a set of models and a diorama brought along by film-maker Paul Glynn.

Caption: Luis Rey original artwork was on show at TetZooCon 2019 (actual, physical, painted artwork). Luis himself appears in the image at right. Images: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Caption: a small section of Paul Glynn’s excellent and enormous Cretaceous diorama. We hope to see more of Paul’s models and model landscapes at future events. Image: Darren Naish.

Several of our palaeoartists sold and signed books. Luis’s new book is Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects, Steve White’s is Thunder Lizard: The Art of Steve White, and James McKay’s is Trilobites, Dinosaurs and Mammoths: An Introduction to the Prehistory of the British Isles. Mark Witton was also selling copies of The Palaeoartist’s Handbook, and Gareth Monger A Disarray of Palaeoart. John bought along a stack of All Yesterdays to sell but, as usual, forgot about them and left them under a table or something.

Caption: more artwork: a John Conway print of a mega-giant Barosaurus standing alongside other dinosaurs. Some of you will know that this image is based on finds discussed over at SV-POW! Image: Darren Naish.

Having mentioned stalls, I must also add that Dougal Dixon was in attendance as were Breakdown Press (publishers of the new edition of After Man), so here was a chance to get signed copies of Dougal’s books. I’m extremely happy to have Dougal as a guest at TetZooCon, and the word on the street is that he’ll be in attendance next year too.

Caption: Dougal Dixon (at left) and Tom of Breakdown Press, both selling books. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Natural History Film-Making. Meanwhile, an entire afternoon dedicated to natural history film-making occurred in the main hall. Amber Eames spoke about her award-winning film Swans: Mystery of the Missing, dedicated to the plight and decline of Europe’s Bewick’s swans Cygnus bewickii. This was followed by a roundtable event involving several members of the BBC Natural History Unit, namely Paul Stewart, Nick Lyon, Zoe Cousins and Amber Eames again. I asked Paul questions about my favourite TetZoo-relevant TV series – 1992’s The Velvet Claw – before talking to him about his work on birds-of-paradise and bowerbirds (the newest of which is featured in the brand-new Netflix show Dancing With the Birds) and the iguanas vs snakes segment from Galapagos. Nick and I mostly discussed Dynasties (Nick was director and producer of the wild dogs episode), Zoe and I spoke about her films on pigeons, squirrels, wildcats and Australia, and Amber and I spoke about swans.

Caption: Amber Eames talks about Swans: Mystery of the Missing at TetZooCon 2019. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Everyone was then involved in some general questions about natural history film-making and things were then opened things up to the floor. We watched Jedi chipmunks, the opening sequence of episode 1 of The Velvet Claw, and some raw background footage from the field, provided by Nick. It was a brilliant event if I say so myself.

Caption: participants in the Natural History film-making discussion event. Left to right: Nick Lyon, Paul Stewart, Zoe Cousins, Amber Eames, Darren Naish. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

Dinosaur and Pterosaur Palaeobiology. Sunday morning opened with a block of talks on dinosaur and pterosaur palaeobiology (Mike Dickison also ran a workshop on Wikipedia as a parallel session). Chris Barker looked at palaeopathologies in fossil theropods and wondered if the ever-present threat of predation might have a psychological and even physical impact on prey species (yes, there’s science behind this somewhat radical idea). He was followed by Dave Hone, who looked at the terminology we use when talking about dinosaur behaviour and ontogeny, the main takehome being that things aren’t as specific as they should be and that more precision is needed.

Caption: Jordan Bestwick spoke about his PhD work, soon to appear in print. Image: Darren Naish.

Rebecca Lakin was next, and discussed her research on reproductive strategies in dinosaurs and other archosaurs, and the session finished with Jordan Bestwick, who discussed his work on how tooth morphology and microwear can be informative with respect to diet and lifestyle. Jordan’s results are exciting and shed much light on pterosaur feeding ecology. The more intriguing and novel of the results can’t be shared yet and we look forward to this work being published soon.

Caption: Rebecca Lakin at TetZooCon 2019, another excellent talk. Image: Darren Naish.

Of Eagles, The Missing Lynx, and Life After Walking With Dinosaurs. My personal highlight of the entire meeting was Lauren McGough’s ‘When Eagles Go Bad!’. That title is a homage to the very first TetZooCon article, published way back in 2006. An experienced falconer since her teenage years, Lauren has flown Golden eagles Aquila chrysaetos in Mongolia, and used this knowledge to learn about eagle-primate interactions in Africa and rehabilitate injured Crowned eagles Stephanoaetus coronatus in South Africa. Her descriptions of eagle behaviour, predatory power, anatomy and ferocity were phenomenal and I can’t stop thinking about them. It’s a great honour to have any speaker at TetZooCon, but hosting Lauren at the event feels like an especially great honour since her research and adventures have been so integral to much of what I’ve written about and thought about since instigating this whole TetZoo thing more than a decade ago. To top it all, Lauren herself is something of a TetZoo fan; what a thrill.

Caption: Lauren McGough, eagle expert and all-round superstar. Image: Darren Naish.

Following Lauren was palaeomammalogist and ancient DNA researcher Ross Barnett. Ross’s work spans an enormous number of animals living and extinct, but I think it’s fair to say that he’s best known for his studies of lions and sabretooths.  His talk at TetZooCon was a broad-bush take on Britain’s lost mammal fauna as reviewed in his new book The Missing Lynx (Barnett 2019). He spoke about hyenas, cave bears, beavers, lynxes and rewilding and the potential for future change and reintroduction. Ross’s talk was followed by a signing event and very successful it was too.

Caption: the crowning achievement of Ross Barnett’s career, surely: having his research written about in The Daily Mash. Such accolade. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

The final talk of the day was by Tim Haines and discussed the ups and downs of ‘digital dinosaur’ projects, namely Walking With Dinosaurs, Sea Monsters, Walking With Beasts and so on. It was titled ’20 Years Since Walking With Dinosaurs’, and the timing was pretty uncanny since October 2020 is almost exactly twenty years since Walking With Dinosaurs first aired. Regular readers might know that I’ve had a long-term involvement in Tim’s projects, initially because my PhD supervisor (Dave Martill) was one of WWD’s consultants. This relationship led to Dave and I’s co-authoring of Walking With Dinosaurs: The Evidence (Martill & Naish 2000), and ultimately to my stint at Impossible Pictures and more recently to my involvement in Dinosaurs In The Wild. It was obvious from our audience’s reaction that Tim had a pretty substantial fanbase at TetZooCon and that his talk was both well-received and much anticipated.

Caption: Tim Haines - with assistant - talks digital dinosaur projects at TetZooCon 2019. Image: Georgia Witton-Maclean.

The Denouement. Talks out of the way, we ended with the famous/infamous quiz, this year won by Richard Hing. Albert Chen and Kelvin Britton were joint runners-up. Prizes included a fantastic array of top-notch animal models provided by our friends and supporters at Everything Dinosaur, not least of which was the brand-new Rebor Komodo dragon, as well as various books, art prints, some leftovers from Dinosaurs in the Wild and a mystery gift in an envelope which was definitely not a dead rat.

And that was that. We had a conference meal later on the Sunday evening, went drinking afterwards, and a bunch of us went on a Monday fieldtrip to ZSL London Zoo, all of which was great.

Caption: a selection of great animals seen at ZSL London Zoo on our post-TetZooCon field trip (clockwise from top left: Dumeril’s salamander, Galapagos giant tortoise, Splendid sunbird, Pygmy hippo). Images: Darren Naish.

Despite a few hiccups, TetZooCon 2019 ran smoothly overall and seems to have been enjoyed by everyone who attended. We had a good contingent of friends from the continent and even several North Americans: thank you all so much for coming! And I’m pleased that things worked out despite our venue – The Venue – double-booking the room and messing us around at the last minute. As ever, we really do need a different venue, but we haven’t yet succeeded in getting one that gives us what we need and is affordable.

Caption: he is the One and Only John Conway. Allegedly.

It only leaves me to say huge and heartfelt thanks to everyone who assisted or attended or helped: to John, Jenny, Will, Tilly and Arty for help, to Kate and Alice for chairing sessions, to Georgia for photography, to Everything Dinosaur, Sheila, Dinosaurs in the Wild, Johan, Mark and others for donating gifts for the quiz, to all our amazing speakers and presenters, to everyone who staffed stalls and sold things, and to all our attendees. As per usual, we aim for next year to be bigger and better!

Several reviews of TetZooCon 2019 have already appeared online…

• TETZOOCON 2019 – DAY 1 at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs

• TetZoo.Con 2019… a throwback to better times looking into​ the future at Luis V. Rey Updates Blog

• TetZooCon 2019 at Talita Bateman’s blog

• #SciFri: TetZooCon 2019 at Steve’s Herpetological Blog

 For previous TetZoo articles on TetZooCon meetings, see…

• The events of TetZooCon 2014, July 2014

• TetZooCon 2015 Is On, July 2015

• The Events of TetZooCon 2015, November 2015

• Coming Soon: TetZooCon 2016, September 2016

• The Day After TetZooCon, October 2016

• The Fourth TetZooCon, September 2017

• The TetZooCon of 2017, October 2017

• Reasons to Attend TetZooCon 2018, September 2018

• TetZooCon 2018: Best TetZooCon So Far, October 2018

• Announcing TetZooCon 2019 – the Biggest Yet, August 2019

• Final Call For TetZooCon 2019, October 2019

 Refs - -

Ashby, J. 2017. Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects. History Press, Cheltenham.

Barnett, R. 2019. The Missing Lynx: the Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals. Bloomsbury, London.

Martill, D. M. & Naish, D. 2000. Walking With Dinosaurs: The Evidence. BBC Worldwide, London.

Robbins, J. R., Park, T. & Coombs, E. J. 2019. Supernumerary teeth observed in a live True’s beaked whale in the Bay of Biscay. PeerJ 7:e7809.

Trueman, C. N., Jackson, A. L., Chadwick, K. S., Coombs, E. J., Feyrer, L. J., Magozzi, S., Sabin, R. C. & Cooper, N. 2019. Combining simulation modeling and stable isotope analyses to reconstruct the last known movements of one of Nature’s giants. PeerJ 7:e7912.

Final Call For TetZooCon 2019

It’s time to remind you once more that TetZooCon 2019 – the sixth Tetrapod Zoology Convention – is happening on the 19th and 20th October, and this is essentially your last chance to book a place*, should you wish to come along….

Caption: scenes from TetZooCon 2018, our biggest and best meeting so far. The 2019 meeting is shaping up to be bigger and better. To those not attending, watch #TetZooCon for live coverage. Image: JCTArtStudio/Jed Taylor.

TetZooCon 2019 is, as per the last two years, happening at The Venue, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London, a difference for this year being that we’re on a different floor from previous meetings and have more rooms in addition to the main hall.

* We don’t send out paper tickets; your name is added to a list.

If you’re seriously interested in prehistoric animals and their evolution, biology and behaviour, in palaeoart and in artistic depictions of animals in general, in the anatomy, ecology, behaviour and biology of such animals as swans, eagles, whales and amphibians, in human-wildlife interactions, in conservation biology, and in natural history film-making, you really should come along. Our talks and on-stage events this year are on a diverse range of tetrapod-themed subjects, but there’s a block on natural history film-making – featuring a range of very talented people from the BBC’s famous Natural History Unit – and another on the palaeobiology of extinct dinosaurs.

Caption: I went over to Instagram and…. here’s proof that things are really coming along with respect to merchandise for TetZooCon 2019. These are Rebecca Groom’s palaeoplushies. In previous years, they’ve all sold out within the first few hours of the meeting! Images: Rebecca Groom/palaeoplushies.

Caption: Jed Taylor is going to knock it out of the park this year, his stuff looks incredible. Here’s a shot of some of his merchandise. Image: JCTArtStudio/Jed Taylor.

As per usual, there’s a special palaeoart event led by John Conway (and running in parallel to part of the main event, sorry about that). This includes several talks by palaeoartists, the main theme of this year’s talks being the 3D construction of models. And – breaking news – it now looks like we’re hosting a big, dedicated palaeoart exhibition as well, featuring art by some of the UK’s leading palaeoartists. It should be hosted in its own special room.

Caption: this year is the 20th anniversary of the screening of Walking With Dinosaurs, so it’s especially fitting that Tim Haines - at far right in this image, with your humble blog-author - will be speaking at TetZooCon.

Merchandise, stalls, book signings and palaeoart wares are also a standard part of TetZooCon. Book signings this year include those devoted to Dave Hone’s The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, Jack Ashby’s Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects, Joschua Knüppe’s Palaeostream book, Luis Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs Part 2: the Projects and Ross Barnett’s The Missing Lynx. Dougal Dixon’s After Man will also be on sale, and I’m pleased to say that Dougal himself will be in attendance on the Saturday.

Caption: Luis Rey’s brand-new book will be on sale at TetZooCon 2019. Image: (c) Luis Rey/Darren Naish.

TetZooCon ends with a quiz and a post-conference meal.

So that’s that, we look forward to seeing you in London in late October. For the first time, attendees can choose to buy a booking for one day only; there isn’t one flat fee for the whole event. The booking site includes more information, a list of speakers, and a draft timetable. If you’re on Twitter and/or Instagram, follow events at #TetZooCon. See you there!

For previous articles on TetZooCon meetings, see…

• The events of TetZooCon 2014, July 2014

• TetZooCon 2015 Is On, July 2015

• The Events of TetZooCon 2015, November 2015

• Coming Soon: TetZooCon 2016, September 2016

• The Day After TetZooCon, October 2016

• The Fourth TetZooCon, September 2017

• The TetZooCon of 2017, October 2017

• Reasons to Attend TetZooCon 2018, September 2018

• TetZooCon 2018: Best TetZooCon So Far, October 2018

• Announcing TetZooCon 2019 – the Biggest Yet, August 2019

Extreme Cetaceans, Part 2

Recall the recent article about ‘extreme cetaceans’? Well, here’s the second one in the series.

Spectacled porpoise. Porpoises – the seven* species of the delphinoid family Phocoenidae – are small, short-beaked cetaceans that mostly live fairly cryptic lives in shallow coastal seas (this description applies to the living species: some fossil porpoises were comparatively large and long-beaked). The species that typifies the group – the Harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena – is greyish (except for its white belly), has a low, triangular dorsal fin and is not especially charismatic.

* I’ve followed recent taxonomic decisions and am recognising two species within Neophocaena (N. phocaenoides and N. asiaeorientalis).

Caption: Phocoena phocoena, the archtypical member of Phocoenidae. Image: Erik Christensen, CC BY-SA 3.0 (original here).

But other porpoises are rather different, and here we’re going to look at a far more flamboyant species, namely the Spectacled porpoise P. dioptrica of the cool and cold waters of the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic seas. This is a very poorly known species, and one of the things said about it most often is that just about nothing is known about it. It’s a 20th century discovery, its scientific debut occurring in 1912.

This species is remarkably pigmented relative to other Phocoena porpoises, being black dorsally, white ventrally, and with dark circles around its eyes. There have actually been a bunch of competing ideas on its exact appearance over the years, authors and artists disagreeing with respect to where the boundary between its dark and white areas are, what colour its flippers and tail flukes are, and so on. It’s distinct enough from the other Phocoena species that some authors have preferred to keep it in its own genus (Australophocoena), but this isn’t fashionable at the moment due to molecular data on its phylogenetic position. The suggestion has even been made that its pattern and colouring give it the ability to mimic killer whales and thus avoid predation. Cool idea, buuuut…. unlikely given that porpoises are so distinct from killer whales in size and surely in vocalisations and in the echolocatory signature that predatory cetaceans use when evaluating potential prey.

Caption: Spectacled porpoises photographed in the wild, in the Southern Ocean, in 2001. A male is at back, an adult female is closest to us, and a calf is in the middle. Image: Sekiguchi et al. (2006).

The Spectacled porpoise isn’t just remarkable for its pigmentation, however, but also for its shape, and in particular for its dorsal fin. This is ‘normal’ in some individuals, but disproportionally large – strangely so – in some individuals where it looks like an out-sized rounded flag projecting upwards and backwards at a size about twice or three times that you might predict. Like the keels, humps and unusual dorsal fins of some spinner dolphins (see the previous article in this series), this is a sexually dimorphic feature that’s especially exaggerated in mature males. Its presence is therefore presumably a sociosexual indicator of age and sexual status. Another odd thing about the dorsal fin (albeit one not unique to this species within porpoises as a whole) is that there are tiny tubercles along the leading edge (Evans et al. 2001), albeit seemingly not in all individuals. Dorsal fin tubercles are actually known for all porpoises – they’re weird and interesting and I’ll try to remember to come back to them in another article.

Caption: male, female and juvenile Spectacled porpoise, as illustrated by Uko Gorter for Natalie et al. (2018). The remarkable size of the male’s dorsal fin is obvious. Image: (c) Uko Gorter/Natalie et al. (2018).

This giant dorsal fin isn’t a newly discovered feature – it was reported and illustrated as far back as 1916 (Bruch 1916) – but it hasn’t ben commented upon as often as it might, especially given that it’s one of the most pronounced expressions of sexual dimorphism in cetaceans. Indeed, as Ellis (1983) noted, “only the killer whale manifests such a difference in the dorsal fin” (p. 198); sexual dimorphism of the dorsal fin is known in other porpoises, but isn’t as extreme as it is here (Torre et al. 2014). Apart from the fact that it’s obvious, and looks fairly absurd in the older males that have it, we don’t know much about this fin or its function. Maybe it’s ‘just’ a visual signal of sex, maturity and (perhaps) health and condition. Maybe – recall the comments in the previous article about dorsal fins functioning as thermal windows – it also plays an important physiological role. Whatever it does, it makes this an ‘extreme’ cetacean; an animal that looks surprising, weird and flamboyant.

Caption: I’m going to build a montage of the extreme cetaceans discussed in this series. This image will become more cluttered over time. Image: Darren Naish.

Finally — there’s a adoption scheme for the Spectacled porpoise. Adopt one yourself and aid in the conservation of this poorly known species.

More in this series soon. Here’s some of the stuff on cetaceans that exists in the archives (as always, much of the material at TetZoo versions 2 and 3 has been ruined by the removal of images, though remember that much or all of this is archived at Wayback Machine)…

• A 6 ton model, and a baby that puts on 90 kg a day: rorquals part I, October 2006

• From cigar to elongated, bloated tadpole: rorquals part II, October 2006

• Lunging is expensive, jaws can be noisy, and what’s with the asymmetry? Rorquals part III, October 2006

• On identifying a dolphin skull, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Seriously frickin' weird cetacean skulls: Kogia, shark-mouthed horror, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Scaphokogia!, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Cetacean Heresies: How the Chromatic Truthometer Busts the Monochromatic Paradigm, April 2015 (but now lacking all images)

• Remembering Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World, June 2019 

• Whale Watching in the Bay of Biscay, August 2019

• Extreme Cetaceans, Part 1, September 2019

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Refs - -

Bruch, C. 1916. El macho de Phocaena dioptrica Lah. Physis, 2461-2462.

Ellis, R. 1983. Dolphins and Porpoises. Robert Hale, London.

Evans, K., Kemper, C. & Hill, M. 2001. First records of the Spectacled porpoise Phocoena dioptrica in continental Australian waters. Marine Mammal Science 17, 161-170.

Natalie, R., Goodall, P. & Brownell, R. L. 2018. Spectacled Porpoise. In Würsig, B., Thewissen, J B. M. & Kovacs, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals, Academic Press, pp. 912-916.

Sekiguchi, K., Olavarría, C., Morse, L., Olson, P., Ensor, P., Matsuoka, K., Pitman, R., Findlay, K. & Gorter, U. 2006. The spectacled porpoise (Phocoena dioptrica) in Antarctic waters. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 8, 265-271.

Torre, J., Vidal, O. & Brownell, R. L. 2014. Sexual dimorphism and developmental patterns in the external morphology of the vaquita, Phocoena sinus. Marine Mammal Science 30, 1285-1296.

Extreme Cetaceans, Part 1

It was while going through my read all the books on the whales of the world phase of the early 1990s, I remember, that I first read of the dolphins – members of the highly streamlined, long-beaked, oceanic dolphin group no less – that have such weird features as deep keels, humps on the back and tailstock, and non-streamlined, forward-canted dorsal fins. Yes, we all know that whales are streamlined, torpedo-shaped animals with sensibly shaped appendages, but they’re not all like this. Quite a few species are weird, possessing anatomical specialisations and peculiarities that are counter-intuitive and little discussed, and most likely related to an unusual ecology, physiological regime, feeding strategy or social or sexual life.

Caption: a nice, normal looking group of Spinner dolphins. The obvious dark cape and paler side regions make these look like Hawaiian spinners but they were apparently photographed in the Red Sea. Image: Alexander Vasenin, CC BY-SA 3.0, wikipedia (original here).

In this short series of articles – yeah, this is Part 1 – I want to talk about just a few such animals, and I hope you’ll be as surprised by their anatomy and specialisations as I was when I first learnt about them.

Extreme spinners. Everybody knows that dolphins are streamlined, and the oceanic long-beaked dolphins (those conventionally united in the genus Stenella) are streamlined the most. The Spinner S. longirostris – a species that occurs throughout the tropical and subtropical marine waters of the world – is one such animal, its very long beak, torpedo-shaped body and tailstock and well-proportioned fins all appearing like textbook adaptations for swift movement in the pelagic environment. Yet for all this, some spinner dolphins – some specific individuals belonging to some specific populations – are very odd indeed.

Caption: one of the very best depictions of an ‘extreme’ male Eastern spinner is this one, from Shirahai & Jarrett’s 2006 Whales, Dolphins and Seals. Image: (c) Brett Jarrett.

These animals have arching dorsal humps and massive, bulbous ventral convexities on the tailstock which give them a peculiarly asymmetrical, lumpy appearance, the dorsal fin is not recurved and falcate, but has a straight or even concave anterior margin such that it might even lean forwards, and the tail flukes turn upwards at their outer edges. The exaggerated lump on the lower surface of the tailstock has a name: it’s the post-anal hump. This structure isn’t unique to the Spinner but is also present in other delphinids, like the Delphinus species. It appears to be sexually dimorphic and is especially prominent in mature males (Ngqulana et al. 2017). Perrin & Mesnick (2003) argued that these features - which are variable in spinner populations and most strongly developed in the so-called Eastern and Whitebelly spinners - are linked to testis size and to a polygynous mating system where males need to be highly distinct from their many female consorts, and built to display against, and fight with, other males. In other words, the most ‘extreme’ spinners are the most polygynous.

Caption: adult males differ in appearance across spinner populations, and it seems that the most ‘extreme’ males are those from the most polygynous populations. This diagram (from Perrin & Mesnick 2003) shows - from top to bottom - male Hawaiian, Eastern and ‘whitebelly’ spinners. Image: Perrin & Mesnick (2003).

How and why might this remarkable feature have originated? Spinners and other cetaceans adopt a sinuous, vaguely S-shaped profile when displaying to one another (this has now been seen in diverse cetaceans, mysticetes as well as odontocetes; Helweg et al. 1992, Horback et al. 2010), and one suggestion is that the post-anal hump and a matching convexity on the dorsal surface of the tailstock might serve to accentuate the curves of the S and thereby function in exaggerating this signal. One idea about the S-shaped pose is that it functions in shark mimicry (Norris et al. 1985; some sharks also adopt an S-shaped profile and use it to signal aggressive intentions), but the fact that it’s as widespread in cetaceans as it is – and similar poses are seen in other aquatic vertebrates – indicates that any similarities with non-cetaceans are convergent.

Caption: S-shaped postures, depicted (sometimes schematically) in cetaceans of very different sizes and proportions, from Horback et al. (2010). (A) Spinner dolphin, (B) Beluga, (C) Humpback whale. Evolve dorsal and ventral convexities on the body and tailstock, and you can exaggerate the intensity of this signal. Image: Horback et al. (2010).

Anyway… the features discussed here appear intuitively odd because they’re just about the opposite of what you’d predict to be present in a fast-swimming, pelagic predator which has otherwise evolved to be ultra-streamlined. But there you are.

Caption: humpback dolphins are not especially well known, and even less well known is that they’re kept in captivity in a few places and have been trained to do tricks. This individual was photographed in captivity in Singapore. Image: Tolomea, CC BY 2.0, wikipedia (original here).

The humpback dolphins. Everyone’s heard of the Humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae, but less well known is that there are dolphins with humps too, perhaps four species of them if you follow some studies of molecular variation within the group (the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin Sousa chinensis, Australian humpback dolphin S. sahulensis, Atlantic humpback dolphin S. teuszii and Indian Ocean humpback dolphin S. plumbea). Superficially, Sousa dolphins look something like bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops), and like them they’re coastal animals that prey on diverse fishes and cephalopods. Unlike the Tursiops dolphins, the Sousa species have a long raised section – sitting dorsal to the neural spines and musculature of the back – that extends along the middle part of the dorsal surface. The dorsal fin sits on top of this hump.

Caption: comparatively few people know that there are dolphins with humps, but check it out. These are Tom Ritchie’s illustrations of Sousa dolphins, representing adult males identified by Watson (1981) as S. chinensis (above) and S. teuszii (below). Images: Watson 1981.

The function of this hump – if it has one – is not well studied and authors have mostly avoided mentioning the possibility that it might have one. Does it function as a visual or acoustic signal of maturity? Does it have some role in buoyancy, hydrodynamics or streamlining? Is it a fat store? The dorsal fins of at least some cetaceans appear to function as so-called thermal windows: as heat-dumping structures, the large and extensive blood vessels of which carry cooled blood to the body interior (Meagher et al. 2002). In males, this cool blood helps lower the temperature of the deeply internal testes (Pabst et al. 1995), which might otherwise be prone to overheating. The humps of humpbacked dolphins, like the dorsal fins, appear to be richly innervated with blood vessels which again transport cooled blood from the animal’s exterior surface to deep within its body (Plön et al. 2018).

Caption: (A) vasculature in the dorsal fin and hump of a humpback dolphin compared with (B) dorsal fin vasculature in a Tursiops dolphin. The blood vessels in Tursiops are proportionally larger, but there’s a great number of them in the humpback dolphin, thanks to the hump. Image: Plön et al. 2018.

Could the hump therefore be a thermoregulatory specialisation for this mostly tropical group? Further research is needed, but this could be consistent with the fact that the hump is proportionally largest in adult males, and perhaps proportionally largest in those populations that inhabit the most tropical parts of Sousa’s entire range. A hydrodynamic role for the hump remains plausible but has yet to be investigated (Plön et al. 2018).

And that’s where we’ll end things for now. More in this series soon. I’ll publish a lot more on whales here in the future, but here’s some of the stuff that exists in the archives (as always, much of the material at TetZoo versions 2 and 3 has been ruined by the removal of images)…

• A 6 ton model, and a baby that puts on 90 kg a day: rorquals part I, October 2006

• From cigar to elongated, bloated tadpole: rorquals part II, October 2006

• Lunging is expensive, jaws can be noisy, and what’s with the asymmetry? Rorquals part III, October 2006

• On identifying a dolphin skull, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Seriously frickin' weird cetacean skulls: Kogia, shark-mouthed horror, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Scaphokogia!, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Cetacean Heresies: How the Chromatic Truthometer Busts the Monochromatic Paradigm, April 2015 (but now lacking all images)

• Remembering Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World, June 2019 

• Whale Watching in the Bay of Biscay, August 2019

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Refs - -

Helweg, D. A., Bauer, G. B. & Herman, L. M. 1992. Observations of an S-shaped posture in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Aquatic Mammals 18.3, 74-78.

Horback, K. M., Friedman, W. R. & Johnson, C. M. 2010. The occurrence and context of S-posture display by captive belugas (Delphinapterus leucas). International Journal of Comparative Psychology 23, 689-700.

Meagher, E. M., McLellan, W. A., Westgate, A. J., Wells, R. S., Frierson, D. Jr. & Pabst, D. A.. 2002. The relationship between heat flow and vasculature in the dorsal fin of wild bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus. Journal of Experimental Biology 205, 3475-3486.

Pabst, D. A., Rommel, S. A., McLellan, W. A., Williams, T. M. & Rowles, T. K. 1995. Thermoregulation of the intra-abdominal testes of the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) during exercise. Journal of Experimental Biology 198, 221-226.

Norris, K. S., Wursig, B., Wells, R. S., Wursig, M., Brownlee, S. M., Johnson, C. & Solow, J. 1985. Behavior of the Hawaiian spinner dolphin, Stenella longirostris. National Marine Fisheries Service Administrative Report LJ-85-06C.

Ngqulana, S. G., Hofmeyr, G. J. G. & Plön, S. 2017. Sexual dimorphism in long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis) from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Journal of Mammalogy 98, 1389-1399.

Perrin, W. F. & Mesnick, S. L. 2003. Sexual ecology of the Spinner dolphin, Stenella longirostris: geographic variation in mating system. Marine Mammal Science 19, 462-483.

Plön, S., Frainer, G., Wedderburn-Maxwell, A., Cliff, G. & Huggenberger, S. 2018. Dorsal fin and hump vascular anatomy in the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa plumbea) and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus). Marine Mammal Science 35, 684-695.

Shirihai, H. & Jarrett, B. 2006. Whales, Dolphin and Seals: a Field Guide to the Marine Mammals of the World. A & C Black, London.

Watson, L. 1981. Whales of the World. Hutchinson, London.

Philip J. Senter’s Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs?, the TetZoo Review

Many of us interested in the more arcane side of natural history will be aware of that body of literature that seeks to explain the biology, behaviour and history of living things within the words of a complex, multi-authored work known as The Bible. I refer of course to the creationist literature; to that number of books and articles whose authors contend that animals known from fossils simply must accord with the stories and descriptions of the Bible, and whose authors furthermore contend that the Earth and its inhabitants must have come into being within the last few thousand years.

Caption: a smouldering Parasaurolophus: the cover art for the book, by Leandra Walters. Image: (c) Leandra Walters/Senter (2019).

Creationist authors – the most familiar include Ken Ham, Kent Hovind and Duane Gish – have argued that non-bird dinosaurs and other fossil animals were inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, that predatory species like Tyrannosaurus rex ate water melons and sugarcane before The Fall, that humans and animals like Tyrannosaurus lived alongside one another during the early days of the Earth’s creation, that evolution cannot have happened, except when it did as species emerged from their different ancestral kind (or baramins), and that animals like Tanystropheus, tyrannosaurs and pterosaurs were seen and written about by people, and are responsible for the mythological creatures mentioned or described in the Bible and other ancient texts. Leviathan and Behemoth of The Bible, Grendel of the medieval epic Beowolf, the fire-breathing dragons of the Middle Ages and so on must – creationist authors contend – be descriptions of human encounters with giant reptiles otherwise known as fossils. And, yes: you read that right… creationist authors have argued, apparently seriously, that fire-breathing dragons must be descriptions of encounters with animals like dinosaurs and pterosaurs. So… they… breathed fire, then.

Caption: the Bible specifically states that the first few books of the Old Testament are not meant to be taken literally. Despite this, a number of Young Earth creationists promote a view of the ancient world where people lived alongside allosaurs and pterosaurs and so on. If you’ve seen a version of this page mentioning lemonade and homosexuality, it’s a spoof (the original text does not include that section of text). Image: (c) Ken Ham, Dinosaurs of Eden.

Over the past several years, Fayetteville State University biologist and palaeontologist Philip J. Senter has published a great many technical scientific articles evaluating the various claims and models of creationist authors; some of his articles are short-form versions of the text included in this new book (cf Senter 2017). His approach is to accept their proposals as valid scientific hypotheses, and not to knock, mock or discount them out of hand from the start. Remember that point; we’ll be coming back to it. This approach means that creationist claims can be considered tested in the empirical sense. It should also be noted that Senter is an Orthodox Christian with qualifications in theology, so his sympathetic and scientifically ‘honest’ approach to creationist claims should not and cannot reasonably be taken as any sort of attack on the Christian faith that the relevant creationists are part of. The fact that Senter is himself religious mean that he can make the argument (should he wish to) that the bad calls and bs put out by creationists is not just ‘bad science’ but ‘bad religion’, too. I’ve heard the same argument from other scientists who maintain an active religious life.

Caption: the book reviewed here is not the first time Senter has written about the ‘fire-breathing dinosaurs’ idea. Image: (c) Skeptical Inquirer.

For completion, and for those who don’t know, I should add that Senter is also an experienced and prolific author of studies devoted to more conventional palaeontological fare: descriptions of new dinosaur species, analyses of phylogenetic patterns, interpretations of functional morphology, and so on. The technical papers of his that I’ve found most useful and interesting include Senter et al. (2004) and Senter (2007) on dinosaur phylogeny, Senter (2006, 2009) on palaeobiology, and Senter (2005), Senter & Robins (2005), Senter & Parrish (2005) and Bonnan & Senter (2007) on dinosaur functional morphology.

Caption: the handsome cover of Senter (2019).

The early chapters of this book evaluate and discuss the creationist contention in general and the relatively young history of the entire movement. The impact of John Whitcomb and Henry Morris’s 1961 book The Genesis Flood is obvious, as is the fact that their arguments fail evaluation (Senter 2019). Nevertheless, their influence was such that – from the early 1970s onwards – a number of like-minded individuals were promoting Whitcomb and Morris’s vision, and were in particular arguing that ancient and medieval writings and works of art make explicit reference to dinosaurs and other long-extinct animals. Senter (2019) uses the term apnotheriopia (meaning ‘dead beast vision’) to describe the tendency of creationist author to interpret monsters in literature and art as long-extinct reptiles.

If apnotheriopia is one of your guiding principles, it ‘follows’ that the fire-breathing dragons canonical to Eurocentric, Christian mythology should be interpreted as dinosaurs or similar reptiles, and that such creatures were dragonesque fire-breathers. So integral has the whole fire-breathing thing been to these authors that they’ve proposed fire-breathing for dinosaurs of several sorts (most frequently hadrosaurs) as well as for pterosaurs and the giant Cretaceous crocodyliform Sarcosuchus (Senter 2019). You might know of one or two cases in which this idea has been mooted. Senter’s book shows that numerous authors have engaged with this vision and written about it. The sheer quantity of this literature is daunting – I was going to say ‘impressive’ but this absolutely seems like the wrong word – and Senter has clearly gone to some considerable trouble to obtain it. He must own a pretty hefty personal library of creationist volumes, and I’m reminded of a statement he makes in one of his papers, wherein he notes that collecting and reading creationist literature on dinosaurs and other extinct animals is one of his “guilty pleasures”.

Caption: some creationist authors have argued that certain dinosaurs could have functioned just like the living bombadier beetles AND SPEWED FIRE!!!!1! One minor issue: bombadier beetles don’t spew fire, they eject hot liquid. Image: Patrick Coin, CC BY-SA 2.5 (original here).

Indeed, the bulk of this book – the long section that runs from chapters 5 through 15 – is a chapter by chapter analysis of the different fire-breathing claims made by creationist authors. These people have, I’ve been surprised to learn, come up with six different mechanisms for fire production in extinct archosaurs. Senter (2019) goes through each in turn, in appropriate detail. In some cases, the proposed mechanisms are total non-starters (no, dear creationists, pterosaurs couldn’t house flammable gases inside their head crests) and can be brushed aside quite swiftly. But in other cases, Senter (2019) has to go down the rabbit-hole of gas chemistry, anatomy and biochemistry, and the history of burns and gaseous explosions in human medicine. All fascinating and well-argued stuff, and full of amazing nuggets of information.

Caption: Parasaurolophus - beloved posterchild of the fire-breathing dinosaurs movement - flames an anachronistic Ceratosaurus, a familiar image from the creationist literature. I believe that this is from one of Ken Ham’s books.

The conclusion, overwhelmingly, is that creationists have been spouting ill-informed (or uninformed) nonsense in coming up with their various fire-breathing fantasies. The proposals concerned are inconsistent with biology, chemistry and physics, and cannot have been present in animals governed by the rules that apply to the living things of planet Earth.

Caption: it’s well known that the crests of lambeosaurine hadrosaurs were hollow, and contained connected internal tubes and chambers. Were these used in the production of fire? No. Image: Sullivan & Williamson (1999).

The book’s final two chapters are connected to the fire-breathing creationist movement, but tackle rather different topics: the origin of dragons as a whole, and the true identity of the biblical Behemoth (Leviathan is covered too), often said by creationists to be a description of a sauropod or similar dinosaur. These two chapters are among the most interesting and valuable in the book.

Caption: why have creationists been so big on the ‘dragons were fire-breathing dinosaurs’ thing? I think it’s partly an effort to attract children to their cult. It isn’t coincidental that most illustrations of fire-breathing dinosaurs appear in books written for children, like this one by Duane Gish.

Even today, the notion that dragons must surely have been based on giant reptiles or reptile-like animals still unknown to science is not unpopular, and is occasionally promoted in the cryptozoological and conspiracy literature. But it’s wrong: the whole idea of dragons as we mostly imagine them (winged, fire-breathing, horned monsters, clad in armour-like scales and equipped with massive limbs and talons) is a mistake, and one that emerged, incrementally, from more mundane origins.

Senter (2019) shows, via statements made in antiquarian literature and by cross-referencing their use of terms, that the term dragon was used – unambiguously, consistently and repeatedly – for snakes, especially for large kinds like pythons. Yes, dragons were snakes. But how does this explain the limbs, wings, fire-breathing and other embellishments? These were added over time, mostly by medieval European authors who were no longer familiar with giant snakes and had heard rumours that dragons could fly (Senter puts this unfamiliarity down to the rise of Christianity and the closing of pagan temples). Feathered wings were added during the 8th century, which then became membranous wings thanks to inventive artists. By the 13th century, dragons were being depicted as quadrupeds (Senter 2019). What about the fire-breathing thing? If dragons were snakes, then some dragons were venomous, and capable of creating a burning sensation in human tissue. Embellish and augment this idea sufficiently, and the concept of fire-breathing winged mega-snakes has emerged. Chinese dragons, by the way, have an entirely independent origin and were mostly based on mammals; Senter (2019) even says that they shouldn’t be called dragons.

Caption: in this most famous depiction of Leviathan - that by Gustave Doré, dating to 1865 - Leviathan is depicted as a monstrous winged serpent of the seas. Image: public domain (original here).

Finally, Senter (2019) also shows – I think convincingly – that the creationist interpretations of both Leviathan and Behemoth of the book of Job are entirely erroneous, but so are the interpretations favoured by the majority of sceptical and ‘mainstream’ authors. I don’t want to steal all of Senter’s thunder, but… Leviathan and Behemoth were both gargantuan mythical serpents, and those authors who have interpreted these creatures as dinosaurs, crocodiles, or big mammals have misunderstood key descriptive phrases, or have been led astray by mistranslations or misinterpretations of the original Hebrew (Senter 2019).

Caption: Senter (2019) uses cartoons like this one to emphasise that Behemoth never was a dinosaur, elephant or hippopotamus, but “a demonic entity that the ancient Hebrews envisioned as a serpent” (Senter 2019, p. 142). The caption to this illustration is “Will be real Behemoth please stand up?”. Image: Senter (2019).

This book is not that lengthy. There are 201 pages, but 45 of them are occupied by a very voluminous bibliography. Plus the book is hardback (or, this edition is, anyway), so appears bulkier than it would do with soft covers. It’s well illustrated and includes numerous colour photos, diagrams of many sorts, and colour cartoons explaining and depicting Senter’s responses to creationist proposals and arguments. There are two things about the images that I dislike. Firstly, some of the colour photos chosen to depict given extinct taxa are quite anachronistic: things would be improved, I feel, if more contemporary reconstructions took their place. Secondly, the colouring used for many of the cartoons is less than great. I mean, the cartoons themselves – which I assume Senter penned himself (he’s a pretty good and competent artist) – are great, but it looks like they’ve been coloured-in with colouring pencils.

Caption: need to feature a depiction of an extinct animal? I, personally, would prefer it if a more up-to-date and aesthetically pleasing image were used in place of this one. Senter (2019) uses several images of models similar to this one when discussing extinct taxa. Image: I’ve been unable to find a source for this picture; it comes from that bottomless pit of hell called pinterest.

So far I’ve been kind to this book. I enjoyed reading it and think it’s a worthy addition to the literature. But I’m afraid that, by the time I’d finished reading it, I’d taken quite a disliking to it, for three reasons.

The first thing I dislike is the way in which creationist claims and proposals are framed. I’m not exactly a fan of creationism, creationist arguments or creationists themselves and I certainly agree with Senter (2019) that the authors who’ve pushed creationist agendas have been scientifically clueless, and/or have sought to wilfully promote anti-scientific gas-lighting. Senter (2019) even finishes the book with a prayer, praising creationist authors for their dogged promotion and energy but wishing and praying that they might make the world a better place by re-directing their energies to something good or constructive. Fair enough.

I do think, however, that Senter (2019) overdoes it in framing creationists and their ideas as ‘silly’ and ‘ridiculous’; Senter (2019) does this throughout the whole of the book such that its entire approach is “let’s all laugh at those whacky creationists” (the subtitle, I’ll remind you, is The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at its Silliest). In my opinion (I’d be interested to know if others agree), the book would have worked better if Senter’s approach throughout was neutral and without the mocking. I’ve mocked creationists myself, for sure (Naish 2017), but I’m not about to write an academic book on the subject of their writings. Indeed, given that I’m familiar with Senter’s  many papers where he tests creationist claims (all are written in scholarly fashion and use language and phrasing typical for peer-reviewed science), I was surprised to see him follow this path, and I had the impression throughout that it was done in an effort to make the text lighter, more fun, and more appealing. I understand the need for that but I’m saying that – surely – there must have been another way.

Caption: Senter (2019) compares creationist decisions to those made by a character called ‘Silly Chef’ (the muppet-like individual in the middle) who features in a series of cartoons that appear throughout the book. Image: Senter (2019).

Finally on this point, it might be doubtful that the creationists and would-be creationists who are the focus of Senter’s (2019) discussion will ever read this book (it’s abundantly clear that they don’t, or haven’t, read any of the other literature criticising or demolishing their arguments; if they have, they do a good job of making it appear that they haven’t). But by framing the entire book as a “let’s all laugh at those whacky creationists” exercise, the people who might benefit most by reading it will (I assume) be thoroughly put off. Admittedly, this is a moot point anyway in view of my third negative point, but hang on, we’ll get to that in a minute.

The second thing I dislike concerns Senter’s use of humour. This book is well written, and well edited too (I didn’t spot a single typo). But the prose is ruined by Senter’s repeated, very weird forays into simile and metaphor. They are, I’m sorry to say, not just bad, but among the worst examples of writing I can recall. Not only did I not ever find his quips funny, I mostly found them tortuous and daft and I winced every time the text introduced yet another one. I feel bad for saying this and apologise for seeming like a miserable bastard. I disliked this stuff so much that I feel the book would be much improved if all of it was stripped out. And if you’re thinking that – surely – the relevant sections of text can’t be all that bad. Well, here’s one example…

“The misunderstandings and mistranslations necessary to force such an interpretation are almost as bad as those that would be required to infer that the story of David killing Goliath is about a vampire grapefruit preparing a pleasant pile of purple petunias as a fluffy pillow for the happily napping saber-toothed tiger that it keeps as a pet and is convinced for no apparent reason that it is a gigantic German bunny with adorable tiny little ears that wiggle ever so preciously when you gently blow into them” (Senter 2019, p. 144).

There are many other examples of this sort of thing. They ruin the book.

Finally, the third thing I dislike is that great bane of book-buyers from impoverished backgrounds: the price. This book is absurdly expensive; ridiculously so. It’s £69.99 in the UK, $119.95 in the USA (though Amazon is currently selling it at a mere $71.89). As per usual, I appreciate that publishers have to sell books at a given price to cover production costs and to compensate for a sometimes distressingly low number of sales, but I still don’t understand why a slim volume has to cost as much as this one does. Given the price, I fully expected this to be some thick, extremely heavy textbook of perhaps 700 pages or so. But no, it’s a small book of no greater size, production value, academic quality or paper thickness than a great many books half its price or less. I’m extremely pleased to have obtained a review copy but that’s the only way I could ever have obtained it. There is no way I would have purchased it. If a paperback version appears and is reasonably and affordably priced, I apologise for this complaint and may even come back to this review and remove this entire paragraph, but let’s see.

Caption: Senter (2019) is not a big book. Here’s a copy with my hand for scale. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: I was expecting a much, much larger book. Image: Darren Naish.

I apologise for ending on such a downer.

Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs is certainly a unique book, and – as someone familiar with Senter’s writings on the creationist literature – it does have a magnum opus, end-of-the-road feel about it. As I’ve stated in this review, it’s well-written, has very high production values, and is of significant interest to those who follow the esoteric literature on Mesozoic archosaurs, and on the history of religiously motivated pseudoscience. But it has issues.

Senter, P. J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne. pp. 201. ISBN 978-1-5275-3042-3. Hardback, refs, index. Here at amazon, here at amazon.co.uk, here from the publishers.

A few other reviews of Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? are online. I deliberately didn’t read them until completing my own review. Having now read them, I see that they make similar points to my own…

• Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs?: A book review, by Jonathan Kane at Panda’s Thumb

• Don’t give Jurassic World ideas — ‘Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest’ book review, by Justin Mullis at AiPT! Science

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see me do more, please consider supporting this blog (for as little as $1 per month) at patreon. The more support I receive, the more financially viable this project becomes and the more time and effort I can spend on it. Thank you :)

Refs - -

Bonnan, M.F. & Senter, P. 2007. Were the basal sauropodomorph dinosaurs Plateosaurus and Massospondylus habitual quadrupeds. Special Papers in Palaeontology 77, 139-155.

Naish, D. 2017. Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Senter, P. 2005. Function in the stunted forelimbs of Mononykus olecranus (Theropoda), a dinosaurian anteater. Paleobiology 31, 373-381.

Senter, P. 2006. Necks for sex: sexual selection as an explanation for sauropod dinosaur neck elongation. Journal of Zoology 271, 45-53.

Senter, P. 2007. A new look at the phylogeny of Coelurosauria (Dinosauria: Theropoda). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 5, 429-463.

Senter, P. 2009. Voices of the past: a review of Paleozoic and Mesozoic animal sounds. Historical Biology 20, 255-287.

Senter, P. 2017. Fire-breathing dinosaurs? Physics, fossils and functional morphology versus pseudoscience. Skeptical Inquirer 41 (4), 26-33.

Senter, P. J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Senter, P., Barsbold, R., Brtii, B. B. & Burnham, D. A. 2004. Systematics and evolution of Dromaeosauridae (Dinosauria, Theropoda). Bulletin of the Gunma Museum of Natural History 8, 1-20.

Senter, P. & Parrish, J. M. 2005. Functional analysis of the hands of the theropod dinosaur Chirostenotes pergracilis: evidence for an unusual palaeoecological role. PaleoBios 25, 9-19.

Senter, P. & Robins, J. H. 2005. Range of motion in the forelimb of the theropod dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, and implications for predatory behaviour. Journal of Zoology 266, 307-318.

Sullivan, R. M. & Williamson, T. E. 1999. A new skull of Parasaurolophus (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the Kirtland Formation of New Mexico and a revision of the genus. New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin 15, 1-52.

Whale Watching in the Bay of Biscay

Back in July 2019, myself and a bunch of friends stepped aboard the Pont-Aven for several days of sea-watching in the Bay of Biscay. We were to travel from Plymouth (UK) to Santander (Spain), the event being organised by ORCA, a charity that monitors whales and uses the data for conservation purposes (they’re here on Twitter). ORCA uses cruise liners, ferries and other vehicles as whale-watching platforms. Nigel Marven was a special guest on our trip and it was great to catch up with him.

Caption: our vessel of choice - the Pont-Aven - at port in Santander, Spain. I cannot tell you how much trouble I went to to get to this ship before departure time. I very nearly didn’t make it. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: the man, the legend; Nigel Marven.

The purpose, of course, was to see whales. The weather was outstandingly good (meaning that I got burnt), but so was the whale watching: I’m pleased to say that we saw literally hundreds of animals of seven or eight species, as you can see from the photos below. My own photos are not great since my camera isn’t exactly the best for fast-moving, far-away animals like whales, so those you see here were mostly taken by my trusty pal Alex Srdic (who’s here on Instagram and here on Twitter). Thanks, Alex.

Caption: several cetaceans have extremely complex markings allowing them to be identified to species and even population. Individuals can be recognised on the basis of their markings too. Image: Alex Srdic.

The Bay of Biscay is a world-famous whale-watching hotspot, famous in particular for Cuvier’s beaked whales Ziphius cavirostris and Sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus. Dolphins of several species are a frequent sight too, as are rorquals of a few species, Harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena and pilot whales. A very lucky whale-watcher might get to see Blue whale Balaenoptera musculus, Killer whale Orcinus orca or True’s beaked whale Mesoplodon mirus. In fact, something like 30 species have been recorded in the region. This is phenomenal and mean that it’s theoretically possible for several species of some of the most elusive whale groups – like beaked whales and globicephaline dolphins – to be seen within days or weeks of each other.

Caption: in good weather, the blow of a big whale (like a Fin whale - as here - or a Sperm whale) is visible from great distance, and in the case of these two species can be diagnostic. Image: Alex Srdic.

Caption: a dynamic leap by a Striped dolphin. Dolphins of some species appear to be attracted to ships and even to deliberately show off when they get close to them. Image: Alex Srdic.

Why is the Bay of Biscay so good for whales? It’s mostly because the topography is complex, combining large, shallow shelf regions, steep sections of shelf edge – sometimes with impressive slopes and deep, enormous rocky canyons twice as big as the Grand Canyon – and a deep abyssal plain section (Carwardine 2016). Depth varies from 1.7 to over 4.7 km. This variation – combined with the overall productivity of the region and its position relative to the Atlantic and English Channel – means that there’s the chance to see continental shelf species (like porpoises), those that use deep canyons and other shelf-edge habitats (like beaked whales) and true oceanic deep-divers that forage in the deepest waters (like sperm whales).

Caption: back and dorsal fin of a Fin whale, remnants of the blow still hanging in the air. Image: Alex Srdic.

As it happens, we were extraordinarily lucky. Fin whales B. physalus are regular animals of the area, and we had amazing, relatively close views of them (by ‘close’, I mean perhaps 30 m from the ship, not alongside the vessel). Fin whales – the second largest extant animal after the Blue – have a blow that’s visible on the horizon and is about 8 m tall. The blow hangs in the air for a surprising time. One of the most remarkable things about the Fin whale is its asymmetrical pigmentation: the right side of the face is marked with a large pale area, as is the right side’s baleen. There are some old TetZoo articles on what this might mean and how it might function – see the links below.

Caption: excellent view of the splashguard - the conical structure surrounding and ahead of the blowholes - and paired blowholes of a surfacing Fin whale. Despite its name, the dorsal fin of the Fin whale is smaller and blunter than that of some other rorquals. Image: Alex Srdic.

Two coastal species were seen early on in our trip: Harbour porpoise and Common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus, though I don’t have good photos of either. The majority of dolphins seen on our trip (as is typical for Biscay whale watching) were Short-beaked common dolphin Delphinus delphis, which were sometimes seen in groups of more than ten. Their distinctive hourglass markings are always visible when they leap – which they often do, sometimes while immediately adjacent to a ship – and we also got to see calves on one or two occasions.

Caption: here’s the whole-body view of the common dolphin shown in detail above. This individual only has one stripe extending from the beak to the flipper, with a large pale area separating the eye and flipper. Different configurations are present in different populations. Image: Alex Srdic.

Caption: as the light begins to fade during the later part of the day, a group of Short-beaked common dolphin carve through a surging wave. Note the calf close to the adult at upper right. Image: Alex Srdic.

We also had excellent views of Striped dolphin Stenella coeruleoalba. They behaved in characteristic acrobatic fashion, leaping high out of the water, making impressive splashes and jumping in the ship’s wake. They typically make a lot more disturbance at the water’s surface than do common dolphins, creating great bursts of spray and rooster-tail patterns when they leap and surge. Striped dolphins are near-globally distributed. They’ve been the source of discussion lately since it’s recently been shown that the Clymene dolphin S. clymene is a naturally occurring hybrid between this species and the Spinner S. longirostris (Amaral et al. 2014).

Caption: we had many excellent views of high-leaping Striped dolphin. Note how much spray and splashing is associated with the leaping of this species. Image: Alex Srdic.

Finally as goes dolphins, we also saw pilot whales, identified on the basis of their black colouration and strongly backswept dorsal fins. These were most likely Long-finned pilots Globicephala melas (it’s more typical of temperate and cold waters than the Short-finned G. macrorhynchus) but we didn’t see any of the key features that allow the two species to be distinguished, and none of our photos are good enough to warrant sharing. A mysterious whale was seen among the pilot whales. It seemed to be very dark and with a short, blunt-tipped, parallel-sided but only weakly curved dorsal fin; I don’t think that its head was seen but I had the impression that it was a shallower-bodied animal than the pilot whales. Several different views were offered on its identity with the most likely (on the basis of dorsal fin shape) being that it was perhaps a False killer whale Pseudorca crassidens. That’s not tremendously likely but not impossible.

The whale most famously associated with the Bay of Biscay is Cuvier’s beaked whale, seen so frequently in the area that it’s regarded as the premier location for sightings of this species, worldwide. I don’t know if you’re guaranteed a sighting of a Cuvier’s while there, but – whatever – we were lucky, since we saw nearly 20 of them, ranging from smooth, clean-bodied youngsters to heavily scarred males.

Caption: Cuvier’s beaked whale, seen relatively close to the ship. Image: Alex Srdic.

Caption: heavily scarred Cuvier’s beaked whale, seen at distance and only briefly. We didn’t see any other individuals with scarring as impressive as this. Image: Alex Srdic.

Some individuals have markedly pale heads sharply demarcated from the rest of the body, others do not. On occasion, one or two individuals were close enough to the ship that I was able to get a half-decent shot with my mobile phone. Each sighting was a huge thrill. While we were oh so lucky as goes Cuvier’s, we didn’t see sperm whale, alas. We also saw Northern minke B. acutorostrata on perhaps two occasions, though again I don’t have any good photos.

Caption: another plus… amazing sunsets, and sunrises too. Image: Darren Naish.

Finally, we didn’t just see whales. The same route is also great for seabirds, and we also saw such fishes as tunas and sunfishes. As much as I’d like to start talking about the birds, I’m out of time. Anyway – the trip was excellent: rewarding, fun, and educational. I’ll definitely be doing it again. You should consider supporting ORCA and their work as well.

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Cetaceans have been covered at length on TetZoo before - mostly at ver 2 and ver 3 - but these articles are now all but useless since all of their images have been removed (and/or they’re paywalled, thanks SciAm). Over time, I aim to build up a large number of cetacean-themed articles here at ver 4.

• A 6 ton model, and a baby that puts on 90 kg a day: rorquals part I, October 2006

• From cigar to elongated, bloated tadpole: rorquals part II, October 2006

• Lunging is expensive, jaws can be noisy, and what’s with the asymmetry? Rorquals part III, October 2006

• On identifying a dolphin skull, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Seriously frickin' weird cetacean skulls: Kogia, shark-mouthed horror, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Scaphokogia!, July 2008 (all images now missing)

• Cetacean Heresies: How the Chromatic Truthometer Busts the Monochromatic Paradigm, April 2015 (but now lacking all images)

• Remembering Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World, June 2019 

Refs - -

Amaral, A. R., Lovewell, G., Coelho, M. M., Amato, G. & Rosenbaum, H. C. 2014. Hybrid speciation in a marine mammal: the Clymene dolphin (Stenella clymene). PLoS ONE 9 (1): e83645.

Carwardine, M. 2016. Mark Carwardine’s Guide to Whale Watching in Britain and Europe. Bloomsbury, London.

Books on the Loch Ness Monster 3: The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness

The story of the Loch Ness Monster is not a zoological one, no matter how desperately those who support the alleged existence of the monster wish it were. It is, instead, the story of people. Of people who tricked others into thinking that they saw or believed in a monster, of people who really thought they had seen a monster, and of people who wrote about, and theorised about, the thoughts, beliefs and adventures of others who’d thought or claimed they’d seen a monster.

Caption: Tim Dinsdale with his own reconstruction of the Loch Ness Monster (a clay model, held in place on a painted wooden board). I presume this photo was taken on the set of the BBC Panorama studio. Image: (c) Tim Dinsdale.

One of the most important characters as goes popularisation of the monster and promotion of its ostensible reality remains aeronautical engineer Tim Dinsdale (1924-1987). Over the three decades in which he was involved in the Loch Ness Monster story, he wrote four Nessie-themed books (Dinsdale 1961, 1966, 1973, 1975; not counting later editions), produced the text for a map (Dinsdale 1977), procured what remains the most famous piece of Nessie-based camera footage, and was deeply and closely involved in several campaigns and schemes to have the Loch Ness Monster formally recognised as a genuine animal species deserving legal protection.

Caption: covers of Dinsdale’s Loch Ness books - though not depicting all editions. Image: Darren Naish.

Those familiar with Dinsdale’s writings will already know the basics as goes his involvement in the Nessie saga. However, a lengthy work dedicated to his life and adventures was always needed, and I’m pleased to say that this gap in the literature was filled in 2013 by Angus Dinsdale’s The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness (A. Dinsdale 2013). This second Dinsdale is Tim Dinsdale’s son, who has written an affectionate but never overly sentimental review of his father’s life.

Caption: cover of A. Dinsdale’s 2013 book The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness.

My review here is the third and final part of the connected series on recently published books about the Loch Ness Monster (the other parts are here and here), though rest assured that it certainly won’t be the last thing I say on the subject since there are several other recently published works that warrant review as well (Ronald Binn’s 2019 The Decline of the Loch Ness Monster will likely be next). I appreciate that it might seem a bit odd to review a book published more than six years ago, but better late than never.

Caption: Dinsdale’s 1977 map is meant to be about Loch Ness in general. It is, of course, quite heavy on monster promotion (Dinsdale 1977). Image: Darren Naish.

The Man Who Filmed Nessie begins with several biographical chapters on Tim Dinsdale’s family background and early adult life. It is partly autobiographical, discussing the Dinsdale adventure as seen through the eyes of his son, but also includes long quoted sections from Dinsdale’s writings. In the text that follows, any mention of or reference to ‘Dinsdale’ should be assumed to refer to Tim Dinsdale, not Angus.

The story of how Dinsdale became seduced by the allure of the Loch Ness Monster is familiar to those who’ve read his books (Dinsdale 1961, 1975) and those written about him (e.g., Witchell 1975, Binns 1983, 2017, Campbell 1986, Williams 2015). For a level-headed person with a ‘practical’ background as an engineer, it’s remarkable how quickly Dinsdale became essentially convinced by the monster’s reality. This revelation wasn’t achieved after a personal encounter with the beast, nor after he’d spoken to some number of sincere witnesses. No: he read a single article in a popular magazine (Everybody’s magazine), titled ‘The Day I Saw the Loch Ness Monster’ (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 42).

Caption: Dinsdale’s identikit rendition of what the Loch Ness Monster must look like, reconstructed by taking averages from the various eyewitness encounters he’d read. Image: Dinsdale (1960).

Inspired and excited, he decided that he had to go to Scotland to see the beast for himself, so off he went. Aaaand… immediately saw Nessie! Yes, on the very first day of his arrival at Loch Ness (16th April 1960), Dinsdale thought that he’d seen Nessie. It turned out to be a floating tree trunk (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 51). On 21st April 1960 (the fourth day of his scheduled expedition at the loch) – shortly after spending time with water bailiff and Nessie oracle Alex Campbell – he again saw, and this time filmed, Nessie: “a churning ring of rough water, centring about what appeared to be two long black shadows, or shapes, rising and falling in the water!” (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 62). And on the final and sixth day of his expedition (23rd April 1960) he again saw and filmed Nessie, this time procuring the famous Foyers Bay footage, featuring a humped object – Dinsdale likened it to the “back of an African buffalo” – moving across the loch. After obtaining control footage of a boat (albeit at a different time of day, in different lighting conditions, and with a white-hulled boat obviously different from the mahogany ‘monster’), Dinsdale immediately messaged the British Museum, his reasoning being that the leading zoological institution of the country should hear about it first. After having the film developed, he waited, honestly expecting an excited cadre of professional biologists to beat a path to his door. After about seven weeks of silence, he gave up waiting and went to the press, his ultimately successful plan being to have the footage screened on the flagship BBC news programme Panorama.

Caption: a screengrab from the approximately 1 minute long Dinsdale film of April 1960. The dark object was thought by Dinsdale to be the mahogany brown, ‘peaked’ back of a massive aquatic animal. Image: (c) Tim Dinsdale.

He brought along a clay monster model he had made, the fact that it had been kitted out with three humps now appearing inconsistent with the monster shown in the footage. Alex Campbell also featured on the same TV show. To Dinsdale’s eyes, the Panorama experience was not merely crucial as goes the promotion of his case, but valuable in the scientific sense since the “increase in definition and contrast” made to the film by the TV people improved its clarity and shed additional information on the appearance of the Loch Ness animal.

Caption: a key character in the Loch Ness saga is water bailiff and journalist Alex Campbell. While at Fort Augustus, I got to see his waterside home, Inverawe. It’s the building at far right here. Dinsdale spent time with Campbell immediately before seeing and filming his ‘monster’ of April 1960. Image: Darren Naish.

Our view of Dinsdale’s film today is that it isn’t impressive and almost certainly doesn’t depict a monster. There were surely viewers at the time who must have been equally unimpressed and Dinsdale’s view that the scientists and specialists who viewed the film in secrecy displayed nothing but apathy (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 73) is, of course, a biased take since he simply expected them to agree with his interpretation. The object he filmed was no giant unknown aquatic animal, but a boat (Binns 1983, Campbell 1986, Harmsworth 2010, Naish 2017; and see Dick Raynor’s page on the footage here).

Caption: Loch Ness is often a beautiful and serene body of water, but I can’t help feeling that it must seem remote and lonely at times of the year. This photo was taken in the Spring of 2016. Image: Darren Naish.

Prior to reading this book, my feelings about Tim Dinsdale were tempered by the fact that I thought him odd for abandoning his family for long stretches while engaging in the esoteric pursuit of an alleged mystery beast in a part of the country far from home. Furthermore, my idiosyncrasies mean that I’m automatically jealous or resentful of anyone who gets to engage in an expensive hobby at what appears to be infinite leisure.

Caption: few people seriously interested in the Loch Ness Monster can claim to have spent as much time on, or close to, the waters of the loch as Dinsdale did. But many people familiar with Dinsdale’s writings have sought to follow his footsteps, at least in part. Image: Darren Naish.

It turns out that none of these things are true. Dinsdale’s monster-hunting came at great personal expense and involved some degree of hardship. Furthermore, he deliberately included his family in his monster-hunting expeditions. I particularly liked Angus’s description of the childhood tradition in which he would procure the largest available carrot from the supermarket; this was to accompany his father on an expedition, the plan being that it would be fed to Nessie once she and Angus’s dad had made friends (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 86). Whatever Dinsdale’s legacy, the lives of his children were surely enriched by their regular trips to Scotland and their involvement in something as unusual as the pursuit of the Loch Ness Monster, though I have to admit that my personal circumstances while reading this book – I was working in China and missing my family – probably influenced my sentimental feelings on this issue.

Caption: you’ve probably read that the water of Loch Ness is tea-coloured. This is what it looks like when the bottom is less than 1 m away. Get to a depth of 10 m, and there’s essentially no light and nothing but darkness - at least, as far as the human eye is concerned. Image: Darren Naish.

While monster hunting, Dinsdale occasionally checked the shoreline. He was aware of the land sightings of Nessie and kept in mind the possibility that he might see the beast on land himself. I should mention here that refractory Nessie fan and blogger Roland Watson has recently published an entire book on the subject of land sightings, titled When Monsters Come Ashore. It’s written in extremely large font and in the bombastic and childish style characteristic of True Believers and is surely not a fair continuation of the level-headed and restrained, respectful tone of Dinsdale’s writings. In other words, poor Tim would not be happy with the state of Nessie promotion occurring among those few who might consider themselves his modern disciples.

One of the most interesting sections of the Nessie story concerns the arrival of the Americans and the use of assorted high-end bits of mechanical and photographic kit. While it might have seemed that Dinsdale and other British Nessie-hunters could have been gradually edged out of the quest, Robert Rines and his colleagues were on good terms with Dinsdale and even helped win him a lecture tour of the US, and ultimately to appear on big-hitting TV shows like The David Frost Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (A. Dinsdale 2013).

Caption: a Loch Ness scene, fortuitously featuring a waterbird (in this case, a Mute swan Cygnus olor) and a boat. Both objects have undoubtedly contributed in no small part to the phenomenon known as the Loch Ness Monster. Image: Darren Naish.

Indeed, Dinsdale’s fame reached its peak during the early and mid 1970s, as did the quest for Nessie in general. The mounting excitement that something was surely there and due to be confirmed – a belief fuelled by all that fancy American technology – inspired the idea that Nessie-like animals might lurk in other, nearby bodies of water. The book recounts Dinsdale’s expedition to Loch Morar, a place very different from Loch Ness but also said to have its own monster, called Morag. The main point of interest here to monster nerds is that the Dinsdales happen to meet a Mrs Parks, sister to one of two men who claimed a close Morag encounter.

Caption: Dinsdale was never explicit about the zoological identity he favoured for the Loch Ness Monster, but he clearly favoured the idea that it was a living plesiosaur, albeit one that had undergone a fair amount of change since the end of the Cretaceous. The legend of the late-surviving plesiosaur - reflected in this model, made for a TV show and photographed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in 2005 - owes something to Dinsdale’s writing. Image: Darren Naish.

The story – recounted in several monster books – is famous because the two men (Duncan McDonell and William Simpson) apparently had to use an oar to fend Morag away from their boat, and so vigorous was the interaction that the oar snapped. The story usually ends there. Another Nessie-themed book, however, explains how the individuals concerned had been poaching deer and were trying to discard an unwanted skin which, despite being filled with stones, refused to sink. Eventually it had to be whacked with an oar, and here we find what is claimed to be the actual explanation for the oar-breaking event (Harmsworth 2010, p. 218).

Caption: the ‘two people in a lake come so close to a monster that they have to hit it with an oar’ trope has been taken seriously enough to inspire this re-enactment, this time involving the Lake Storsjö monster of Sweden. The man with the oar is Ragner Björks. Image: Bord & Bord (1980).

In places, Dinsdale’s story arc is a melancholy one. He wrote of his realisation, years after his initial forays in boats on Loch Ness, that he had become an experienced and confident boatman, his long, quiet stretches involving grey water, and rain. He never was to experience anything again as thrilling as his 1960 filming of the ‘monster’s hump’, nor did this footage receive the accolade he hoped it would. The decline and demise of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau during the early 1970s marked “the end of an era” (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 200), and even the 1975 scientific symposium – the high water mark of Nessie’s scientific respectability, convened to discuss the sonar traces and photos obtained by Rines and his colleagues – was regarded as a disappointment (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 217). As scientific interest in Nessie waned during the 1980s, Dinsdale complained in 1987 that scepticism had taken over, that “Nessie in the 80s has, if anything, been going backwards” (Williams 2015, p. 202). A planned sequel to 1975’s Project Water Horse, intriguingly titled Loch Ness and the Water Unicorn, and said in the 1982 edition of Loch Ness Monster to be partly written, never appeared in print (Binns 2019).

Caption: scientific interest in Nessie might have waned during the 1980s, but this was the decade that gave us this fantastic book cover. You might doubt that encounters as close and thrilling as this ever occurred. It belongs to the sixth edition of this book, published in 1982.

Some authors, especially those championing the Loch Ness Monster’s existence, have framed Tim Dinsdale as the most brilliant, wise and relevant authority on the Loch Ness Monster (pro-Nessie author Henry Bauer is an example). It’s easy to be convinced from Dinsdale’s writings, and his son’s, that he was indeed sincere, honest, and trying as best he might to stir scientific and mainstream interest in something that he regarded as unquestionably real. And his underlying methodology was scientific. But he seemed never to grasp why the official response was one of apparent disinterest and apathy. It wasn’t down to “stubbornness … indifference … [and] arrogance” (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 232), but to the fact that the evidence just wasn’t good enough, and that there never was a good reason to believe in a monster. That Dinsdale became almost fixated on the monster’s existence after reading a single popular magazine article does not – I have to say it, forgive me – seem consistent with someone who might be deemed wise, level-headed and of the most sceptical, rational approach.

Caption: the Peter O’Connor photo of 1960 - this is a low-res, cropped version - has appeared several times at TetZoo over the years and is almost certainly a hoax, most likely an overturned kayak and a model head and neck (Naish 2017). Dinsdale included it in early editions of his book Loch Ness Monster but it - and any accompanying prose devoted by Mr O’Connor - is absent from the fourth edition and those that appeared afterwards. Image (c) Peter O’Connor.

On that note, and while it again shames me to say it, I’m impressed – if that’s the right word – by Dinsdale’s naivety when we look at specific parts of his Loch Ness experience. Take his interaction with Tony Shiels, the self-proclaimed Wizard of the Western World. In 1977 Shiels claimed to capture on film the most remarkable colour photos of Nessie ever taken, an object affectionately known today as the Loch Ness Muppet. Any familiarity with Shiels and his adventures quickly reveals that he has, and seemingly always has had, a tongue-in-cheek, jovial take on monsters and how they might be seen. They’re not really meant to be undiscovered animals lurking in remote places, but interactive pieces of quasi-surreal art akin to open-air theatre, the ensuing cultural response in literature and news being as much a part of the event, if not more, as the claimed sighting and photo. While I undoubtedly write with the benefit of hindsight (and, dare I say it, some quantity of insider information), Dinsdale was seemingly unable to perceive this. And thus the muppet photo appears – as a legit image of the Loch Ness animal – on the cover of the fourth edition of Dinsdale’s The Loch Ness Monster, a decision that speaks volumes.

Caption: the infamous 1977 Shiels muppet photo. Exactly what it depicts (a plasticine model superimposed on a scene showing water? A floating model posed in the loch?) remains uncertain. Image: (c) Tony Shiels.

The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness is an essential read for those seriously interested in the history of monster searching and the people who engage in it. The book has very high production values and impressive design and editorial standards, and includes an excellent colour plate section. I enjoyed reading it and think that Angus Dinsdale has produced a book that his late father would have been proud of, and moved by. Many interesting people have contributed to the lore of the Loch Ness Monster, and Dinsdale was without doubt one of the most important and influential. I leave you to judge whether this was time wasted, or a life enriched and made remarkable.

Dinsdale, A. 2013. The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness. Hancock House, Surrey, BC Canada. pp. 256. ISBN 978-0-88839-727-0. Softback, refs, index. Here at amazon. Here at amazon.co.uk.

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Nessie and related issues have been covered on TetZoo a fair bit before, though many of the older images now lack ALL of the many images they originally included…

• The Loch Ness monster seen on land, October 2009 (now missing all images due to hosting issues)

• Dear Telegraph: no, I did not say that about the Loch Ness monster, July 2011 (now missing all images due to hosting issues)

• Photos of the Loch Ness Monster, revisited, July 2013 (now stripped of all images, so completely useless)

• Is Cryptozoology Good or Bad for Science? (review of Loxton & Prothero 2013), September 2014 (now stripped of all images)

• My New Book Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths, February 2016

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 1: Ronald Binns’s The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded, March 2019

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 2: Gareth Williams’s A Monstrous Commotion, March 2019

Refs - -

Binns, R. 1983. The Loch Ness Mystery Solved. Open Books, London.

Binns, R. 2017. The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded. Zoilus Press.

Binns, R. 2019. Decline and Fall of the Loch Ness Monster. Zoilus Press.

Bord, J. & Bord, C. 1980. Alien Animals. Granada, London.

Campbell, S. 1986. The Loch Ness Monster: the Evidence. The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, UK.

Dinsdale, A. 2013. The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness. Hancock House, Surrey, BC Canada.

Dinsdale, T. 1961. Loch Ness Monster. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1966. The Leviathans. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1973. The Story of the Loch Ness Monster. Target, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1975. Project Water Horse: the True Story of the Monster Quest at Loch Ness. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1977. The Facts About Loch Ness and the Monster. John Barthlomew & Sons, Edinburgh.

Harmsworth, T. 2010. Loch Ness, Nessie and Me. Harmsworth.net, Drumnadrochit.

Naish, D. 2017. Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Williams, G. 2015. A Monstrous Commotion: the Mysteries of Loch Ness. Orion Books, London.

Witchell, N. 1975. The Loch Ness Story. Penguins Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.

Announcing TetZooCon 2019 – the Biggest Yet

At last, tickets for TetZooCon 2019 are on sale. And you’re advised to buy one, and thus book a place, as soon as possible, since they’re selling pretty fast. This is the sixth TetZooCon, and we’re now in bigger, badder, faster, harder mode with two whole days of TetZoo-related stuff.

This year’s banner includes just some of the birds I’ve drawn for my in-prep textbook… but let’s not talk about that today.

As per the last two years, we’re once again at The Venue at Malet Street in central London on a weekend (Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th October). Things kick off at 10am both days. We have numerous talks but the schedule has been arranged this year such that – hopefully – there’s time for Q&A sessions, and also more time for roundtable events and other discussions, since they worked well at the 2018 meeting.

Beautiful Megaloceros model made by Agata Stachowiak. You might recognise the colour scheme if you’re a regular TetZoo reader. Image: (c) Agata Stachowiak, used with permission.

Palaeoart. Once again we’re running a dedicated palaeoart event which involves short talks (this time mostly revolving around the theme of making things in 3D: Rebecca Groom, Agata Stachowiak, Jed Taylor; Joschua Knüppe is speaking too), a discussion (led by Beth Windle) and a workshop. The palaeoart event runs in parallel to one of the main sessions: not ideal, but we can’t otherwise fit everything in. You have to pay separately for the palaeoart event if you intend to come along (I mean, in addition to the main entry fee). There will also be – we hope; none of this is confirmed and finalised yet – two palaeoart-themed exhibitions. Also, both Luis Rey and Mark Witton will be selling and signing palaeoart-themed books. I believe that Luis’s new book will be out in time, fingers crossed! Hey, that’s a lot of palaeoart-themed stuff.

Just two of our several palaeoart presenters for TetZooCon 2019, both - coincidentally - holding dromaeosaurids. Jed Taylor (of JCTArtStudio) at left; Rebecca Groom (of palaeoplushies) at right. Images: (c) JCTaylor, Rebecca Groom, used with permission.

Dinosaurs and other extinct archosaurs. One major theme this year is Mesozoic dinosaurs and kin, because why not. We have a block of talks on dinosaur palaeobiology (Rebecca Lakin on parental care, Chris Barker on pathologies in theropods, Dave Hone on social behaviour), as well as Jordan Bestwick on his work on inferring diet from tooth microwear analysis, recently published in Scientific Reports. There’s also a roundtable discussion on extinct archosaur palaeobiology as a whole. Dave Hone will be selling and signing his The Tyrannosaur Chronicles as part of this event.

Dr David Hone will be speaking at TetZooCon 2019, and signing his book The Tyrannosaur Chronicles. Image: (c) David Hone, used with permission.

Natural History Film-Making. A second theme involves film-making. I don’t so much mean the nuts and bolts of how one actually goes about ‘making’ a film, but the entire experience, the backstories to the people involved, and their various projects and adventures. Amber Eames will be talking about her award-winning film Swans: Mystery of the Missing, and we’ll be joined in an on-stage discussion by Paul Stewart (who’s filmed a vast number of mammals, birds and other animals worldwide, including a huge number of things featured in the BBC Attenborough documentaries), Nick Lyon (best known for the BBC Dynasties episode on African wild dogs), and Zoe Cousins (who’s worked on documentaries about the Tapanuli orangutan, urban wildlife and more). We’re hoping to show film segments and montages as part of this event.

Amber Eames will be talking about her film devoted to the plight of migratory Bewick’s swans. Images: (c) Amber Eames, used with permission.

Wildlife film-maker, producer, author and qualified zoologist Dr Paul Stewart (in the middle; here with Sir David Attenborough and other team members) will be at TetZooCon 2019. Image: (c) Paul Stewart, used with permission.

Other talks, other events. And there’s tons more as well. TetZooCon 2019 also includes Ellen Coombs on whales, Amy Schwartz on her work on roadkill, Lauren McGough on eagles and adventures in falconry, Tim Haines on ‘20 years of popular digital palaeontology’, Ross Barnett on The Missing Lynx (another book signing), Jack Ashby on Unnatural History Museums (another book signing)…. and more! There will also be stalls and merchandise, we end with a quiz (with great prizes), and there’s a conference meal and a drinks reception too.

One of our many star speakers for 2019: the amazing Lauren McGough. Image: (c) Lauren McGough, used with permission.

As per last year, it’s likely that we’ll be sold out by the early weeks of October, so don’t leave things too late if you’re planning to come along. We’ve also changed the ticket sales so that you can pay for attendance on just one day. And that’ll do for now. Go here to book (and see more information), and see you there in October!

The First Year of Tetrapod Zoology Ver 4

It’s July 31st 2019, meaning that TetZoo the blog has been at its new home here – tetzoo.com, previously occupied only by the podcast and the TetZooCon page – for a whole year.

If there’s ever a TetZoo Park, it’ll have a lot of tapirs, especially Kabomani ones. Image: Patrick Murphy.

As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader, I already do birthday articles every January 21st (doing these is a good way of keeping track of the year’s events), but being at a new hosting site is enough of a big deal that I feel it’s worthy of a special article too. This article also exists as a one-stop list of links for all ver 4 articles published so far.

Who doesn’t love bigfoot, wailing in the dark? More colorful versions of this image are available on merchandise at the TetZoo redbubble shop. Image: Darren Naish.

Ver 4 started its life with an obligatory ‘Welcome to ver 4’ article but we were immediately deep in extreme niche: specifically cryptozoology, more specifically bigfoot (still one of my favourite subjects in the world, however things pan out), and more specifically still the genitals of bigfoot. Yes, it was a vile, cheap effort to rake in readership, but by fuck did it work. A few dinosaur-themed book reviews followed, as did a popular and fun article on the vexing (and somehow topical as of August 2018) issue of dinosaur domestication.

• Bigfoot’s Genitals: What Do We Know?

• New Dinosaur Books, Part 1: Barrett on Stegosaurs

• New Dinosaur Books, Part 2: Ben Garrod’s ‘So You Think You Know About… Dinosaurs’ Series

• A 1996 Letter from Dr Phil Currie

• Could We Domesticate (Non-Bird) Dinosaurs?

The Vectidraco daisymorrisae holotype (NHMUK PV R36621) in (A) left lateral, (B) right lateral, (C) dorsal and (D) ventral views, and - at right - shown in anatomical position as per the animal's presumed profile in life. Image: figures from Naish et al. (2013).

For understandable reasons, another thing I often blog about is the research I publish, and August 2018 saw me writing about the new paper on pterosaur palaeoneurology I published with Liz Martin-Silverstone and Dan Sykes (Martin-Silverstone et al. 2018). The evolutionary history and diversity of modern animal groups are – surprisingly to many – not well covered in the literature, nor online, and it’s partly for these reasons that I often write review articles on given groups when I can (oh, for more opportunity to do this). August’s article on mastigures is one of the latest example of this noble tradition; I hope it proves useful.

• Postcranial Palaeoneurology and the Lifestyles of Pterosaurs

• The Tet Zoo Guide to Mastigures

Megaloceros cheat-sheet, from the September 2018 article on the life appearance of this animal. Image: Darren Naish.

And so to September 2018. A long-running project I’d been involved in over the past several years – the travelling, immersive Dinosaurs in the Wild experience – came to an end in September, and I just had to write about it, one more time. I also wrote about the giant deer Megaloceros (part of a slow-burn series on the life appearance of Pleistocene mammals), and I also covered TetZoo-relevant meetings of the time: the Dougal Dixon After Man event and TetZooCon 2018.

• The Last Day of Dinosaurs in the Wild

• The Life Appearance of the Giant Deer Megaloceros

• The Dougal Dixon After Man Event of September 2018

• Reasons to Attend TetZooCon 2018

• Reminiscing on Tetrapood Zoology: Book One…

• TetZooCon 2018: Best TetZooCon So Far

• TetZoo ver 3 and a Dark Day for the Dissemination of Knowledge

A Tapirus terrestris at Chester Zoo, UK. Relevant to tapir discussions covered here in October 2018. Image: Darren Naish.

Avocets and tapirs – the infamous Kabomani tapir, no less (did I mention that there’s a new tapir?) – were covered here in October, while November saw New Living Animals We Want to Find, another dinosaur-themed book review, a report of the ZSL ‘Comical Tales From the Animal Kingdom’ meeting, thoughts on an alleged 16th century dino-chicken, news on the second edition of the Naish & Barrett book Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved (Naish & Barrett 2018), a brief review of Erroll Fuller’s Passenger pigeon book, and a really fun article on the pouches of the Sungrebe. Wow, that was a busy month. The dino-chicken article includes a serious gaff and a follow-up article is needed. It’s coming, I promise.

• Avocets in Flight and Phylogeny

• Whatever Happened to the Kabomani Tapir?

• New Living Animals We Want to Find

• Brian Switek’s My Beloved Brontosaurus: A Belated Review

• Comical Tales From the Animal Kingdom, a Zoological Society of London Meeting

• Aldrovandi’s Monstrous Rooster, a 16th Century Dino-Chicken

• The Second Edition of Naish and Barrett’s Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved

• Erroll Fuller’s The Passenger Pigeon

• Pouches of the Sungrebe

Head of the reclining Crystal Palace Iguanodon. There’s an awful lot to say about these models… and I’m pretty sure they’ve been extensively discussed on a blog run by a colleague of mine. If only I could remember the name of it, or the url. Ok, ok, Mark Witton has been discussing all the models A LOT. Image: Darren Naish.

And we saw the year out with articles from December on TetZoo’s 12th birthday, the Crystal Palace prehistoric animal models, and one on exciting TetZoo-themed discoveries of 2018.

• The Much Belated Final Part of the Tetrapod Zoology 12th Birthday Event

• Up Close and Personal With the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

• The Most Amazing TetZoo-Themed Discoveries of 2018

That’s 27 articles over the five months in which ver 4 had - at this point - existed (I can’t count July, seeing as things kicked off on July 31st), meaning that 5.4 articles were published each month. That’s reasonable value for money, if I say so myself – more than one new article per week. Surely I couldn’t keep up such superhuman levels of productivity across 2019 as well? Let’s find out…

Gerhard Heilmann’s take on the appearance of ‘Proavis’ - a hypothetical bird ancestor - as illustrated in his Danish book of 1916. For more see the article on Heilmann and his Proavis from January 2019. Image: Heilmann (1916).

January 2019 was off to a good start, with articles on hypothetical proavians (follow-up article still needed), the life appearance of sauropods, and the obligatory birthday review all appearing during the month. More new(ish) books were reviewed in February, I also wrote about potoos on the internet, my personal recollections of the Dinosaurs Past and Present exhibition of the late 1980s and early 90s, and another new published piece of academic research (a new paper on a Late Cretaceous nesting colony, dominated by archaic birds; Fernández et al. 2019).

• Heilmann, Thompson, Beebe, Tetrapteryx and the Proavian

• The Life Appearance of Sauropod Dinosaurs

• Tetrapod Zoology Is A Teenager Now

• TetZoo Bookshelf, February 2019, Part 1

• A Multi-Species Nesting Assemblage in the Late Cretaceous of Europe

• Recollections of Dinosaurs Past and Present, the 1980s Exhibition

• Potoos As An Internet Phenomenon

Pretty soon there’ll be an entire wing of Tet Zoo Towers devoted to Loch Ness literature. Image: Darren Naish.

More on cryptozoology was published in March as I got through two of the promised three connected reviews of books on the Loch Ness Monster (the third will appear within the next month or two). Also worth mentioning here is the April article on my paper with Charles Paxton on sea monster sightings and whether they were shaped by people’s familiarity with fossil marine reptiles (Paxton & Naish 2019), and my recollections of a popular children’s book on monsters.

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 1: Ronald Binns’s The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 2: Gareth Williams’s A Monstrous Commotion

• Sea Monster Sightings and the ‘Plesiosaur Effect’

• Usborne’s All About Monsters

Slow loris, sloth and hypothetical pre-hominid, three ‘cautious climbers’ illustrated in the cautious climber article of March 2019. Image: Darren Naish.

Articles on the cautious climber hypothesis of hominid origins, sleep behaviour, New World leaf-nosed bats, and cocks-of-the-rock all appeared during April 2019. May was fairly eclectic and featured articles on the creatures of Star Wars, the way in which Styracosaurus has been depicted in books and movies, birdwatching in China, and cases where animals have been killed by falling rocks and trees. An unusual personal article dedicated to the life of the older of our family dogs – Willow – also appeared in May.

• The Cautious Climber Hypothesis

• Sleep Behaviour and Sleep Postures in Non-Human Animals

• The New World Leaf-Nosed Bat Radiation

• Cocks-of-the-Rock, Extreme Cotingas

• On May the 4th, Some Star Wars Musings

• The Fate of Burian’s Styracosaurus

• Birdwatching in Suburban China

• Lessons From a Dog: a Life With Willow

• Death by Falling Rocks and Trees

I have it bad for the Big G. Here’s a recent addition to my toy and model collection. Image: Darren Naish.

June – we’re in recent memory now – included articles on Godzilla: King of the Monsters, my reminiscences of Watson’s Whales of the World, thoughts on books about woodpeckers, and a review of Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook. Bringing us right up to date, we have my July pieces on dunnocks, Palaeolithic rock art and gulls.

• Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Some Trivial But Monstrous Thoughts

• Remembering Lyall Watson’s Whales of the World

• The World’s Best Books on Woodpeckers

• Mark Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook

• Tell Me Something Interesting About Dunnocks

• Five Famous Palaeolithic Rock Art Enigmas

• Hacks Vs Wildlife: the Eternal Vilification of Gulls

Sleep well, little, err, giant panda. From Chengdu Panda Base. Image: Darren Naish.

Excluding the article you’re reading now, that gives us 27 (again, oddly) 2019 articles across the first six months of the year, giving us a lower output of 4.5 articles per month… so, still more than one a week. I’ll say at this point that it’s the support I receive via patreon that allows me to be, and remain, productive here at TetZoo, so huge thanks to those who assist. My other projects – technical research and various in-prep books (not least of which is The Vertebrate Fossil Record) – are also dependent on patreon support.

I constantly upload in-prep stuff to patreon, support me there and see it come together :)

So there we have it: a quick review of what’s happened at ver 4 so far. As I’m sure I always say, there’s tons more I plan to write about, the current to-do list featuring some ungodly number of articles that are partially written, or planned, or in some preliminary stage of preparation. I would do so much more if I could. Overall, I’m happy with the way things are going at ver 4. Finally, I’m free of adverts (like those crow-barred in at SciAm) and have control over commenting (something I care about and want to encourage, not curtail). The community here is healthy and growing, and it can only continue to grow and expand as ver 4 itself incorporates more articles on an increasing number of subjects. Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll continue to do so. Here’s to the first year of ver 4.

The inevitable consequence of overlapping obsessions: actinopterygians and tapirs. Result: mertapir. Image: Darren Naish.

Refs - -

Fernández, M. S., Wang, X., Vremir, M., Lauren, C., Naish, D., Kaiser, G. & Dyke, G. 2019. A mixed vertebrate eggshell assemblage from the Transylvanian Late Cretaceous. Scientific Reports 9, 1944.

Heilmann, G. 1916. Vor Nuvaerende Viden om Fuglenes Afstamning. Unknown publisher, Copenhagen.

Martin-Silverstone, E., Sykes, D. & Naish, D. 2018. Does postcranial palaeoneurology provide insight into pterosaur behaviour and lifestyle? New data from the azhdarchoid Vectidraco and the ornithocheirids Coloborhynchus and Anhanguera. Palaeontology 2018, 1-14. doi: 10.1111/pala/12390

Naish, D. & Barrett, P. M. 2018. Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved. The Natural History Museum, London.

Naish, D., Simpson, M. I. & Dyke, G. J. 2013. A new small-bodied azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of England and its implications for pterosaur anatomy, diversity and phylogeny. PLoS ONE 8 (3): e58451.

Paxton, C. G. M. & Naish, D. 2019. Did nineteenth century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports? Earth Sciences History 38, 16-27.