Announcing the first ever digital Tetrapod Zoology convention!
For reasons that might be obvious there will not be, alas, a physical TetZooCon this year. This is a major blow, since the 2019 meeting (which you can read about here) was HUGE and a clear indication that we were on the up and up. We’ve opted instead to go for the inevitable digital meeting: world, I announce TETZOOMCON, a Zoom-based meeting available to anyone who books a place. Oh, ten TetZoo dollars to Ethan Kocak for - I think - being the first to suggest the convention’s name.
Yes, TetZooMCon. TetZooMCon tickets are already on sale. The event will happen on Saturday 12th December 2020, a week from the time of writing. It won’t be as long, as massive or as busy as the most recent physical meetings, in part because organising the thing has been a pain, in part because of Zoom fatigue (I don’t know about you, but I want to spend as less time in digital meetings as possible at this point), and in part because a potential global audience limits our options with respect to timetable.
On that note… for a British audience (John and I - the organisers - are both based in southern England*), TetZooMCon kicks off at 4pm on Saturday afternoon. That’s a morning start if you’re on the west coast of the Americas, late night if you’re in India, or the middle of the night if you’re in Australia or eastern Asia, sorry. But it should be doable for some reasonable section of the globe.
* We’re also being kindly assisted by Sharon Hill.
Caption: Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred, one of our several TetZooMCon speakers.
Anyway, what’s happening at TetZooMCon? We kick off with a brief introduction to events, and follow with a series of talks including those from Rebecca Wragg Sykes on Neanderthals (Becky’s new book Kindred is out now), Natalia Jagielska on pterosaurs, David Lindo on recently extinct birds and their possible persistence, and RJ Palmer on creature design. We follow with a discussion event on the phenomenon of British big cats, involving myself, Rick Minter and Matthew Everett (plus some special guests). Whatever you make of the British big cat phenomenon, the fact remains that it’s a fascinating sociocultural event.
Caption: the British big cat phenomenon - whether you think there are genuine wild-living, non-native cat species involved or not - involves discussions on rewilding, our attitudes to feral wildlife, field biology and evolutionary theory. Rick Minter (shown here) discusses all of these things in his book and his podcast (Big Cat Conversations).
We finish with an extensive Palaeoart Workshop, where a list of palaeoartists run parallel sessions on the process and background to the work they produce. We’ll be joined by Raven Amos, Midiaou Diallo, Rebecca Gelernter, Scott Hartman, C. M. Kösemen, Julio Lacerda, Bob Nicholls, Luis Rey, Steve White, Emily Willoughby, Mark Witton, Gabriel Ugueto and others. We aim for there to be breakout events, informal discussions and Q&As; at the time of writing we’re working out how to do those things… I’m sure it’ll work out on the day, ha ha.
Caption: a montage of works involving TetZooMCon palaeoart workshop participants. Clockwise from upper left: Bob Nicholls, Gabriel Ugueto, Raven Amos, Midiaou Diallo and Luis Rey.
Interested? Places can be booked HERE. Our fees for joining are extremely low and we need them to cover overheads. Tickets are selling well, though I should emphasise that places for the palaeoart event are limited, and it has to be first come first served [UPDATE, added 6th Dec’ 2020: places for the palaeoart event have sold out].
So that’s that; I hope to see you there! I’ll do a write-up of events once the whole thing has happened. If TetZooMCon works, it’s possible that we’ll do similar digital meetings in the future (perhaps in addition to the physical events we hope to have up and running again at some point), but who knows?
