TetZooCon - the Tetrapod Zoology Convention - is our annual meeting themed around the contents and remit of the world-famous blog Tetrapod Zoology. We host talks, panel discussions, book signing, events and sales relevant to the world of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, living and extinct, and to matters of their evolution, biology and diversity, their portrayal in art, literature and fiction, the animals of the distant past, and to conservation, cryptozoology, domestication and more.
TetZooCon 2024 will be held on September Friday 27th (evening reception only), and the weekend of September 28th and 29th. Our venue is once again Bush House, King’s College, London, albeit in different parts of the building from last time. This is the 11th TetZooCon and is set to be the biggest so far. It includes talks, panel discussions, workshop events, an exhibition, movie screenings, a cosplay competition, book signings, a quiz (with numerous prizes!), stalls selling merch, books and other goodies, and more. Aaaand…
On Monday September 30th, join us for the first ever TetZooTour, visiting the Horniman Museum in London (for a special visit to the Dinosaur rEvolution Exhibition, accompanied by Luis Rey), the Lyme Regis coast and museum (in conjunction with staff of the Lyme Regis Museum), and Howletts Wild Animal Park. Darren Naish and others will accompany you as guides. Breakfast, an evening meal, accommodation and entry to venues is included in the price. Pickup in London 10am on Monday September 30th (in Surrey Street, adjacent to Bush House), returning on the evening of Wednesday October 2nd (dropoff same place).
If you have any questions or comments, please email convention@tetzoo.com.
Attendance for both days of the convention, Includes morning and afternoon tea and coffee, and the drinks reception on Saturday evening, and access to the Palaeoart Workshop sessions.
On Monday September 30th, join us for the first ever TetZooTour, visiting the Horniman Museum in London (for a special visit to the Dinosaur rEvolution Exhibition, accompanied by Luis Rey), the Lyme Regis coast and museum (in conjunction with staff of the Lyme Regis Museum), and Howletts Wild Animal Park. Darren Naish and others will accompany you as guides. Breakfast, an evening meal, accommodation and entry to venues is included in the price. Pickup in London 10am on Monday September 30th, returning on the evening of Wednesday October 2nd.
Saturday evening drinks reception and art show, 6 to 8pm on Saturday the 28th. All are welcome, £10 standard, free for TetZooCon Attendees.
Location
Bush House
30 Aldwych
London, WC2B 4BG
Announcing Events for the 2024 Meeting
At the time of writing our timetable is not yet finalized: watch this space. However… once again, TetZooCon 2024 will involve parallel sessions throughout. The Friday evening event will be an on-stage panel discussion. Events on Saturday will begin with an introduction by Darren Naish and John Conway. This will be followed by talks on monsters, herpetology and conservation. Sunday is mostly devoted to dinosaurs and will include talks from Darren Naish on an unusual episode in the history of dinosaur science, and David Hone on dinosaur behaviour. We will also be joined by celebrity natural historian, artist, author and photographer Chris Packham on Sunday. Panel discussions (one on portraying Mesozoic dinosaurs as live animals) will occur on both days, as will a palaeoart workshop. We end on Sunday with our famous quiz, followed by a pub trip (note to self: tell the pub in advance).
Merchandise and more
Merchandise is on sale and includes artwork, books and more. We invite those interested in hosting stalls to contact us.
The merch and sales area at TetZooCon has grown substantially in recent years. Several regularly attending merchants sell palaeoart- and wildlife-themed prints, models, figures, sculptures, badges, stickers and more. Palaeoplushies are on sale! The selling and signing of books will be happening too, including from Darren Naish, and hopefully David Hone if stocks of the relevant book are available in time!
Social Media and Sharing
TetZooCon promotes the sharing of info and images used during the meeting on twitter and other social media platforms and it is assumed that presenters and speakers are ok with the sharing of their material unless they state otherwise. Please use #TetZooCon when tweeting or on instagram. Please note that photos and audio and visual recordings taken during the event will be used online (at the Tetrapod Zoology blog etc) and on social media. Please make us aware if you wish to opt out.
Access
Bush House includes disability and wheelchair (step-free) access at the entrance and lobby, and ramps and lifts are provided throughout the building. Guests in wheelchairs have successfully attended the premises before (and been on stage). The only accessible toilets, however, are on the ground floor. More information is available at the the Bush House Access Guide.
Code of Conduct
TetZooCon operates a code of conduct whereby we do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference without a refund at the discretion of the organisers. We follow the Conference Code of Conduct recommendations explained in more detail here. If you have any questions, concerns or relevant issues to discuss, please contact the CoC reps via social media channels.
Terms and Conditions
We regret that we cannot provide refunds for people who have purchased tickets but are then unable to attend. The appearance of all advertised speakers and presenters is dependent on circumstances and may change at any time.
Provisional List of Speakers for TetZooCon 2024
Kai Caspar -- How Smart Was T. rex? Current Debates in Dinosaur Neurology and Cognition
Mary Colwell -- Curlew Conservation - A Battle for Hearts and Minds
Dave Hone -- Uncovering Dinosaur Behaviour
Angela Julian -- Revealing the Secrets of the Vanishing Viper
Natalie Lawrence -- Making Monsters
Jonathan Meiburg -- The Caracaras Would Like to Meet You: Encounters with the World's Smartest and Strangest Birds of Prey
Darren Naish -- Brian J Ford and the Dinosaurs: An Unsuccessful Effort to Make Dinosaurs Aquatic Again
Chris Packham -- Nextinction
Katrina van Grouw -- Unfeathered Bird Update: Progress Report From the House of Bones
Previous Years
Talks from previous years (2014 to 2019) have covered a huge range of subjects (the list below doesn’t include the events of 2020 and 2021 because they were zoom-based and thus a bit different)…
2014's meeting included talks on mermaids past and present (Paolo Viscardi, Horniman Museum and Art Gallery), the history of speculative zoology (Darren Naish, Tet Zoo Towers), the amphibian conservation crisis (Helen Meredith, ZSL), azhdarchid pterosaurs (Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth), Shakespeare and mystery primates (Carole Jahme, journalist and broadcaster), wildlife photography (Neil Phillips, UK Wildlife) and the biology of sauropod dinosaurs (Mike Taylor, University of Bristol). A write-up of the 2014 event is here.
At the 2015 meeting we had talks on urban birdwatching (David Lindo, aka The Urban Birdwatcher), Mesozoic marine reptiles (Jessica Lawrence-Wujek, University of Southampton), pygmy elephants (Matt Salusbury, freelance journalist), the story behind The Future Is Wild (Vicky Coules, writer and artist), the story behind The Unfeathered Bird (Katrina van Grouw, artist and writer), the science of sea monsters (Darren Naish again), and more. A write-up of the 2015 event is here.
2016 was similarly excellent and electric: speakers covered bears in Britain (Hannah O'Regan, University of Nottingham), the vital statistics of the Loch Ness Monster (Charles Paxton, University of St Andrews), the biomechanics of kneecaps (John Hutchinson, Royal Veterinary College), dinosaurs and the evolution of sex (Darren Naish, yet again), exotic sooglossid frogs (Jim Labisko, University of Kent), pterosaur biology (David Unwin, University of Leicester) and more. A write-up of the event is here.
The 2017 event was the first at our new, much larger venue: The Venue. The substantial extra space allowed much more as goes merchandise, products and artwork. Talks included Darren Naish on Hunting Monsters, Rose-Heather Mikhail on the history of zoos, Dani Rabaiotti on Does It Fart?, Aubrey Roberts on Triassic marine reptiles, Beth Windle on thylacines, and Ben Garrod on how things work in TV-land... A fuller account can be read here at TetZoo.
2018’s TetZooCon stepped things up to WHOLE NEW LEVEL with two full days of TetZooConiness… TetZooConity… TetZooCo— whatever. Unsurprisingly, it featured twice as much material as the TetZooCons of previous years, and the larger scope of the meeting meant space for loads more stuff. Events included a block of talks on bird evolution (with talks from Robyn Womack, Caitlin Kight, Albert Chen, Hanneke Meijer and Glyn Young), a panel discussion on bird evolution, a parallel palaeoart session that occurred separately from the other talks, talks from Steve Allain (snake fungal disease), Jennifer Jackson (baleen whale biology and evolution), Ian Redmond (‘The Reluctant Conservationist’), several book signings, an on-stage discussion devoted to speculative biology, a conference meal, a drinks reception, and lots more stalls. A fuller description of what happened is here at TetZoo.
2019’s TetZooCon was the biggest and bestest up to that time. Again, TWO WHOLE DAYS of TetZooCon-ness, including panel discussions on natural history film-making and the palaeobiology of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, a giant palaeoart event and exhibition (with talks from Rebecca Groom, Joschua Knüppe, Agata Stachowiak and Jed Taylor), and talks from Jack Ashby (unnatural history museums), Ellen Coombs (whale stranding records), Lauren McGough (hunting with eagles), Alice Pawlik (amphibian conservation), Ross Barnett (The Missing Lynx), Tim Haines (Walking with Dinosaurs to Dinosaurs in the Wild - 20 Years of Popular Digital Palaeontology) and Amy Schwartz (studying roadkill). It was epic! A TetZoo write-up is here.
TetZooCon 2022 - the first post-pandemic in-person TetZooCon and the ninth TetZooCon - occurred at our new epic venue: Bush House, King’s College, The Strand, London. Talks included Jack Ashby on Platypus Matters, Dean Lomax on Locked In Time, Jennifer Colbourne on bird intelligence, Darren Naish on the British herpetofauna, Cassius Morrison on theropod dinosaur ecology, both Liz Martin-Silverstone and Natalia Jagielska on pterosaurs, John Conway on A History of Painting (With Dinosaurs)…. and more! An on-stage discussion about All Yesterdays, marking ten years since its publication, occurred as John, Memo and Darren related events. Memo also sold original artwork from the project. Panel discussions were also hosted on Designing Aliens and Pterosaurs. Several book signings occurred, most notably that for Steve White and Darren Naish’s Mesozoic Art. Once again, attendance was up on the previous event… despite being a new, bigger venue, we just about filled up the space we had. A TetZoo write-up is here.
TetZooCon 2023 - the Tenth One - happened again at Bush House, King’s College. We’ve expanded to the point where parallel sessions simply have to occur for the whole duration of the event, and 2023’s meeting involved a Mesozoic marine reptile set of talks (with ichthyosaur talks from Dean Lomax and Emily Swaby, and plesiosaur talks from Judyth Sassoon, Richard Forrest and Luke Muscutt), a modern archosaur session (with talks from Todd Green on cassowaries, Jennifer Campbell-Smith on corvids, and Evon Hekkala on crocodiles), and a weekend-long palaeoart series of talks and discussions. Things started with a panel discussion on Friday evening devoted to extinction and the role of extinction studies in culture. Nigel Marven delivered to a packed house (see the adjacent photo) and additional talks covered extinct dolphins, scicomm projects, obscure frogs and more. Numerous stalls were there, and books, animal figures and art was on sale as well. A fieldtrip to London Zoo on the Monday was very well attended. This was by far the biggest and busiest TetZooCon so far, and in fact it was so busy that things will have to change for 2024 if we want to accommodate it all. A very lengthy write-up of 2023’s events can be found here.
