New Species Round-up for 2023, Part 2

In the previous article we looked briefly at those new amphibian and mammal species named during 2023. This time we skip ahead to reptiles… including birds because – yes – birds are reptiles in the phylogenetic sense)….

New Species Round-up for 2023, Part 1

This is a time of ecological crisis and massive loss of animal diversity, make no mistake about it. But there’s still a vast amount of new stuff left to discover, and every year we see a significant influx of newly recognized species, even among tetrapods. In this and the next article, we take a whistle-stop tour of those tetrapod species new to science as of 2023. As ever, remember that new to science is not synonymous with new to humanity…

Announcing the 10th Tetrapod Zoology Convention

On December 1st, 2nd and 3rd, the 10th Tetrapod Zoology Convention – TetZooCon – happens at Bush House, King’s College, The Strand, London. With just over a month to go (yikes), now is time to buy a ticket and consider joining us. It’s going to be the biggest TetZooCon so far, and hopefully the best. Here’s a rundown of what’s due to happen…

Alan Feduccia’s Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs: Forays in Postmodern Paleontology

For something like four decades, Dr Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina has been arguing that everyone is wrong about dinosaurs….

Laysan Ducks: Not as Degenerate as People Used to Think

I really like ducks, and my god there’s a lot to say about them. Here, we look at a small Hawaiian duck that once stood on the very precipice of extinction, some sources saying that it was reduced to a single individual at one point. I speak, of course, of the famous Laysan duck Anas laysanensis…

Birdwatching in Oregon

Back in December 2022, I had the remarkable privilege of visiting Portland, Oregon, for a conference. I’ve longed to visit the Pacific Northwest for my entire life and this was my first ever visit there. It was a dream trip and I had an amazing time, and while there’s a lot I could talk about… today we’re here to discuss THE BIRDS...

Discovering 'Hidden' Diversity Within Wealden Spinosaurid Dinosaurs

Over recent years, myself and colleagues at the University of Southampton have published a series of studies on the spinosaurid theropods of the English Wealden Supergroup (Barker et al. 2021, 2022, 2023a). And we’ve succeeded in improving our knowledge of Wealden spinosaurid diversity. But wait — there’s more!

My Own Personal Dinosauroid

Regular readers of Tetrapod Zoology content will be aware of the long-standing interest round these parts in the dinosauroid, a hypothetical humanoid theropod dinosaur posited to evolve in an alternative timeline where the end-Cretaceous extinction event never happened…

The Remarkable Basilisks

Way back in 2009 (the ScienceBlogs years) I published a Tetrapod Zoology article titled ‘Tell me something new about basilisks, puh-lease’ wherein I lamented the fact that people only ever say the same one thing about basilisks. Aware that there’s all too little squamate content here at Tetrapod Zoology ver 4, I here present a much augmented and updated version of that article…