We have heard a lot about Cayman Islands banking during this election season, but what about Cayman Islands endangered species? The three tiny islands that make up the Caymans—Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac—are home to a handful of endangered species that aren’t found anywhere else in the world. In the case of at [...]

Rare reptiles known as tuatara (the last two species of the order Sphenodontia) survived the age of the dinosaurs, but the age of man has given them a bit more trouble. After living in New Zealand for millions of years, tuatara were completely wiped out on the country’s two main islands by invasive Polynesian rats [...]

In 2008 biologists studying the eastern massasauga rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus catenatus) made a gruesome discovery: three sick snakes suffering from disfiguring lesions on their heads. All three died within the next three weeks. A fourth snake, found in 2010, also died from the mysterious growths and ulcers. Necropsies uncovered the source of the lesions: a [...]

Asian appetites are rapidly driving the world’s tortoises and freshwater turtles toward extinction, and some species might only be savable through costly and labor-intensive conservation efforts, according to both a new report and speakers at a workshop about conserving Asian turtles. “It’s going to take some intense management, both to protect wild populations and manage [...]

For nearly 20 years, the critically endangered Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) has been considered nearly extinct in the wild, victimized by habitat loss and poaching. A small population was found in Cambodia in 2000 and, until now, it was believed that, at most, 250 of the rare crocodiles existed in the world. But recently, conservationists [...]

Tet Zoo readers with supernatural memories will doubtless recall the January 2012 article ‘Rigid swimmer’ and the Cretaceous Ichthyosaur Revolution (part I) [link below]. I’ll refresh your memory by telling you that the article was all about the PLoS ONE paper on Acamptonectes, a Cretaceous ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur from the UK and Germany described by Valentin [...]

Tet Zoo regulars will remember the detailed montage I’ve produced that hopefully gives some idea of crocodylomorph diversity (Crocodylomorpha = the archosaur clade that includes modern crocodylians and all taxa closer to them than to croc-branch members of Archosauria like the aetosaurs and rauisuchians. Crocodylomorpha is basically equivalent to ‘Crocodilia’ of tradition; most members of [...]

Over the last few days, I and my friends and colleagues from the University of Southampton’s vertebrate palaeontology research group visited Lyme Regis for the 2013 Fossil Festival, a big, fun event attended by 1000s of people and by most palaeontologically- and geologically-oriented people in the southern half of the UK. There are stalls and [...]

We’ve named another new pterosaur! Once again, the open-access online journal PLOS ONE hosts a paper that I and colleagues (Martin Simpson and Gareth Dyke, both of the University of Southampton) have published on a new taxon (Naish et al. 2013). This is the third paper I’ve published in PLOS ONE so far this year, and [...]

The Tet Zoo crocodile series is not yet finished, and here we embark on part VI in the series (see below for links to previous parts). This time, we come to the Nile crocodile lineage, and I refer here to a ‘lineage’ rather than to a species since there’s now good evidence that C. niloticus [...]

Way back in November 2010 a remarkable photo appeared online, showing an adult Nile crocodile Crocodylus niloticus biting the trunk of an adult female African bush elephant Loxodonta africana (a plague upon those bloggers and others who identified the crocodylian as an… alligator. Duh). You’ve almost certainly seen the photo already: it was widely features [...]

It’s January 21st, meaning that Tetrapod Zoology is another year older and has now been going for more than seven years. Time once again to look back at the year that’s passed… or, the year as seen from my own personal, Tet Zoo-themed perspective. As per previous birthday events (or, blogoversaries, or whatever), I’m going [...]

Two weeks ago I and colleagues published a new paper in the august open-access online pages of PLoS ONE. Led by Aleksandra Birn-Jeffery of the Royal Veterinary College, and co-authored by Charlotte Miller, Emily Rayfield, Dave Hone and myself, the paper is titled ‘Pedal claw curvature in birds, lizards and Mesozoic dinosaurs – complicated categories [...]

My latest book, All Yesterdays, is now out (Irregular Books, 2012; details below). Subtitled Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals, the book – available both as an e-book and as a hard-copy, actual book book – was co-authored by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen (aka Memo) and myself. It’s fantastically illustrated [...]

This sequence of photos – taken by my good friend Markus Bühler – shows snail-crushing behaviour in a captive individual of the Australian scincid lizard Hemisphaeriodon (read on) gerrardii, popular known as the Pink-tongued skink. Unique to the coastal eastern strip of Queensland and New South Wales, it’s a predominantly terrestrial skink of damp sclerophyll [...]

Earlier this week, scientist Anna Wilkinson won an IgNobel prize for her research on contagious yawning (really, the lack thereof) in red-footed tortoises. In case you’re not familiar with them, the IgNobel Prizes are given for research that “first makes you laugh, then makes you think.” Read Scicurious’s coverage of the awards here. Since I’ve [...]