Glassfrogs (or centrolenids) are a really interesting but comparatively little known group of anurans, you might have heard of them. Ha ha, just kidding – you know them well already since they were recently covered at reasonable length here at Tet Zoo. Since that article went live, I’ve been talking with glassfrog expert Juan Manuel [...]

Glassfrogs, or centrolenids, are wide-skulled, long-limbed arboreal little frogs (SVL 20-60 mm), unique to the Central and South American cloud and rain forests. Not until 1951 did this group get recognised as a distinct and nameable entity: prior to this, species within the group (known to science since 1872) had been classified as part of [...]

Back in May this year I visited the New Forest Reptile Centre (Holidays Hill, near Lyndhurst, New Forest National Park, Hampshire, UK). I’ve been meaning to visit for a long time – I think I last went there some time during the late 1990s – and the very hot and sunny weather meant that it [...]

As you’ll know if you’ve been following Tet Zoo for any length of time, I’ve been slowly working my way through the toads of the world for the past few years – yes, all of them, more or less. Seeing as there are about 540 living toad species, this may take a while. I’m currently [...]

More toads! (for previous articles in the series – required reading if you’re really interested – see the links below). In the previous article I introduced the idea that a large number of (mostly) poorly known African toads might be close relatives: they generally group together in cladograms, and – even when they don’t – they [...]

One of my long-term goals at Tet Zoo has been to complete my series of articles on the toads of the world… actually, this started out as a short-term goal, but it ended up taking rather longer than expected. This enormous, near-globally distributed anuran clade (properly termed Bufonidae) encompasses incredible variation and a huge amount [...]

Time to look at more of the frogs I encountered in Romania. In the previous article I discussed Western Palaearctic water frogs (the species of Pelophylax). Here in Europe, water frogs live alongside another group of ranid frogs – the brown frogs, the only frogs unambiguously and unquestionably associated with the generic name Rana. Well, [...]

As you’ll recall if you read my recent article on Yellow-bellied toads Bombina variegata you’ll know that I recently wandered about the Romanian countryside, hunting for frogs. You can never have too many frogs and, these days – what with the global amphibian crisis and all – you typically don’t. The good news is that [...]

I recently spent a bit of time in Romania, working with colleagues in an effort to find new Cretaceous reptile fossils. As usual, I can’t talk about what we found (yet. And we did find a lot). But what I can talk about is the modern-day wildlife I encountered while on the trip. Partly due [...]