This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
It’s time to crack open the champagne and hit the town because Tet Zoo ver 3 just hit the ‘200 article’ mark: specifically, Because caecilians are important was # 200.
That caecilians piece was a republished section of a longer article originally published on Tet Zoo ver 2: as I think I already said, some time soon I need to revisit caecilians and extensively update what I have. On the matter of lissamphibians, salamanders need revisiting too since I also want to extensively revise the old articles from ver 2. Anurans (frogs and toads) still haven’t been given extensive coverage on Tet Zoo. So much diversity and so much work on fossil and extant lineages that neither I nor anybody else has really reviewed properly online. Projects of mine that involve ichthyosaurs, Mesozoic dinosaurs, birds, and the ever-present azhdarchid pterosaurs will also be covered soon enough. Oh yeah, and then there’s all the stuff on non-mammalian synapsids, Paleogene mammals and temnospondyls that’s sitting there in my files, awaiting completion. If only I could put more time into blogging. I can’t, the constant quest for cash always takes precedence.
Other things I’d really like to publish here if only time allowed: body language in archosaurs and how you can make your images of fossil crocodylomorphs and dinosaurs all that more interesting, my overdue reviews of von Grouw’s The Unfeathered Bird and Loxton and Prothero’s Abominable Science!, the Dougal Dixon interview on speculative zoology (yes, it just happened), the rest of the toxodont series, and the Piltdown Man article I’ve been tinkering with since 2006.
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So… 200 articles. I don’t have anything particularly interesting to say about this fact. I did think about counting up the articles and seeing which groups have won the most coverage and so on, but that’s the sort of thing I save for the birthday articles. A quick look reveals the same sort of pattern I’ve come to expect: mammals and birds are tremendously well represented and non-avialan dinosaurs are fairly healthily represented while non-mammalian synapsids fail to get a look-in and anamniotes (‘amphibians’) are not covered in sufficient depth. At least croc-group archosaurs are fairly well covered, with much more to appear as time allows.
Anyway, all we’re seeing here is a list of the articles that have appeared on ver 3 so far. Actually, while I know that I’ve published 200 ver 3 articles, I seem to have missed one or two in the list here – I’m not sure how. If you know which articles those are, let me know and I’ll add them. Anyway, producing this list is a good idea since it’s not always easy to find old articles (the SciAm blog site is not, in my opinion, especially easy to search or navigate). And arranging articles in a subject-arranged format, as here, always seems wise.
I’ve interspersed the list with assorted images for your amusement.
All that remains for me to say is: thanks to everyone who reads, comments, and provides advice, commentary, support and assistance.
Miscellaneous musings
On conferences, books, films and museum displays
Karl Shuker’s The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals
Extinction: Not the End of the World at London’s Natural History Museum
Palaeozoic and Mesozoic non-lissamphibian anamniotes
Trematosauroids, those gharial-snouted, marine temnospondyls
Trimerorhachid temnospondyls: numerous scale layers and… gill-pouch brooding?
More temnospondyls: gigantic, gharial-snouted archegosauroids and their spatulate-snouted kin
Lissamphibians (extant amphibians)
In pursuit of Romanian frogs (part II: WESTERN PALAEARCTIC WATER FROGS!!)
The toads series comes to SciAm: because Africa has toads too
Dwarf mountain toads and the ones with the doughnut-headed tadpoles
Mammals
Why putting your hand in a peccary’s mouth is a really bad idea
The Mulefoot and other syndactyles: not all pigs are cloven-hoofed
Of koalas and marsupial lions: the vombatiform radiation, part I
Marsupial tapirs, diprotodontids, wombats and others: the vombatiform radiation, part II
A peculiar whale skeleton is included fortuitously in the sci-fi movie Hunter Prey
Obscure fossil mammals of island South America: Thomashuxleya and the other isotemnids
Marmosets and tamarins: dwarfed monkeys of the South American tropics
Nasalis among the odd-nosed colobines or The “Nasalis Paradox” (proboscis monkeys part II)
Hunter and Barrett’s A Field Guide to the Carnivores of the World
Squamates (snakes, lizards, amphisbaenians)
The more you know about colubrid snakes, the better a person you are
Love for Mastigodryas, Tomodon, Sordellina and all their buddies: you know it’s right
The Squamozoic actually happened (kind of): giant herbivorous lizards in the Paleogene
Turtles
Mesozoic marine reptiles
‘Rigid Swimmer’ and the Cretaceous Ichthyosaur Revolution (part I)
Malawania from Iraq and the Cretaceous Ichthyosaur Revolution (part II)
Other Mesozoic (and Permian) reptiles
Crocodile-group archosaurs
The Saltwater crocodile, and all that it implies (crocodiles part III)
Crocodiles of New Guinea, crocodiles of the Philippines (crocodiles part IV)
The Freshie: Australian crocodile, seemingly from the north (crocodiles part V)
In pursuit of Early Cretaceous crocodyliforms in southern England: ode to Goniopholididae
Pterosaurs
A new azhdarchid pterosaur: the view from Europe becomes ever more interesting
Daisy’s Isle of Wight Dragon and why China has what Europe does not
Quetzalcoatlus: the evil, pin-headed, toothy nightmare monster that wants to eat your soul
Non-avialan dinosaurs
Gerhard Maier’s African Dinosaurs Unearthed: the Tendaguru Expeditions
The Second International Workshop on the Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs (part I)
Did dinosaurs and pterosaurs practise mutual sexual selection?
The Second International Workshop on the Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs (part II)
Ryan et al.’s New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs: a review
Junk in the trunk: why sauropod dinosaurs did not possess trunks (redux, 2012)
Did Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx climb trees? Claws and climbing in birds and other dinosaurs
Dinosaurs and their ‘exaggerated structures’: species recognition aids, or sexual display devices?
Birds
Obscure Mesozoic birds you’ll only know about if you’re a Mesozoic bird nerd: Jibeinia luanhera
Big birds in the Cretaceous of Central Asia: say hello to Samrukia
Hoatzins are no longer exclusively South American and once crossed an ocean
A symbiotic relationship between sunfish and… albatrosses? Say what?
Living the pelagic life: of oil, enemies, giant eggs and telomeres (petrels part II)
Petrels: some form-function ‘rules’, and pattern and pigmentation (petrels part III)
Alien viruses from outer space and the great Archaeopteryx forgery
Putting petrels in their place and the possibly weird evolution of albatrosses (petrels part IV)
Gadfly-petrels: rarities, a whole lot of variation and confusion, and skua mimicry (petrels part V)
Eurylaimides, Tyrannida and Furnariida: the suboscine passerines
Getting a major chapter on birds – ALL birds – into a major book on dinosaurs
The war on parasites: the pigeon’s eye view, the oviraptorosaur’s eye view
Dyke & Kaiser’s Living Dinosaurs: the Evolutionary History of Modern Birds
Giant petrels, snow petrels, fulmars and kin (petrels part VI)
Great tits: still murderous, rapacious, flesh-rending predators!
Tubenosed seabirds that shear the waves: of Calonectris, Lugensa, and Puffinus (petrels part VII)
Herring gull eats sea star, and other tales of larid gastronomy
My local magpie family: four weeks of observation, 265 photos, and how good are the results?
Cryptozoology
Dear Telegraph: no, I did not say that about the Loch Ness monster
A baby sea-serpent no more: reinterpreting Hagelund’s juvenile Cadborosaurus
Palaeoart