The Big 200 at Tet Zoo

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

• Welcome to Tetrapod Zoology ver 3

• Dead animals at the roadside

• Inside Nature’s Giants… series 3! Camel!!

• Tet Zoo highlights 2006-2011, from a Tet Zoo superfan

• A Merry Tet Zoo Christmas

• Happy Birthday Tetrapod Zoology: SIX YEARS of blogging

• Happy 6th Birthday, Tetrapod Zoology (part II)

• Tet Zoo ver 3, (part of) the story so far

• Tet Zoo, the books

• 100 articles at Tet Zoo ver 3

• Leonard Brightwell’s brilliant palaeo-zoo

• Sexual selection in the fossil record

• The Haematothermia hypothesis

• Tet Zoo Christmassy wishes, 2012

On conferences, books, films and museum displays

• A day at London’s Grant Museum of Zoology

• Vertebrate palaeontology at Lyme Regis: of ‘All Yesterdays’, the ‘Leathery Winged Revolution’, and Planet Dinosaur

• Dinosaurs at SVPCA – no Mesozoic non-avialan theropods, thank you very much – and what about those marine reptiles?

• The Wealden Bible: English Wealden Fossils, 2011

• Karl Shuker’s The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals

• Tet Zoo Bookshelf: van Grouw’s Unfeathered Bird, Bodio’s Eternity of Eagles, Witton’s Pterosaurs, Van Duzer’s Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps!

• Extinction: Not the End of the World at London’s Natural History Museum

• The Tet Zoo Guide to Pacific Rim

• Tetrapod Zoology enters its 8th year of operation

Palaeozoic and Mesozoic non-lissamphibian anamniotes

• Nectrideans: more than just Diplocaulus

• 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

• The confusing diplospondylous tupilakosaurids

Lissamphibians (extant amphibians)

• In pursuit of Romanian frogs (part I: Bombina)

• In pursuit of Romanian frogs (part II: WESTERN PALAEARCTIC WATER FROGS!!)

• In pursuit of Romanian frogs (part III: brown frogs)

• The toads series comes to SciAm: because Africa has toads too

• 20-chromosome toads

• Dwarf mountain toads and the ones with the doughnut-headed tadpoles

• Life and times of the wild Axolotl

• Glassfrogs: translucent skin, green bones, arm spines

• Everybody loves glassfrogs

• Because caecilians are important

Mammals

• You have your giant fossil rabbit neck all wrong

• Why putting your hand in a peccary’s mouth is a really bad idea

• Those giant killer pigs from hell aren’t pigs

• Frankly, cattle are awesome

• Mystery mammal, badly photographed

• The Mulefoot and other syndactyles: not all pigs are cloven-hoofed

• Identify the mystery object (please)

• The seemingly endless weirdosity of the Milu

• Artiodactyls and steep slopes, and a new banner for Tet Zoo

• The ‘Tree-Kangaroos Come First’ hypothesis

• Of koalas and marsupial lions: the vombatiform radiation, part I

• Marsupial tapirs, diprotodontids, wombats and others: the vombatiform radiation, part II

• The noble tradition of military goats

• All the whales of the world, ever (part I)

• All the whales of the world, ever (part II)

• Because giraffes are heartless creatures, and other musings

• “San Diego Demonoid”: you mean that dead opossum?

• Williams and Lang’s Australian Big Cats: do pumas, giant feral cats and mystery marsupials stalk the Australian outback?

• Identify the Baja California mystery whale carcass!

• Grampus griseus joins the globicephalines

• A peculiar whale skeleton is included fortuitously in the sci-fi movie Hunter Prey

• Eld’s deer: endangered, persisting in fragmented populations, and morphologically weird… but it wasn’t always so

• The Man-Eater of Mfuwe

• Marsupial ‘dogs’, ‘bears’, ‘sabre-tooths’ and ‘weasels’ of island South America: meet the borhyaenoids

• Obscure fossil mammals of island South America: Thomashuxleya and the other isotemnids

• The anatomy of sloths

• Great Asian cattle

• Zihlman’s ‘pygmy chimpanzee hypothesis’

• Giant flightless bats from the future

• Poor little bat, impaled on spines

• Marmosets and tamarins: dwarfed monkeys of the South American tropics

• The amazing swimming Proboscis monkey (part I)

• Nasalis among the odd-nosed colobines or The “Nasalis Paradox” (proboscis monkeys part II)

• Mysteries of the diceratheriine rhinos

• The mystery mammal of Kayan Mentarang

• Hunter and Barrett’s A Field Guide to the Carnivores of the World

• Another meeting with the Hayling Island Jungle cat

• Jagged-toothed mystery monster; needs identifying

• A lynx, shot dead in England in c. 1903

• Wild wallabies in the UK

• A brief history of sengis, or elephant shrews

• What did giant extinct vampire bats eat?

• Phenacodontidae, I feel like I know you

• Tapir attacks past, present, but hopefully not future

Squamates (snakes, lizards, amphisbaenians)

• The Crowing crested cobra

• 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

• Amphisbaenians and the origins of mammals

• Monstersauria vs Goannasauria

• Goanna-eating goannas: an evolutionary story of intraguild predation, dwarfism, gigantism, copious walking and reckless thermoregulation

• The New Forest Reptile Centre

• Amazing social life of the Green iguana

• Hammer-toothed skink SMASH!

• Welcome to the Squamozoic!

• The Squamozoic actually happened (kind of): giant herbivorous lizards in the Paleogene

• Taxonomic vandalism and the Raymond Hoser problem

• The enormous liolaemine radiation: paradoxical herbivory, viviparity, evolutionary cul-de-sacs and the impending mass extinction

• It’s high time you were told about Psammodromus

Turtles

• In case you forget, softshell turtles are insanely weird

• Terrifying sex organs of male turtles

• A very quick history of turtles

Mesozoic marine reptiles

• Prediction confirmed: plesiosaurs were viviparous

• ‘Rigid Swimmer’ and the Cretaceous Ichthyosaur Revolution (part I)

• The gigantic, shark-toothed, small-flippered, long-bodied, sea-going predatory lizard that is Hainosaurus

• The carcass of a large, modern-day marine reptile!

• Sauropterygians NEVER FORGET

• Plesiosaurs and the repeated invasion of freshwater habitats: late-surviving relicts or evolutionary novelties?

• Scenes from the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival

• Malawania from Iraq and the Cretaceous Ichthyosaur Revolution (part II)

Other Mesozoic (and Permian) reptiles

• In support of Scientific Triassicism: Sues and Fraser’s Triassic Life on Land: the Great Transition

• Coming next: ReptileEvolution.com and the Dave Peters thing

• Why the world has to ignore ReptileEvolution.com

• The Tet Zoo guide to mesosaurs

Crocodile-group archosaurs

• Dissecting a crocodile

• Earth: Crocodile Empire homeworld (crocodiles part I)

• The once far and wide Siamese crocodile

• 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)

• The Crocopocalypse is upon us

• In pursuit of Early Cretaceous crocodyliforms in southern England: ode to Goniopholididae

• In pursuit of Early Cretaceous crocodyliforms in southern England (part II): of Vectisuchus and Leiokarinosuchus, Bernissartia and the hylaeochampsids

• Awesome sea-going crocodyliforms of the Mesozoic

• Crocodiles attack elephants

• Crocodiles of Africa, crocodiles of the Mediterranean, crocodiles of the Atlantic (crocodiles part VI)

• Crocopocalypse exposed in public for the first time!

• These skulls are for talking about

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

• In Rio for the 2013 International Symposium on Pterosaurs

• Quetzalcoatlus: the evil, pin-headed, toothy nightmare monster that wants to eat your soul

Non-avialan dinosaurs

• Dryosaurids 101

• What they’re saying about The Great Dinosaur Discoveries

• The discovery and early interpretation of Spinosaurus

• Gerhard Maier’s African Dinosaurs Unearthed: the Tendaguru Expeditions

• Paul Brinkman’s The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush

• 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)

• Greg Paul’s Dinosaurs: A Field Guide

• There are giant feathered tyrannosaurs now… right?

• Ryan et al.’s New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs: a review

• The 19th Century discovery of dinosaurs

• Dinosauroids revisited, revisited

• 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?

• Brilliant Brazilian spinosaurids

• 21st Century Dinosaur Revolution

Birds

• Sunbathing 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

• Obscure, extravagant tropical crows

• Three remarkable hummingbird discoveries

• Hoatzins are no longer exclusively South American and once crossed an ocean

• STOP ‘feeding’ the ducks

• A symbiotic relationship between sunfish and… albatrosses? Say what?

• Because the world belongs to petrels (petrels part I)

• 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)

• Noel W. Cusa’s brilliant seabird drawings

• Alien viruses from outer space and the great Archaeopteryx forgery

• Chickens, 2012

• Raptor vs raptor

• Putting petrels in their place and the possibly weird evolution of albatrosses (petrels part IV)

• Thor Hanson’s Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

• A drowned nesting colony of Late Cretaceous birds

• 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)

• Raptors kill hominids, kill cattle, kill giant moa

• Turkeys vs peafowl, the great debate

• The other turkey

• The other peacock

• Great tits: still murderous, rapacious, flesh-rending predators!

• Tubenosed seabirds that shear the waves: of Calonectris, Lugensa, and Puffinus (petrels part VII)

• Kea, Kaka, Kakapo

• Herring gull eats sea star, and other tales of larid gastronomy

• In pursuit of the Rook

• ‘Mystery’ birds from Brazil

• Birding in Brazil: a view from suburban Rio de Janeiro

• My local magpie family: four weeks of observation, 265 photos, and how good are the results?

• Historical ornithology 101, a Tet Zoo Guide

• My famous duck-based rant

• It’s hot and sunny, so birds lie down and sunbathe

Cryptozoology

• Cryptozoology at the Zoological Society of London. Cryptozoology: time to come in from the cold? Or, Cryptozoology: avoid at all costs?

• Dear Telegraph: no, I did not say that about the Loch Ness monster

• A baby sea-serpent no more: reinterpreting Hagelund’s juvenile Cadborosaurus

• The Cadborosaurus Wars

• Alien Investigations and the Montauk Monster

• The inaugural issue of The Journal of Cryptozoology

• Photos of the Loch Ness Monster, revisited

• Tales from the Cryptozoologicon: the Yeti

• Tales from the Cryptozoologicon: Megalodon!

Palaeoart

• The Great Dinosaur Art Event of 2012

• The All Yesterdays Launch Event

• All Yesterdays… today!

• All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals – the book and the launch event

• All Yesterdays: the talks!