Today is July 31st, 2023 which means….

**Caption:** images relevant to the last year of blogging here at Tetrapod Zoology… the books *Ancient Sea Reptiles* and *Mesozoic Art*, a cassowary skeleton (photographed at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), and the Beasts of the Mesozoic *T. rex* figures.

… that Tetrapod Zoology ver 4 – the version you’re at right now – has been going for five years already. As ever with milestones of this nature, I want to use this as an excuse to look back on what’s happened here since the previous ver 4 birthday. Consider this a highlights reel for the Tet Zoo events of the last year.

We start with my August 2022 article on black dogs (as in, the semi-mythical spectral giant hounds), an article that’s been regarded by some readers as a bit weird relative to the normal Tet Zoo remit. Maybe that’s so, buuut maybe it’s not since at least a few authors have considered black dogs relevant to cryptozoological hypotheses (rendering the topic appropriate for Tet Zoo coverage). Furthermore, the ‘sociocultural’ angle that I covered in the article is very much consistent with some of the hypotheses I’ve published elsewhere on belief in, and sightings of, mystery creatures (Naish 2017, 2022).

**Caption:** just how many ‘black dog’ pubs are there in the UK, exactly? This one is in Weymouth; the photos come from June 2023. The challenge is knowing whether they’re named for random actual dogs (say, a black Lab that was used in local wildfowl hunting) or the great spectral hounds of yore. Images: Darren Naish.

A big deal for me personally was my September 2022 talk at the United Nations Science Summit. It’s a big marker in the history of Tetrapod Zoology in general and I’ve already written about it a fair bit. Moving on, I’ve been meaning for years to talk about the diversity, evolution and natural history of zebras, and I finally published a long-in-gestation article on this subject in October 2022. What was intended to be a single, brief, picture-led article evolved into a multi-part – and as yet unfinished – series; part 2 was published in June 2023.

**Caption:** zebras have been covered at length at Tet Zoo ver 4, but more is set to come. The illustration here (left) is by Wilhelm Eigener and appeared in Hans Hvass’s 1961 *Mammals of the World*. At right: the cover slide of my September 2022 talk at the United Nations Science Summit panel ‘Knowing and Protecting Life on Earth Starts with Natural History and Science Innovation’.

Mesozoic Art and TetZooCon 2022. October saw the publication of Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art, co-authored and co-edited with Steve White and published by Bloomsbury Wildlife (White & Naish 2022). Mesozoic Art has been hugely well received and has sold well; we’re extremely happy with the feedback we’ve received from reviewers, contributors and people in the palaeoart community. It should be emphasised that the production of a big, glossy palaeoart-themed book is something of a gamble. This one really paid off. Will there be a Mesozoic Art 2? Well, hold that thought.

**Caption:** at left, *Mesozoic Art* editor, author, compiler, editor Steve White at a bookshop in King’s Lynn. At right, images from the book, by Brennan Stokkermans (above) and Julia D’Oliviera. Images: Darren Naish, Brennan Stokkermans, Julia D’Oliviera.

We planned to do various signing events and talks on Mesozoic Art but, sadly, they never panned out, this ultimately meaning that TetZooCon 2022 (in December) functioned as a big launch event, sort of.

And having mentioned TetZooCon 2022 – the 9th TetZooCon – it was the biggest TetZooCon so far. Held at Bush House, King’s College, London, it included an All Yesterdays event, a palaeoart exhibition, on-stage discussions about designing aliens and pterosaurs, a pop-up cosplay event, a quiz (with more prizes than we could give away), and a Crystal Palace fieldtrip. 2023’s event will be held at the same venue, most likely on December 2nd and 3rd, but this is not yet confirmed. Pay attention to the TetZooCon facebook page to see news as it’s announced.

**Caption:** some TetZooCon 2022 scenes. At left, Darren Naish and Ben G. Thomas himself. At right, the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs stand, featuring Mark Witton and Ellinor Michel’s excellent book (**buy it here**) and much else. Images: Georgia Witton-McClean.

Technical dinosaur work. Regular readers will know that – when and where I can – I aim to finish and publish technical work on the Mesozoic animals that interest me, some of which stems from my time in academia (including my PhD years at the University of Portsmouth and a subsequent post-doc I had at the University of Southampton). When these studies see print, I of course write about them here, but I’ve also had reason to write about incomplete or unfulfilled studies too.

**Caption:** did we succeed in finding Robert Plot’s famously lost dinosaur bone? As ever when the introductory statement is posed as a question, the answer is no. The photos of OUMNH PAL J29757, with Hilary Ketchum’s hands for scale, are by Paul Stewart. The cartoon is from *Dinosaur Bones* by Aliki (A & C Black, London, 1989).

A project that ultimately didn’t go the way we hoped it would resulted in December 2022’s article on Robert Plot’s lost dinosaur bone. While we (‘we’ = me, Paul Stewart, Martin Simpson and Hilary Ketchum) could have published a technical paper on what happened, I opted to out the whole story as a blog article instead. The spinosaurid work I do with Chris Barker and Neil Gostling (both based at the University of Southampton) continued throughout 2022 and 2023 as we published our study of baryonychine brain endocasts (Barker et al. 2023a) in February, and our analysis of an isolated tooth (and what it means for Wealden spinosaurid diversity; Barker et al. 2023b) in March 2023. The latter study was intended as an initial foray into spinosaurid tooth diversity and what it might mean, and follow-up work is underway.

**Caption:** at left, the Isle of Wight baryonychine spinosaurid *Ceratosuchops* interacts with another animal, with the position and anatomy of its brain (and associated structures) shown in the inset. At right: one of the several University of Southampton CT-scanners in operation. Images: Anthony Hutchings, Darren Naish

Ancient Sea Reptiles. February 2023 also saw the publication of a book I’d been mentioning on and off throughout 2022, namely Ancient Sea Reptiles: Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs and More (Naish 2023a), published by The Natural History Museum in the UK and Smithsonian Books in the USA. I’ve already said quite a few times that getting this book into print marks the fulfilment of decades of trying to do just this, and I’m very pleased with the result.

**Caption:** *Ancient Sea Reptiles*, the UK cover (left) and US cover. Buy it **here from the Natural History Museum**, **here from Smithsonian Books**, **here at amazon.com**, **here at amazon.co.uk**.

An article announcing the book’s publication is here, and a follow-up on various of the subjects it covered appeared in May. I’m due to give talks on the book and its contents at various events during 2023, including TetZooCon in December. A published article on Mesozoic marine reptiles appeared in Evolve, the magazine of the Natural History Museum, in June (Naish 2023b).

**Caption:** scenes from the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, 2023. My signed copy of Tom Sharpe’s book on Mary Anning, and an actual live tyrannosaur on the streets of the town (just outside Lyme Regis Museum). Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** cover image of Naish (2023b), featuring an Early Jurassic marine scene by the excellent Bob Nicholls. More specifically, the scene depicts the Hettangian of Barrow-upon-Soar (UK) where rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurs lived alongside leptonected and ichthyosaurid ichthyosaurs; actinopterygians and numerous invertebrates are known from the fauna too. Image: Bob Nicholls.

The following new articles were published at Tetrapod Zoology during March, April and May of 2023…

**Caption:** larks and okapis, two subjects I’m happy to have covered during 2023. The Eurasian skylark *Alauda arvensis* painting at left is by Alan Harris and appears on the cover of Paul Donald’s 2004 book *The Skylark*. The captive Okapi was photographed at Marwell Zoo in 2015.

There is also a podcast. I don’t know what overlap there is between the readership of Tet Zoo the blog and Tet Zoo the podcast, but episodes of the podcast have been published at reasonable frequency across the last year. It’s all down to when John Conway and I can make time to actually sit down and record together: John’s hectic schedule means that he’s only ever available for a short window on certain days. Whatever, during 2023 we released episodes that are connected to the content of Ancient Sea Reptiles, and a Prehistoric Planet tie-in released in May 2023 is our exclusive and wide-ranging conversation with Jon Favreau. The episodes in question are…

Cassowaries. I’ve already said what a huge deal it was that I got to go to Florida in January 2023 and assist with Todd Green and the Cassowary Conservancy of North America in the moving of nine live cassowaries. My article on this event – published in July 2023 – was actually written some months ago but had to be delayed for a number of good reasons. Much more on cassowaries is due to be announced in the near future; something special might be happening at TetZooCon 2023.

**Caption:** Jessica (and an out-of-shot Todd) release a male Southern cassowary into a new enclosure. Image: Darren Naish.

And that essentially brings us up to date. Tetrapod Zoology as a whole is 17 years old (it will be 18 in January 2024), but ver 4 is now five years old, so I think it can be considered ‘established’ at this point. That’s reflected in visitor counts (which are now about similar to what they were at ver 3), in how findable the blog is via web searches, and in how much content is hosted here.

On the financial side of things, things are ticking over thanks to support I receive at patreon (where assorted images and amounts of text are released exclusively, literally years before they’re ready to be published). The patreon account has also allowed me to pay for specific bits of research where I would otherwise have struggled or failed to see the relevant project to completion. So: massive, massive thanks to my patrons.

**Caption:** just some of the massive amount of content that’s been shared at the **Tet Zoo Patreon**, all of it intended for as-yet-unpublished mega-projects. Images: Darren Naish.

And thanks, as ever, to readers, visitors and commenters. Massive thanks if you’ve been visited ver 4 for its five years of duration, and here’s to the future. I still have so much I want to do.

For previous TetZoo articles on birthdays and other landmarks, see…