Tetrapod Zoology Reaches 18 Years of Age

Once again, it’s January 21st, meaning that Tetrapod Zoology the blog – initiated one dark night in the long-ago age of 2006 – has reached another birthday. It’s 18th, no less. And thus it’s once more time to look back at the previous year from the very biased, wholly whimsical and personal perspective of Tet Zoo- themed events…

Caption: a montage of things relevant to Tetrapod Zoology’s 2023. From left to right: a cassowary in Florida, a basilisk (top), a muscovy duck, and some 3D-printed dinosauroid models. Images: Darren Naish.

2023 was another manic year in the history of things Tet Zoo. Some indication of this is given by the fact that the 17th birthday article wasn’t published on time, in part because I was busy returning home from fieldwork in Florida. And said fieldwork was the grand cassowary relocation event, covered at length some months later during the year (go here).

Ancient Sea Reptiles and Monsters of the Deep. Among the first personally significant events of the year happened during February: I mean the widespread release of Ancient Sea Reptiles: Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs and More by the Natural History Museum in the UK and Smithsonian Books in the US (Naish 2022). Ancient Sea Reptiles saw print in October 2022 but it wasn’t really out and available in shops until early 2023. I have many thoughts on this book and the general message it aims to convey, and for more on those things I direct you to this February article. Another article promoting the book and its message was published in Evolve, the magazine of the Natural History Museum (Naish 2023a). Ancient Sea Reptiles has done well in sales, sufficiently so that a second impression (impression, not edition) was put into production only a few months later in the year. This allowed me to correct a few typos and broken sections of text that somehow made it into the first printing.

Caption: ancient sea reptiles get covered in the Natural History Museum’s Evolve magazine (message me if you want a pdf of the article), the same issue that announces the museum’s hosting of Titanosaur, an exhibit devoted to the biology and anatomy of the giant sauropod Patagotitan. Images: (c) Natural History Museum, London.

Regular readers of Tetrapod Zoology will know that I was guest curator for Monsters of the Deep (MOTD), a museum exhibition hosted at the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall in Falmouth. Alas, MOTD came to the end of its run at Falmouth in January 2023, which is a shame because I sure loved using it as an excuse to visit that part of the world. So… what next?

The good news is that MOTD had and has life beyond Falmouth, since in April 2023 it re-opened at Chatham Historic Dockyard in Essex. Museum spaces being what they are (no two museums are alike), the exhibition had, of course, to be re-arranged and re-designed, and the final result was very different from the Cornish version. But I’m saying all of this from photos, since I was unfortunately never able to get to Essex to see it myself. And, indeed, I never will see it, since it ended its run in Essex in November (herpetologist Steve Allain wrote an article about the exhibition here). What next? Well, news is due to be announced, so stay tuned.

Caption: Monsters of the Deep as it looked at Chatham Historic Dockyard, Essex, during November 2023. See Steve’s article for more images taken during his visit. Image: Steve Allain.

2023, year of frogs. I’ve been paying some reasonable amount of attention to our local frogs for as long as I’ve lived here, and regular readers might recall that we started out with essentially no frogs in the area before seeing a general uptick that was fully in swing by 2020. I’m talking here about the lone amphibian species that occurs in my area: the Common frog Rana temporaria. We have no toads here, no newts. Depauperate herpetofauna donchaknow.

Caption: the shallow end of pond 2 during February 2023. Common frogs need very shallow areas in which to spawn, since their eggs will only develop if in sunlight. Something I hadn’t appreciated before 2023 is that large numbers of frogs have the ability to modify the shallow parts of ponds through their activity, since their competing, fighting and constant moving removes leaf litter and sediment. Images: Darren Naish.

Caption: fresh spawn is tight, compact and rubbery, and individual clutches are easy to distinguish. But as the spawn absorbs water, it stretches out and individual clutches become hard to distinguish. We definitely ended up with at least 24 masses of spawn, but that number is conservative. Image: Darren Naish.

A concern I have about our newer pond – it’s called pond 2 – is that it’s deep, often in shade due to tall hedges, and with a substantial amount of duckweed (and other floating plants) on its surface. This is bad for frogspawn and tadpoles, since they develop fastest when ponds are shallow and sunlit, and relatively warm overall. My plan for 2023 was to reduce the height of the hedges, and also remove the duckweed. On the first point, I wasn't much successful. I just never found the time. On the second, I largely succeeded. Anyway, the breeding season for 2023 was exceptional, with more than 50 adult frogs present and at least 24 spawn clutches. What a massive success! How did this happen? (1) the creation of ponds, and (2) the maintenance of deliberately ‘wild’ areas around the ponds, with substantial understorey, leaf litter and brush piles.

Caption: a depiction of spawn clutch number present in the ponds here at Tet Zoo Towers, recorded over the time that we’ve had ponds. A long period of almost nothing followed by a rapid, exponential rise. Image: Darren Naish.

I look forward to seeing how things go in 2024. Have we reached peak frog, or are numbers set to increase even more? I’ll report events on social media (I’m still active on Twitter/X as @TetZoo).

Baryonychines part 1. As per most years, my work on Mesozoic dinosaurs – in particular those of the Lower Cretaceous Wealden Supergroup of southern England – continued in the background. A few papers that have been on the backburner for years now, err, remained on the backburner, and those that made it into print were led by my colleague Chris Barker and represent parts of his PhD (which is devoted to baryonychine spinosaurs). The first of these for 2023 appeared in Journal of Anatomy in February. It concentrates on baryonychine brain anatomy as inferred from CT scans (Barker et al. 2023a) and I wrote it about here.

At some point during March I appeared as a guest on the Plastic Plesiosaur Podcast run by Miles Greb and Trey the Explainer. Each episode of the Plastic Plesiosaur Podcast is based around the theme of a specific episode of the much-loved TV series MonsterQuest, and the episode I appeared in was devoted to an episode (number 19 of season 2) titled Jaws in Illinois, the main focus of which is the alleged presence of bull sharks in fresh- and brackish-water locations in the US. It’s a bit weird that Miles and Trey chose me to contribute seeing as I’m not exactly a shark expert, but I think I was deemed topical because of the recent publication of Ancient Sea Reptiles. The episode was released in late March and is here. Incidentally, I starred in an episode of MonsterQuest back in the day, I think devoted to the British big cat phenomenon.

Caption: I’m lucky enough to live close to the New Forest National Park and get to visit it often. Here’s a scene from February 2023. It’s an interesting place for lots of reasons, including its massive bracken meadows and ‘wild’ ponies. A very problematic thing about the forest – remember, it’s labelled a ‘National Park’ – is that it’s generally seen by people as a dog playground, meaning that literally thousands of dogs run about the forest every single day. So, good luck conserving ground-nesting birds, the wildlife of ponds and streams, ground water quality and so on. I say all of this as a dog owner myself. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: having mentioned New Forest ponies, here’s a montage. These ponies were all photographed on the same day (23rd May 2023). Image: Darren Naish.

Dorling Kindersley’s Ask An ‘Ologist. March was also when the first of the ‘Ask An ‘Ologist’ Dorling Kindersley events happened. This was an interactive event in which school kids from across the UK would submit questions on a given subject and have them answered by a relevant ‘ologist’. I might not be a professional palaeontologist but I play one on TV, and I’ve worked for DK on numerous occasions since the early 2000s. Hence it was appropriate that I get roped in to answer dinosaur-themed questions. Other experts dealt with questions on Egyptology, modern zoology, and science in general.

Caption: my relationship with Dorling Kindersley has been long and fruitful. As I said in this article from 2022, the 2001 Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life (which I co-authored with David Lambert and Liz Wyse) should probably be considered the most significant book I’ve been involved in. Images: Darren Naish.

The school that asked ‘the best’ question (as decided by we ‘ologists) won a ton of books, and also got a special visit from the relevant ‘ologist. I visited St Richards Reynolds Catholic College in Twickenham, London, in June, where I spoke to a class of Year 4 children (ages 8-9). There were lots of questions, and all were brilliant (I think the most memorable was "Would dinosaurs have howled at the moon?"). Thankfully, no-one asked the dreaded "How do you become a palaeontologist?". A few of the children hung around even as they were supposed to have left, and a girl asked me "Are there any girl palaeontologists?". I said that the subject is for everyone and that there are many great women in palaeontology. Another girl wanted to tell me that she was from Mexico since one of the issues that came up in the Q&A was the Chicxulub impact site. This was a hugely positive experience and I’m really grateful to have been involved in it. Everything at the school was well organised, DK did an excellent job in pulling it all together, and the children and staff were great and really fun to talk to.

Caption: in a London school during June 2023, I tell a group of Year 4 children what it’s like to get to work on books. Image: Hattie Hansford/Dorling Kindersley.

It was considered such a success that plans were soon made for a US version, and this happened in early November. Sadly, DK weren’t prepared to fly us out to the US to visit the school that gave us the ‘best’ question, oh well.

Also during late April, I attended the Lyme Regis Fossil Fair (again), this time as a guest of the Lyme Regis Museum where I gave a talk (and participated in a book signing) on Mesozoic marine reptiles, this of course again being a tie-in with Ancient Sea Reptiles. The only room available for the event was small and most people who turned up – including members of my own family – had to be turned away!

Caption: scenes from the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival of 2023. At right, a replica miniature Neovenator skeleton owned by a company that specializes in the digitizing and printing of fossils. I’ve shown images of this replica before. Images: Darren Naish.

Prehistoric Planet Season 2. One of the biggest personal events of the year was of course the May 2023 release of season 2 of the Apple TV/BBC Studios series Prehistoric Planet. I’m chief scientific consultant for the series and being involved is an incredible experience; involvement now marks a significant chunk of my adult life and it’s been an absolutely joy to work at the BBC Natural History Unit and to collaborate with the many amazing and talented people involved in the making of the series.

We didn’t have publicity events in Los Angeles this time round, but events associated with the release of the series did happen at several venues during May and June, including Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Everyman Cinema at Broadgate, London Comic Con and the Festival of Nature in Bristol. Our official day of dealing with journalists and abusing local bars happened in early May, and here’s where I got hold of the big Prehistoric Planet season 2 poster board I now own.

Caption: a Prehistoric Planet season 2 promotional event at Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank. At left, Liz Bonnin hosts. At right, (left to right) executive producer Mike Gunton, series producer Tim Walker and consultant Darren Naish field question. Behind and around us are members of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Image: Amber Cherry Eames.

Caption: at another Prehistoric Planet season 2 event, series producer Tim Walker and I discuss the making of the series from the main stage of London’s MCM Comic Con during May 2023. Images: Toni Naish, Darren Naish.

A novel experience for 2023 was the recording of a podcast dedicated to Prehistoric Planet, some of which happened at my house, some of which happened in special studios. The several different episodes were released throughout May. They’re available here.

Caption: images from the Prehistoric Planet season 2 media event held at the offices of MPC in Soho (London) in early May 2023. Dinosaur-shaped biscuits at left; my buddy Prehistoric Planet producer Dom Walter at right, outside The Ship. Images: Darren Naish.

Some readers here will know that I’ve been tweeting long threads on the scientific decisions behind each of the Prehistoric Planet episodes. For season 2, time has just not allowed me to get through these at all quickly, and even now (January 2024) I’ve only gone through two of them. The first – dedicated to Islands (episode 1 of season 2) – was released in June (it’s here at Threadreader), the second – dedicated to Swamps (episode 3 of season 2, but wrongly thought by me to be episode 2) – appeared in November. The others are coming, I promise.

Caption: a selection of Prehistoric Planet objects I own. The poster board might be familiar. As for the models: sadly, Apple aren’t interested in producing Prehistoric Planet merchandise, but fans of the series have made their own incredibly good versions, some of which are available for sale online. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: a close-up of those amazing (but unofficial) Prehistoric Planet models. The large swimming Tyrannosaurus at left is by Ancestors Models (sadly not available for sale at the moment). The remainder are by Marco Makes whose products are here on Etsy. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: more detailed images of the amazing Prehistoric Planet-inspired swimming Tyrannosaurus model made by Ancestors Models (sadly not available for sale at the moment). It’s built to float (though I admit that I haven’t tested this) and is beautifully painted. The company concerned is set to produce more models of this quality. Images: Darren Naish.

Also on Prehistoric Planet, I was interviewed for the All Creatures podcast in June and for the I Know Dino podcast in July.

Moving now to something quite different… thanks to a tip-off from Dan Garrick, I made an emergency trip to Marwell Zoo in late May to watch the Crocodile monitor Varanus salvadorii there consume an entire rabbit. It was a rewarding experience and I took tens of photos. The lizard used the trunks of nearby trees to help position and reposition the carcass within its mouth. We also got to see the zoo’s two young Mainland clouded leopards Neofelis nebulosa. I’ve seen clouded leopards before but not those two.

Caption: a captive (and not yet fully grown) Crocodile monitor consumes a furry vertebrate object. How predators process, manipulate and swallow prey is a hugely important component of their natural history: for many animals we still have comparatively little information on this aspect of their evolution and biology, so observation and study of it is always welcome. Images: Darren Naish.

Caption: the clouded leopards are among the most beautiful and anatomically remarkable of all cats. I wrote about them briefly in 2007, back when the Sunda clouded leopard Neofelis diardi was resurrected from synonymy. It’s fitting that the two Marwell Zoo individuals shown here were photographed while partly concealed by foliage. Images: Darren Naish.

Baryonychines part 2. At the end of May our second spinosaurid paper appeared, this one being devoted to our analysis of a single tooth from a relatively old part of the Wealden Supergroup. It was published in PeerJ and thus is open access. As discussed in the article (Barker et al. 2023b) and the resulting Tet Zoo article, here was an excuse to test the hypothesis that all isolated baryonychine teeth from the Wealden should be referred to Baryonyx. No, they shouldn’t.

Caption: it’s pretty scary how much science can be done on isolated teeth. They are the very opposite of useless and disposable bits of evidence. The paper being depicted here is, again, open access. Images: Barker et al. (2023b).

Work on additional English baryonychine specimens continues in the background. On that note, I think it goes without saying that… at any one time, five or more technical papers are being compiled, finished or reviewed ‘in the background’. I tend to hold off talking about them until they see print, but – as of the time of writing (January 2024) – I have several papers on dinosaur palaeobiology, anatomy and diversity in various stages of completion. And they’re not all on baryonychines, ha ha.

Not going to Brazil. An amazing trip was due to happen in June. I was an invited speaker for the 9th Pterosaur Symposium in Crato, Brazil. I’ve visited Brazil once before (in 2013, and that was for the 6th Pterosaur Symposium: I wrote about it here), but that was in Rio, on the coast. This Crato trip would surely be a very different experience. I couldn’t wait.

But the problem with flying is that it involves airports, planes, schedules, weather, and all other kinds of incompatible things. And thus it was that an intense storm over Central Europe delayed my first plane by about an hour, meaning that I (and about a hundred other people) missed our long-haul flight to São Paolo. After an overnight stay involving an ‘emergency field bed’ in the airport (my financially bereft backstory requires that I’m not able to consider paying for airport hotels), I went to arrange a new flight the next day, but nothing could be sorted that would get me there with sufficient time to make it worthwhile. Ultimately, I had to give up and return home. How dispiriting. I later sent apologies to Taissa Rodrigues and the other organisers. Because I’d booked time off work, I made the most of it and went on a much-needed family holiday, albeit only in the UK.

Caption: your connecting flight was late, but you rush to the gate anyway… and find that the plane you were hoping to get is still there! Maybe they’ll see you and let you on. Nope, you can do nothing but watch it leave. How depressing. At right: a nighttime view from a walk about the town of Ilfracombe in coastal north Devon. Images: Darren Naish.

Caption: there are several good reasons to go to Ilfracombe, and one of them is Verity, the 20-metre-tall statue designed by Damien Hirst, put in place in 2012 and cast by Pangolin Editions in 40 separate sections. On her right (seaward) side, she is flensed, such that her skull, musculature, internal breast tissue and foetus are visible. She is intended as an allegory for truth and justice, and stands atop a pile of books and holds a sword aloft. Images: Darren Naish.

Caption: as a seaside town, Ilfracombe is of course home to gulls, and I love gulls. This lucky Herring gull Larus argentatus is taking advantage (or trying to take advantage) of a gurnard discarded at the dockside by a fisherman. Images: Darren Naish.

Fish and false German lions. A terrible secret was revealed in the June of 2023 when Jeff Liston and I released a co-authored study (albeit only an abstract and conference presentation) for that year’s EAVP (European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontology) meeting at Sabadell in Spain (I didn’t attend the meeting). The catch is that it was on fishes, specifically the giant Jurassic pachycormid Leedsichthys, and specifically on the plausibility of it sometimes engaging in breaching behaviour (Liston & Naish 2023). The fact is that I’ve actually written a truly vast amount about fishes – all of them – and will… eventually… at some point… have published more words and more pages of text on fishes than most other living humans. I refer of course to the still unpublished contents of The Vertebrate Fossil Record, but the less said about that the better. It will see print eventually.

A newsworthy event that saw widespread coverage in online news sources was the alleged observing of a live lion in a suburb of Berlin, Germany, during July. I was confident immediately that the footage did not show a lion but either a calf or a boar (I was eventually convinced by the boar identification), and I said so at Tet Zoo. This was reported in various German news outlets, was ultimately supported by other people with relevant experience, and the story then died a death as people realized that there never was reason to believe in a lion in the first place. This was a classic ‘flap’ (as defined in the Fortean literature) and a person with good knowledge of the history on alleged ‘animal escape’ stories could have written a very accurate script on how things would play out.

Caption: at left, the Tetrapod Zoology evaluation of the Kleichmachnow lion-that-wasn’t. At right, a German news item (here, translated into English; original here) that covers this interpretation. It turned out that the version of the video shared by the media was selectively cropped in order to remove the unambiguous boar footage present both before and after the ‘lion’ section, and that the person who filmed the footage never said it was a lion anyway.

Caption: a Prehistoric Planet event at the Festival of Nature in late June 2023. The silhouette depicts the tyrannosaurid Qianzhousaurus (which appeared in Prehistoric Planet season 1); the skull is that of a Mosasaurus. Image: Darren Naish.

Things to do in a garden in June. I must have mentioned here and there at Tetrapod Zoology that one of my main concerns these days is the constant, never-ending erosion and destruction of the natural world that I witness about me all the time. I’m sure that this is more immediately visible here in tiny little overbuilt southern England than it is in many other parts of the world, but it’s a global phenomenon and one that we all have to be aware of. It often seems that individual people can do little about this, since the real issues are ‘big’ things beyond our control.

But we as individuals can at least do a little to help: we can be more tolerant in letting ‘weeds’ grow, can create ponds and pools, and can stop being so insanely keen to remove leaf litter and decomposing wood. Writing entirely from a provincial, ‘little England’ perspective (those qualifiers are important), I tweeted a thread during June 2023 on things that individual people can do to help (the thread is here). The good news is that this went soft-viral and was shared about the web here and there (here’s a version at IFL Science). Obviously, I think my advice is good and hope that it makes a tiny bit of difference.

Caption: part of the space around our house is paved, which is not ideal if we want to help nature. But we can improve things by having planted areas and plants growing in pots, as here. Since this photo was taken in June 2023 I’ve acquired another water butt. Image: Darren Naish

What I’d neglected to appreciate is that some of my advice – like, that advocating the creation of new sources of standing water – is considered bad, if not illegal, in some tropical places. I apologise for that and re-emphasize that I was only thinking about things from the British perspective.

Caption: proof that Slow worms Anguis fragilis still exist in southern England. This one was encountered at Highcliffe, Dorset, during July 2023. Slow worms used to occur in the part of the UK where I live but they’ve mostly disappeared from the places where I used to be able to find them. This is an animal whose survival is contingent on the things mentioned above: they need green spaces with natural cover, arthropods and other small animals, and so on. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: frogs again, this time encountered foraging in the garden during July 2023. Frogs have white eyeshine and incredible low-light eyesight. Images: Darren Naish.

A summer whale watching adventure. During July, I and a team of buddies once more boarded the Pont-Aven to travel across the Bay of Biscay in search of whales and other marine wildlife. These trips, which involve official monitoring and recording, are organized by the marine conservation charity ORCA and I intend to be involved in them as often as possible. They didn’t happen over the course of the pandemic, and in fact this was the first one to be arranged since 2019. That 2019 trip was a massive success in terms of which whale species we saw (an article about it is here).

Caption: I’m naturally very lazy and hence don’t ordinarily see sunrise. But I do when I go whale watching, and here is one. It was shortly after 7am on a July morning. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: that grey blurry mass on the right is a cloud dumping some quantity of rain, and we’re about to go through it. It rained a lot on our 2023 trip and was extremely windy at times, so much so that we had to stay off deck for part of the trip. Image: Darren Naish.

The 2023 trip wasn’t quite as memorable, but was still great. I had to make emergency measures immediately beforehand to get a new lens for my half-decent camera (a Canon EFS 500D); I succeeded, and it served me reasonably well. We saw dolphins of a few species, a substantial number of Fin whales Balaenoptera physalus (sometimes two and three together) and some gannets and petrels. Numbers of certain of these animals (seabirds in particular) were low, perhaps because of the high sea surface temperatures that were a concern at the time, die-off caused by bird flu, or both.

Caption: these are Sowerby’s beaked whales Mesoplodon bidens, a new species for me. This is the only beaked whale in the region with a long, slender rostrum, a low melon, and a greyish overall colour. It has small, paired lower jaw teeth located halfway along the lower jaw and was the first species of the highly speciose genus Mesoplodon to be scientifically described. Images: Alex Srdic.

Caption: we saw an incredible number (for me!) of Fin whales on our 2023 trip, certainly over 20, mostly distant blows. Fin whales roll quickly, such that the dorsal fin is soon directly beneath the remnant of the still-hanging blow. Images: Alex Srdic.

No Bay of Biscay trip would be complete without sightings of at least some beaked whales, and we were blessed with observations of two species: Cuvier’s beaked whale Ziphius cavirostris and Sowerby’s beaked whale. My associate Alex Srdic has once again kindly allowed me to use his photos. The ship docked in Plymouth in the UK, and we used that as an opportunity to visit both the National Marine Aquarium and The Book Cupboard, one of the UK’s most impressive second-hand book shops.

Caption: Plymouth’s National Marine Aquarium is great, and I’ve been there several times. I like life-sized animal models, and here’s a leatherback sea turtle, humpback whale and killer whale in the large hall that’s also home to the giant Eddystone Reef exhibit. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: when in Plymouth, we visited the Barbican Prawn (officially The Leviathan), and here it is (at left) in less than ideal weather conditions. At right, my book haul from The Book Cupboard, an impressive lot if you share my interests. Images: Darren Naish.

Caption: I live in, and am unable to escape from, the suburban environment. Wildlife is mostly in chronic decline in such places. But it remains surprising how adaptable and tenacious some species are. Look here for the cryptic Roe deer Capreolus capreolus, photographed in August 2023 only a few metres across the road from my house. Image: Darren Naish.

Exotic Norfolk; oh, and Tajikistan. I went to north coastal Norfolk in late July, partly to see wildlife there while visiting my friend and collaborator Steve White. I saw Harbour seals Phoca vitulina and numerous gulls, and on that front the impact of bird flu was obvious, since numerous dead and dying gulls were present at the colonies we visited.

Caption: more hot Herring gull action, this time from Hunstanton, Norfolk. This picture is part of a whole sequence in which the two birds challenged each other and eventually fought. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: part of a gull colony at Wells-next-the-sea, Norfolk, photographed during July 2023. You can see the live, normal-looking gulls, I’m sure, but look harder and there are a worrying number of sick, dying and dead ones here too (there’s plastic waste as well, but of course). Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: the seals I mostly see around the shores of the UK are Grey seals Halichoerus grypus, but these are Common or Harbour seals (photographed at Wells-next-the-sea, Norfolk). A nice, tranquil scene. All was well and good until a guy on a paddleboard, with his two kids, insisted on coming right up to the seals, this causing them to flee. Image: Darren Naish.

But the big event of this part of the year – one of the big events of the year for me – was my trip to Tajikistan. I’ve always wanted to go to Central Asia, both for the incredible landscape and for the wildlife, and this didn’t disappoint. I didn’t see any wild mammals (though we did frequently observe bear scat, and we at least hear altercations occurring between local dogs and wild boar) but numerous birds were observed and badly photographed: for more on those see my articles on birdwatching in Tajikistan, part 1 and part 2.

Caption: I was pleased that we flew across Asia during daylight, meaning that I got views from the plane like this. I’m not quite sure what country or region this spectacular mountainous scenery belongs to; let me know if you can work it out. Images: Darren Naish.

The main reason for the trip was cryptozoological, or ethnozoological if you prefer, since the region is associated with observations and tales concerning both a wildman-type creature termed the gul as well as tigers (this, in a part of Asia where tigers are supposed to be extinct). We collected copious relevant data and are still in the process of getting it properly written up. The results were sufficiently encouraging that we plan to return.

Caption: the Tajik countryside was truly spectacular. I’ve never seen so many amazing mountains. Unfortunately, the regions we visit were far from ‘remote’, however, and signs of human presence and use were everywhere. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: Tajikistan is a land of massive, raging rivers, and numerous wooden bridges have been built to allow their crossing, some safer than others. A massive series of storms passed across the region where we were staying during the latter part of the trip and several bridges were lost. In the photos here, Richard Freeman is visible at left and Jon Hare at right. Images: Darren Naish.

During September I was supposed to be in Lyme Regis for a special fossil-themed event, but that didn’t happen for reasons. I did, however, go to the Fossil and Mineral Fair at Lyndhurst in the New Forest, to the coast, to Bristol, and to London to see the titanosaur exhibition (a tie-in with Prehistoric Planet). We were also finally ready – months of preparation were involved – to release tickets for TetZooCon 2023, and off on sale they went.

Caption: at the 2023 Mineral and Fossil Fair (in Lyndhurst, Hampshire), Kate Acheson-Dumbravă is in charge of the ZOIC PalaeoTech stall. She has plush dinocarididans (and more)! Kate and I go way back and did fieldwork in Romania together, back in the day. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: I visited a massive number of local places where you can look at wildlife during 2023, but I mostly haven’t discussed them here as this article is already way too long. Here’s an interesting shot showing Sturt Pond, Milford-on-Sea, during October 2023, where a Herring gull is pretending that it’s a wader, perhaps because it was aiming to steal from the Little egret Egretta garzetta just ahead of it. Image: Darren Naish.

Loch Ness again, part 1. I mentioned in the previous birthday article that I did filmed interview pieces for two Loch Ness Monster documentaries during 2022, and the results of both appeared on screen in 2023. The first – titled Loch Ness: Hunting the Monster – appeared on the UK’s Channel 5 in late September.

Caption: title card for Channel 5’s Loch Ness: Hunting the Monster. I have no idea how accessible it is outside of the UK, but to those within it it’s available here on the My5 app.

Hunting the Monster was 2 hours long and focused on the way belief in the monster was compiled through the supposed accruing of new evidence, and the soundbites from experts (including myself) mostly explained how people interpreted that evidence at the time. It also mostly did a fair job of saying what happened to that ‘evidence’ in the end, with their treatment of the Rines flipper photos (the Tet Zoo treatment of which is here) being especially good. They never said that the MacNab 1955 photo was a boat wake though, nor that Dinsdale’s 1961 film shows a boat. I featured throughout. My performance was a bit stilted but maybe that’s because I was trying to sound authoritative.

Caption: a less than ideal image of that Darren Naish guy appearing in yet another documentary on the Loch Ness Monster. I just know that the two or three Nessie truthers that still exist out there love it when they see me appear on these shows.

The Tetrapod Zoology Animal Figure Collection on film. At some point during August (while I was in Tajikistan actually), conservationist, author and TV presenter Chris Packham asked if I’d be interested in having a film made about my animal figure collection. I said yes, of course, and in October I was visited by Chris, camera operator Joe Cooper and junior presenter Aneeshwar Kunchala.

Caption: Darren, young Aneeshwar, and Chris (at right) talk dinosaur models and toys at Tet Zoo Towers. Aneeshwar is holding the giant Beasts of the Mesozoic T. rex figure; I’m holding the much-sought-after Dinosaurs in the Wild one. Image: Anil Kunchala.

The relevant segment was for the online TV series 8 out of 10 Bats and the relevant episode, released in early November, is here: the segment with me starts at 21:41. This was a fun and very rewarding experience, and I hope that my message about the educational value of animal toys and figures made it through to those interested. It was also very gracious of Chris to give plugs for Ancient Sea Reptiles, Mesozoic Art and TetZooCon as well! Many thanks to Chris, Megan McCubbin, and Aneeshwar and his family for making it happen.

In case it’s not obvious (I actually have no idea whether it is or isn’t), I really struggle to make time for blog-writing these days, so it’s quite a big deal when I complete and publish an especially long, complex article. That in mind, October’s publication of my very long review of Alan Feduccia’s book Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs was notable. Because it was written in co-operation with the German AG EvoBio site that aims to combat creationist claims, a German language version also appeared.

Caption: at left, the cover of Ethan Kocak’s amazing Moistly Harmless of 2023, with associated merch and artwork. At right, some of the beautiful art (some by guest artists) that appears within.

Ethan Kocak’s Moistly Harmless (Kocak 2023), a graphic novel written in celebration of salamanders, arrived in October too. I did the foreword and hence feel special connection to it. And my article on the making of Prehistoric Planet – I think the only article I’ve published on this subject – appeared in the Natural History Museum’s Evolve magazine (Naish 2023b), sadly only available to the museum’s members.

Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, third edition. During late 2022, Paul Barrett and I received news that our Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved was going to get a third edition. The field of dinosaur science moves fast, so here was an excuse to modify numerous sections of the book in keeping with new data and hypotheses, and even to swap out certain illustrations. We made a start on this in December 2022, worked on it through the early months of 2023, and were mostly done by April. Bob Nicholls agreed to produce new cover art and we opted to replace the fuzzy Tianyulong of the second edition with a beautiful rendition of the baryonychine Ceratosuchops.

Caption: goodbye second edition, hello third. Bob Nicholls has done the cover art for both of these editions, and let’s see if we can keep this tradition going into the future. Images: Natural History Museum Publishing/Darren Naish.

My copies arrived in early November. I’m pleased to get the book (Naish & Barrett 2023) to a third edition: my ultimate hope is that it gets at least as many new editions (I think four) as one of its predecessors, Alan Charig’s A New Look at the Dinosaurs. I’ve been planning to explain how this third edition is different from the second and first but, again, time has not allowed. I obtained copies for sale at TetZooCon 2023 and also for the 200 Years of Dinosaurs conference at the Natural History Museum (on which, more below).

Regular readers here will know that I’m not only interested in new editions of my books, but also in foreign-language versions. I feel it’s quite the win when you learn that your book is being translated, especially if the country or region is one that isn’t exactly blessed with an abundance of relevant books written in the relevant language. So it’s good news that a Dutch language edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived & Evolved appeared in March 2023. It has a totally different design and look from the existing editions. The full title is Dinosauriërs: Hoe Spectaculaire Fossielen en Nieuwe Technieken ons Beeld Steeds Completer Maken, meaning something like 'Dinosaurs: How Spectacular Fossils and New Techniques Are Increasingly Completing Our Picture'. It's published by VeenMedia, in association with New Scientist. And it's interesting to see John Sibbicks's spectacular ceratosaur vs brachiosaur painting make the cover, an image that so many of us associate with an iconic dinosaur book from the 1990s.

Caption: at left, cover of the extremely well designed Dinosauriërs: Hoe Spectaculaire Fossielen en Nieuwe Technieken ons Beeld Steeds Completer Maken. I like the late-1980s John Sibbick cover art, even though it does seem an odd choice for a book published in 2023. Many of us of course best know that piece from the cover of the 1990 Dinosaurs: A Global View by Sylvia and Stephen Czerkas. Images: Darren Naish.

Loch Ness again, part 2. Episode 92 of the podcast was released, and it was another marine reptile special, this time focusing on mosasaurs. And November also saw the release of the second of those Loch Ness Monster documentaries, this one titled They Created a Monster and currently available (in the UK) via BBC iplayer. The film mostly focuses on notorious Loch Ness Monster faker and huckster Frank Searle, one of many characters involved in the hunt for Nessie, and one I’ve had reason to mention in previous articles on the Loch Ness Monster.

Caption: the BBC iplayer card for They Created a Monster. If you know your Loch Ness Monster history, you might recognize the artistic depictions of various of the players.

Also on monsters, I featured on a Halloween ‘scary science’ segment on the BBC World Service Unexpected Elements show. I think you need a BBC account to listen to it, but it’s here (starting at 14:17). I inadvertently said that mothman is associated with New Jersey, not West Virginia, during the interview, oops.

TetZooCon, Godzilla, and In Conversation With David Lindon. December. And here we come to another massive personal event of 2023: the 10th TetZooCon. Given that this was THE TENTH ONE, it follows that we’d make it something big and extra special, and I think we succeeded. Two-and-a-bit days of talks, events, workshops, merchandise sales and more, with bonus electrical faults, air con and heating failures, and concomitant freezing temperatures. I won’t say any more here since a very long review of the event appeared in December. TetZooCon 2023 marks another watershed in the history of the event, and there’s no going back now. Stay tuned for news on 2024’s meeting.

Caption: Jennifer Campbell-Smith very kindly produced this image of a Lammergeier Gypaetus barbatus, one of my favourite animals., as a sort of personal thanks for her involvement in TetZooCon 2023 (she spoke on corvids). It was fantastic to have her there. Image: Jennifer Campbell-Smith.

Of other relevant events in December, I saw Godzilla Minus One at the cinema. Godzilla (and other movie monsters) is part of the Tet Zoo remit since thoughts on creature-building and the speculative biology devised to explain them is relevant to our interests, as demonstrated by various articles that have been published at Tet Zoo over the years (and see Godzilla vs. Kong: A scientist decides who would really win).

A zoom conversation I had with David Lindo was released as part of his In Conservation With series during late December (it’s here on YouTube). David is best known as a birder but it turns out that he has a serious, secret interest in cryptozoology, and that’s the subject we discussed. I’ve previously met David in real life (he spoke at TetZooCon 2015, hosted at the London Wetland Centre) and in the digital realm (when he spoke at TetZooMCon 2020, this time on the possible persistence of supposedly extinct birds).

Caption: your humble author, at left, with the always excellent David Lindo (and a particularly good background. I really must get a greenscreen). Images: The Urban Birder (original video here).

The inevitable introspection. And so finally we come to January, and the run-up to today. For reasons, I published on frogs at Tet Zoo (here on strabomantids, here on obscure African toads), but this of course is the part of the year when I reflect hard on the events of the previous 12 months (more so than I do in December), all in preparation for birthday articles such as the one you’re reading now.

I didn’t just sit around through the whole of January though, since I’ve only recently returned from 200 Years of Dinosaurs: New Perspectives on an Ancient World at the Natural History Museum. This was a phenomenal event, featuring about 30 talks on cutting-edge dinosaur research worldwide. I got to visit the titanosaur exhibition again, this being just a few days before it was due to be closed down.

Caption: scenes from the excellent 200 Years of Dinosaurs conference, held at the Natural History Museum, London. Prof Paul Barrett opens the meeting at upper right. The original Megalosaurus lower jaw was present and had been specially brought along by arrangement with Oxford University Museum of Natural History. I include (middle image, lower row) an image from Matt Lamanna’s talk on Antarctic dinosaurs since it shows the Prehistoric Planet season 2 depiction of Imperobator… will that reconstruction (which I and others designed) stand the test of time? Images: Darren Naish, Michael Pittman (lower right).

And thus here we are, the 18th birthday of Tetrapod Zoology. As per tradition, let’s review the blog’s subject coverage during the year…

Miscellaneous

Amphibians

Mammals

Squamates

Permian and Mesozoic swimming reptiles

Non-bird dinosaurs

Birds

Cryptozoology

SpecBio

As ever, there’s nothing like fair taxonomic balance here. Evidently, I never found time to cover stem-mammals, croc-line archosaurs, turtles and pterosaurs during 2023, and amphibian and squamate articles for 2023 are rare. Birds and mammals win out again in terms of coverage, I think because I saw, or was involved in, interesting things on those groups that warranted coverage. My plans to write about turtles and various other groups during the year just didn’t come to fruition as I couldn’t find time to generate new content, and I’m also a bit surprised that I never wrote more about fossil marine reptiles. I did plan to, what with the Ancient Sea Reptiles book.

As per usual, I’m deeply unhappy with the spread of subject coverage and do wonder why I even pay attention to this issue at this point. And, similarly, I remain frustrated that so many things never got finished during the year, assorted books, papers and articles among them. I am, by now, resigned to the fact that these things take literally years when you can’t devote proper time to them, which I can’t. Those who support me at the Tet Zoo Patreon will know that some progress was made throughout 2023 on the Cryptids of Bernard Heuvelmans project, but not nearly enough to get the thing anywhere close to being finished. I’m hoping to have it done by late 2024.

Caption: Flame the bearded dragon is alive and well, and here she is foraging in the garden during May 2023. On the same day, she swam in the pond (hence the bits of duckweed stuck to her arm). Her bright orange tones indicate that this was all a positive thing from her point of view. Image: Darren Naish.

Anyway…. you will all, of course, agree with me that it’s more important to focus on the positive things more than the negative. Obviously, 2023 was a significant year in the history of Tetrapod Zoology both as a place where content is published, and as a brand: things of note include the wide release of Ancient Sea Reptiles, the third edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, the publication of two technical papers (Barker et al. 2023a, b)* and two magazine articles (Naish 2023a, b), fieldwork in Tajikistan, whale watching, numerous TV and podcast appearances, my involvement in Prehistoric Planet season 2 and the TENTH – and by far the biggest and busiest – TetZooCon.

* I’m not going to discuss Caspar et al. (2023) since it’s only a preprint. But here’s your heads-up that it exists.

Caption: here’s proof, of a sort, that the amazing people who support me at patreon do get bespoke gifts on occasion. Images: Darren Naish.

It just remains for me to say, as ever, a massive thanks to everyone who visits this blog and leaves comments, and to those who support or assist me. Here’s hoping for a happy and healthy 2024!

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

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see me do more, please consider supporting this blog (for as little as $1 per month) at patreon. The more support I receive, the more financially viable this project becomes and the more time and effort I can spend on it. Thank you :)

Refs - -

Barker, C. T., Naish, D. & Gostling, N. J. 2023b. Isolated tooth reveals hidden spinosaurid dinosaur diversity in the British Wealden Supergroup (Lower Cretaceous). PeerJ 11: e15453.

Barker, C. T., Naish, D., Trend, J., Michels, L. V., Witmer, L., Ridgley, R., Rankin, K., Clarkin, C. E., Schneider, L. & Gostling, N. J. 2023a. Modified skulls but conservative brains? The palaeoneurology and endocranial anatomy of baryonychine dinosaurs (Theropoda: Spinosauridae). Journal of Anatomy doi: 10.1111/joa.13837

Caspar, K. R., Gutiérrez-Ibáñez, C., Bertrand. O. C., Carr, T., Colbourne, J., Erb, A., George, H., Holtz, T. R., Naish, D., Wylie, D. R. & Hurlburt, G. R. 2024. How smart was T. rex? Testing claims of exceptional cognition in dinosaurs and the application of neuron count estimates in palaeontological research. bioRxiv 2024.01.10.575006.

Kocak, E. 2023. Moistly Harmless: How to Appreciate News and Salamanders. Endangered Art Books.

Liston, J. J. & Naish, D. W. 2023. “Once more into the breach, dead friends”: dynamic behaviour in the giant suspension-feeding pachycormid Leedsichthys. In Alba, D. M., Marigó, J., Nacarino-Meneses, C. & Villa, A. (eds). Book of Abstracts of the 20th Annual Conference of the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists, 26th June – 1st July 2023. Palaeovertebrata, Special Volume 1-2023: 22.

Naish, D. 2022. Ancient Sea Reptiles. Natural History Museum, London.

Naish, D. 2023a. Ancient sea reptiles. Evolve 52, 32-37.

Naish, D. 2023b. Step back in time. Evolve 53, 30-37.

Naish, D. & Barrett, P. M. 2023. Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved (Third Edition). Natural History Museum Publishing, London.