Diprotodontians Forever: the Vombatiform Radiation, Part I

If you’re a regular reader here you might recall me making occasional lamentations about the near-absence of marsupial-themed content here. The recent Thylacoleo article was an unusual blip. But…

Thylacoleo, the Incredible Marsupial Lion

Among the most striking and interesting of extinct mammals is the so-called marsupial lion of Australia, or Thylacoleo carnifex…

The Life Appearance of Glyptodonts

For some time now I’ve been interested in what the glyptodonts – a group of highly modified, large or gigantic armadillos – looked like when alive….

A Woolly Mammoth Primer

I’ve said before that proboscideans – the familiar group of placental mammals that includes living elephants and their many fossil relatives – have never been well served here at Tet Zoo…

The Amazing Giant Black Fossa

Is there a bigger, badder, blacker fossa alive in Madagascar?

Sloth World, 2025 (Part 1)

Like me, you are no doubt a big fan of sloths...

Crocodiles Attack Elephants Then, Now, and Still

Regular readers here will be familiar with my lamentations about the old, archived material from ver 2 (ScienceBlogs) and ver 3 (Scientific American). It’s been lost, destroyed, vandalized, paywalled, or some combination of those things. Today, something happened which has inspired me to rescue one of those articles from ver 3, specifically from 2013 (here’s the original). What inspired it, huh? Well, THIS DID…

Whales and Dolphins Around the Coasts of Europe, 2025

Once again, I’m back from time spent in the North Atlantic looking at wild cetaceans, specifically on a Bay of Biscay trip (a journey made between Plymouth in England and Santander in Spain) organised by the wildlife charity ORCA…

Armadillo Empire, Part 2: Fairies, Tolypeutines, and Where Glyptodonts Go

Once more, it’s time to look at armadillos, both at their diversity and at some aspects of their evolutionary history…

Armadillo Empire, Part 1: of Euphractines and Eutatines

If you’ve read recent articles here, you’ll have seen the coverage I’ve been giving to armadillos…

Suburban Camera Trapping, Week 1

Let’s experiment with camera trapping!

Of Zaedyus, the Pichi

Let’s look at armadillos some more. Or, let’s look at more armadillos. I mean, let’s look more at armadillos. Whatever: armadillos! More.

The Fate of the Woolly Long-Nosed Armadillo of Peru

One of my favourite mammal assemblages of all is Xenarthra, the ‘strange joint’ group that includes the remarkable and odd anteaters, sloths and armadillos…

Otaria, the Southern Sea Lion

I haven’t written much on pinnipeds (seal, sea lions and walruses) here at ver 4. Here’s a recycling of material originally published at ver 2 way back in 2007, enjoy! I haven’t updated it…

Curtis, Swisher and Lewin’s Java Man of 2000: Hominin-Themed Books, Part 1

If you were following the hominin-themed discoveries of that long-ago era known as the 1990s, you may well remember the hot news, published in Science in 1994 and 1996, on Homo erectus…

Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo

Once again it’s time to continue with my slow-burn zoo review series. I’ve just returned from a trip to Tokyo, you see, and while there I visited two zoos. Today we look at the first of them: Ueno Zoological Gardens (usually just called Ueno Zoo), located in Ueno Park in Taito City, central Toyko…

The Kleinmachnow Lion is Definitely Not a Lion

Over the past day (20th July 2023), social media accounts have been sharing a brief snippet of mobile phone footage purporting to show a lion (specifically, a lioness) walking at the edge of woodland in the Berlin suburb of Kleinmachnow…

The Slightly Surprising Diversity of Zebras, Part 2

Back in October 2022, we looked at the diversity and evolution of plains zebras, a group that includes the Quagga. Here, we carry on with the zebra series, this time looking at Grevy’s zebra….

The Discovery of the Okapi, Part 2

In the previous article, we looked at the European, scientific discovery of the Okapi Okapia johnstoni…

The Discovery of the Okapi, Part 1

If you’ve heard of the Okapi Okapia johnstoni – and if you’re at all interested in the history of zoology – chances are high that you’ve heard the famous story of this animal’s scientific discovery…