You’re kidding… another year has passed? Yes, it’s late January, meaning that Tetrapod Zoology, the world’s best and most famous zoology-themed blog, has reached another birthday. As ever, I here take a very long-form look back at 2024….

There will come a time – very soon – when Tetrapod Zoology the blog is 20 years old. Two entire decades of blogging. But that day isn’t here yet. Today, Tet Zoo is 19, still a teenager. As is tradition for January (for Tet Zoo started life on January 21st 2006), we once more embark on my exceedingly long, rambling, tediously introspective review of the previous year’s events. I suppose these articles are mostly written for me, mostly as I strive to ever keep track of things, and make sense of them. I also like to see things I’ve learned, experienced and recorded shared, otherwise I’m just keeping stuff to myself.

**Caption**: Flame the dragon is alive and well and had a happy and healthy 2024 that involved going outside during the warmer parts of the year and foraging among the greenery. Flame is now over 11 years old, and members of her species only rarely make it to 15 (the world record is 18). Fingers crossed. Image: Darren Naish.

2024 in summary. What was the last year of operation like, from the Tet Zoo perspective? It was a packed year, with multiple things happening, a good amount of paying work, and numerous adventures and trips relevant to my interests. I went to Norway, Japan and Germany, attended five conferences, participated in an Atlantic whale survey, co-hosted a momentously successful TetZooCon and attendant tour, gave nine invited talks (in Hull, Bristol, Dorchester, Lyme Regis, Chichester, Southampton, Mettmann in Germany, Glasgow, and one online), and published three academic papers, several popular articles, a Chinese edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, and both Chinese and Spanish translations of my book Dinopedia.

**Caption:** hey, have I ever mentioned the Natural History Museum book I co-authored with Prof Paul Barrett, titled *Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved*? Despite being out since 2016, it has so far only been published in a handful of languages. This Chinese edition appeared in 2024. Image: Darren Naish.

I visited a good number of local woodland areas, wildlife parks and zoos, and did what I could in terms of observing wildlife local and foreign (images relevant to those trips are more or less randomly included in the article here). Some significant things were set up for 2025 and beyond. A lot was achieved here at the blog. As ever, there were significant failings in the completion of various works minor and major.

**Caption:** I feel very lucky to live in close proximity to the New Forest, one of the largest remaining unenclosed areas of medieval-style woodland, heathland and pasture, and I get to go there on numerous times throughout the year. This photo is from February 2024. Image: Darren Naish.

A huge number of things happened throughout the year that I can’t talk about. On that note, I’m extremely fortunate to still be working at BBC Studios. This, at a time when the TV industry is going through one of its darkest and most trying episodes, when massive numbers of people have been laid off or have found it impossible to remain in work.

Amphibians and a trip to Hull. February started with my attendance at the Herpetofauna Worker’s Meeting in Fareham, not far from where I live. Herpetology-themed meetings are always fun, and deeply relevant to me what with my involvement in pond construction and renovation, and local conservation. A few comments on the meeting in question were included in the February article published here, and I won’t ever be able to think about my attendance there without linking it to my buying of Jean Raffaëlli’s enormous, and enormously expensive, book Salamanders and Newts of the World. I’ve never opted to spend this much money on a book, and I don’t think I will again.

**Caption:** so, buying a copy of Jean Raffaëlli’s *Salamanders and Newts of the World* is quite the commitment. You need shelf space to house it (and your shelves must be able to take some substantial amount of weight), and you need some arm strength to lift it. The selection of books shown alongside it at left is pretty random – that shelf is an unsorted mess. Images: Darren Naish; Toni Naish.

It was also spawnwatch season, wherein I report the sexual shenanigans of the Common frogs Rana temporaria that inhabit the area around our house. I could say a lot about that, but of course I already have in this article from February 2024. It was a record year in terms of numbers of frogs and clutches of spawn, and I keep my fingers crossed that the situation will continue to improve in 2025 and beyond. And with ecologists Phil Budd and John Poland, I visited various ponds and wetland areas across the north and east of Southampton to monitor the amphibian situation, for concerns are that the invasive Alpine newt Ichthyosaura alpestris is here and expanding its range across the region. We didn’t find any, but let’s see what things are like in 2025.

**Caption:** Palmate newts *Lissotriton helveticus* at the degraded Hum Hole ponds in Southampton. The animal on the left had climbed to the top of a vertical wall that separates two of the tiered ponds, but on reaching the top it let go and fell back down (note the gammarid crustacean in shot too). Animals handled under licence. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** in February 2024, I visited the abandoned swimming pool and its nearby ponds at Southampton’s Outdoor Sports Centre. We found abundant Smooth newts *Lissotriton vulgaris* but not the Alpines we were looking for. Also present were a low number of Common toad *Bufo bufo*; calling male at left. Images: Darren Naish.

In which I’m outed as a disclosure agent for the Reptilians. And now for something entirely different. As regular readers will know, I dabble on occasion with cryptozoology, both academically and in terms of things at the more popular end. A few people heavily invested in monster belief – and who just happen to possess a good number of attendant conspiratorial ideas – tend to have opinions about those of us who view the subject through a sceptical, critical lens. I’m pretty familiar with this sort of thing. But what happened in February 2024 was kinda new.

Over on Twitter/X, the anonymous proprietor of the Beasts of Belial account (who I’m aware of due to previous exchanges) explained their complex, three-step reasoning behind the following modest proposal: Darren Naish is, most likely, “a disclosure agent in disguise, masquerading as either a skeptic or a disinformer”, who is actually “providing us clues about cryptids” while belonging to “a co-ordinated network of pro-disclosure people (probably all reptilian) who are using the disinformation conceit as a means to disclose things”. ‘Reptilian’, in this case, refers to the humanoid ‘reptilian aliens’ of conspiracy culture, not the group of animals that includes lizards and turtles.

**Caption:** I think that the tweets speak for themselves. There were many of them, but I’ve only bothered sharing the initial salvo here.

Sooo…. yup, outed at last. Someone told me that getting ‘conspiratorialised’ like this is quite the event, and that I should print the tweets out and get them framed on the office wall. I took screengrabs but the tweets themselves have all been deleted, and indeed the Beasts of Belial account no longer exists at all. Boo-hoo.

**Caption:** 2024 was a good year in terms of acquiring new animal figures and models. At left, a random assortment of recently obtained pieces, among them the giant AAA *Smilodon*, an unusual bigfoot, the Chap Mei orangutan, some Starlux mammals, and the various Safari Ltd crurotarsans from the toob set. At right, the very impressive *Prehistoric Planet* *Hatzegopteryx* from **Xotic Sculpts**. Yes, it has a technical issue concerning its feet. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption**: more models and figures new to the collection for 2024. At left, the pike, trout and ceramic bowhead from **TheYoungerEarth**, the *Homo diluvii testis* and *Corythoraptor* made by **Splendid Editions**, and a **Jed Taylor***Deinonychus* acquired at TetZooCon 2024. At right… 2024 was the year in which Haolonggood dinosaur models really arrived on the scene, and here are some, with their megatooth shark figure and a giant salamander. Haolonggood figures are available via **Everything Dinosaur**. Image: Darren Naish.

Back to the world of sanity… I travelled to the University of Hull to deliver a lunchtime seminar on dinosaurs and what we currently think about their behaviour, a talk originally designed to accompany the release of my 2021 book Dinopedia. That gave me an excuse to visit The Deep, a giant multi-level aquarium that houses a good number of species and some great exhibits and displays. Thanks to Rob Knell for his help with this visit.

**Caption**: The Deep in Hull, as seen from Millennium Bridge looking south toward the Humber Estuary. It’s one of the largest aquariums in the UK, opened in 2002, and is a centre for research and conservation. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption**: I was impressed with many things about The Deep, and one of them is the giant rock wall that extends parallel to the walkway near the entrance. As you can see, it’s decorated with replica (but very real-looking), life-sized, fossils of spectacular marine animals from throughout history. Those shown here are (at left) the stem-whale *Dorudon*, (at upper right) the placodont *Placodus*, and (at lower right) the Cretaceous sea turtle *Archelon*. Images: Darren Naish.

My friend and colleague Paul Stewart – who I’ve mentioned here and there in connection with his roles in Prehistoric Planet and The Velvet Claw – visited in late February for a bunch of reasons, one being that we could photograph all editions of the seminal Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia, that’s The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades by Professor Dr Harald Stümpke in the same one place. Has such a thing ever been done before? I highly doubt it. The range of All Yesterdays figures made by Sam St Leger of Splendid Editions, made with my co-operation as consultant, went on sale at Etsy.

**Caption**: have more than three editions of Stümpke’s classic volume been photographed together before? I don’t know, but I doubt it. At left, the German original. In the middle, the 1967 Doubleday English first edition. At right, the 1981 University of Chicago softback. Other versions of the book do of course exist but I doubt I’ll ever get to own them. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** batch 1 of the *All Yesterdays* figures from Splendid Editions include Sleepy Stan the *T. rex*, the Swan, and the therizinosaur. Buy them (and others in the range) **here at Etsy**. Image: Darren Naish.

Wildscreen in Bristol and Ancient Sea Reptiles in Dorchester. During March, I visited Norway – for reasons I can’t discuss – and the Boneheads crew (that’s YouTubers Ben, Hamzah and Eddy) dropped in at Tet Zoo Towers. An on-stage discussion themed around the Apple TV / BBC Studios Prehistoric Planet series happened in Bristol at the natural history film and TV event Wildscreen, involving myself, palaeobotanist and palaeoclimatologist Bob Spicer, TV producer Simon Bell, and pterosaur expert Liz Martin-Silverstone. Tori Herridge led the whole thing. We did a good job of discussing the process behind the making of Prehistoric Planet – the event was titled Prehistoric Planet: Where Science Drives the Story – and Tori very graciously took time to explain the global significance and impact of Tetrapod Zoology. Yes, really – she did!

**Caption**: the Wildscreen 2024 *Prehistoric Planet* event. Tori Herridge (at far left) talks to (left to right) Simon Bell, Darren Naish, Bob Spicer and Liz Martin-Silverstone. People in the TV world generally don’t see the value of continual scientific input, and in fact often don’t want it, so *Prehistoric Planet* was unusual in having scientists as full-time members of staff. Image: © Wildscreen.

The day after, and it was time to visit Dorset County Museum in Dorchester to talk, yet again, about Mesozoic marine reptiles in connection with my book Ancient Sea Reptiles. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve given that talk. I substantially under-estimated the number of copies of the book I might need and many people who wanted to buy one went home without. Events relating to Ancient Sea Reptiles continued throughout 2024 and I’m pleased with the reception the book has had. In fact, the publishers (Natural History Museum, London) sold the last of their stock during the July of the year, which can only mean…. a third edition at some point, right? Stay tuned.

**Caption**: at left, a promotional image for my talk at Dorset Museum and Art Gallery, Dorchester, knocked up by my friend Mark North (who has proved himself quite the enabler when it comes to those accursed animal toys and figures). The artwork featuring the pliosaurid is by Konstantin Gerasimov. At right, the spectacular skull of the Weymouth Bay pliosaurid, holotype of *Pliosaurus kevani*, on show in Dorchester. Image: Darren Naish.

On plastic pollution, again. I assisted in another beach clean during March, again at the tidal stretch of the River Itchen known as Chessel Bay, famous for the epic quantity of plastic pollution that afflicts it. The situation, at least based on my experience, is worse than ever, with great swathes of the beach being composed of plastic fragments: discarded domestic junk as well as tiny polystyrene fragments, many of which come from the marina industry (where they’re used in pontoons).

What I think is happening is that several waterside companies and industries – involving shipping and distribution, leisure boating and watercraft mooring, and plastic manufacture – are woefully unregulated, and have been able to be lax on pollution at every turn. We understand this now (an organisation called Friends of Chessel Bay, here on Twitter/X, has led investigation and cleanup operations) but it does feel like too little, too late. We will keep working though.

**Caption**: if you don’t think that plastic pollution is a problem… well, maybe ignorance is bliss I guess. Small fragments of packaging of all sorts, plastic sticks used in toiletry products, plastic nurdles… Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption**: this is the situation we’re in. Millions – literally – of polystyrene fragments, with known origins. You can pick up this stuff for the whole of your lifetime and not make much difference to an affected beach. And here’s a reminder that plastics are not inert in the environment. They’re chemically active and destructive to living things. Image: Darren Naish.

Moving now to something entirely different, at the end of March I published another of my TetZoocryptomegathreads, this one devoted to Tim Dinsdale’s Loch Ness Monster footage of April 1960. The text was shared at Twitter/X and my Patreon, but not at the blog so far. As I’ve said before, the plan is to compile all this text for a book. I’m working on that, and progress was made during the year.

**Caption:** it seems almost unbelievable today, but there were years during the 1960s and 70s when a select number of sane and intelligent people actually believed that the Dinsdale Loch Ness film of 1960 (a still from which is shown at left, diagrammatic interpretations of which are shown at right) really showed a large, scientifically unrecognised animal. These images, and numerous others, featured in my megathread on Dinsdale… **which is here on Twitter/X**.

During April I visited the New Forest Wildlife Centre – hence this article – as well as Jamie Jordan’s Fossils Galore museum and shop in March, Cambridgeshire. A number of very interesting marine reptile, dinosaur and Pleistocene mammal specimens are in Jamie’s care, and it would be good to see them studied and written up. One of the many things going on in the background at this point was the arranging of 2024’s TetZooCon and the accompanying tour. By late April, we essentially knew that we were going to be at Bush House, central London, once again, and we’d also booked the majority of our speakers and presenters. We knew also that this was to be the last TetZooCon of them all, for change was on the horizon once again.

**Caption**: the **Caspar *et al*. (2024)** paper on dinosaur intelligence proved popular with journalists. Some of the coverage was good, some was ok, but some was shallow and weak. “Scientists change their minds … yet again’” for example, is a terrible title that completely misses the point, since it’s written to imply that scientists all share the same interpretation of a given body of data. Here are screengrabs of just two of the many articles that covered the story.

Late April saw the publication of the year’s first technical paper, ‘How smart was T. rex? Testing claims of exceptional cognition in dinosaurs and the application of neuron count estimates in palaeontological research’ by Kai Caspar and a team of colleagues (Caspar et al. 2024). A version of the paper – a preprint – had already been online for a while at this point, so those properly invested in this subject were already aware of the article’s existence and primary contention. Nevertheless, publication makes a work more formal and definitive than it was before, and the study received substantial coverage and discussion.

**Caption:** the extremely picturesque saltmarsh and salt dune complex of East Head, West Wittering, West Sussex, as of April 2024. This is yet another place in the UK where dogs are allowed and even encouraged by their owners to run about, despite the signs, ropes and fencing designed to encourage people to keep their dogs out of these areas. Nothing works. The only solution is to ban people and dogs from such areas, but no-one wants to take draconian action of that sort. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** another relatively local green area within easy reach of where I live: River Hamble Country Park, April 2024. A large pond in this park gets good quantities of frogspawn, but all of it – I’m not exaggerating, *all of it* – disappeared, and presumably died, during the early months of the year. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** I visited Blenheim Palace in April 2024 (specifically for the Icons of British Fashion exhibition). This is the toy wooden elephant that belonged to Winston Churchill during his childhood. I like it very much. Image: Darren Naish.

May was nuts in terms of work, with background events involving the the Brian Ford paper, my speaking at the second of Verity Burke’s The Unnatural History Museum conferences, and prep for both the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival and TetZooCon. The Unnatural History Museum conference occurred online on May 22nd and was devoted to cryptozoology in museums. My talk – Conveying 'Sea Monster Science' in a Museum Setting – was about the story behind Monsters of the Deep, my National Maritime Museum exhibition. I believe that a recording will eventually be released online; until then, the script is available at the Tet Zoo patreon for those interested.

**Caption:** Steve Etches talks Kimmeridge Clay fossils at the *New Scientist* Jurassic Coast Weekender event in Exeter, 2024. In this particular moment, Steve is discussing the spectacular new pliosaurid discovered by Philip Jacobs in early 2022, then excavated by Steve and colleagues from its cliff-side location, and which was featured in the documentary *Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster* on New Years Day 2024. In my capacity as a consultant working at BBC Studios, I helped devise the events featured in that film, though I’m not adequately credited. Image: Darren Naish.

Do not talk about the state of the British countryside. Later in the month, I headed west for the New Scientist Jurassic Coast Weekender event in Exeter where – yet again – I spoke about Mesozoic marine reptiles. While there I also, after years of knowing her online, met geologist Anjana Khatwa; my friend and colleague Liz Martin-Silverstone was a speaker at the event too. While travelling back home on the train, I made a point of filming a section of the Dorset countryside that I’ve long noted as being completely devoid of wildlife. I stand by that contention. If you visit the same area on foot… it’s dead. No birds, no insects, just agricultural monoculture with a small amount of denuded coppice. Quite a few sections of the British farmed landscape are like this. To make a point, I created a short video recording and uploaded it to social media. And… oh boy.

**Caption:** there are a number of short movies that show green, European landscapes… and which have a famously triggering effect (I’m talking about the K-fee jump scare commercials). Well, now there’s another triggering movie of a green landscape. Here’s a still, taken from a train as it thundered through the English countryside. Because this image is a little boring, I hid three small bigfoots in the background. Images: Darren Naish.

A few conservation advocates (some with a very large social media footprint) share the fairly negative view of the state of the countryside outlined above, and use what opportunity they can to point it out. And thus it was that I won a major signal boost. But another contingent of people hate any suggestion that things might be off in the British agricultural landscape. Rural places are, they contend, just peachy: natural forest is healthy and expanding, wildlife is thriving, and farmers and gamekeepers are just and wise stewards of the land, fully cognizant of the way things work and how they’re meant to be. A massive pile-on happened as a few hundred angry men descended to tell me what a complete idiot I am, the whole thing extending for the better part of a day (May 20th 2024, for those interested).

It was an interesting experience, for sure, but – for what it’s worth – a notable thing is that the very vocal, very visually obvious complainers were far fewer in number than those who ‘liked’ (in the social media sense) or retweeted the point being made. Despite the anger, the state of the UK countryside is dire. We’re hammering what’s left of our wildlife into the dirt and things – on average – are getting worse.

**Caption:** it wouldn’t be an annual review without me sharing at least something on gulls. This is a Herring gull *Larus argentatus* pair that accompanied me while I was having lunch next to the Avon in Bristol one day. What’s interesting about one of these birds (the presumed male on the left) is that its iris was speckled with black, not just pale yellow as is more common. This is a known intraspecifically variable feature of this species, speckled irides being rarer than plain ones. Image: Darren Naish.

The Chinese translation of Dinopedia appeared in May (a Chinese edition of Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved appeared in print at the start of the year), slow progress on the Cryptids of Bernard Heuvelmans project continued (as it did throughout the year), Plumpmot the frog was photographed tackling and consuming an earthworm, and I discovered my long-lost Safari Ltd Great crested newt Triturus cristatus while undergoing loft clearance. What a win. Tetrapod Zoology articles published at around this time included those on the taxonomic vandalism of Ray Hoser, dibamids, atractaspidids – the burrowing asps or stiletto snakes – and the lamprophiine snake Bothrolycus. Those articles all focus on squamates, since I’d promised myself to rescue and republish what squamate-themed articles I could from the archives of ver 2 and 3.

**Caption:** views of the Chinese edition of *Dinopedia*. It’s a condensed, reduced version of the book relative to the original, but I hope that it still carries enough content to be considered worthwhile by its readers. The red-brown hue of the illustrations also marks it as different from the English edition. Images: Darren Naish.

The 2024 Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. I’ve said in previous birthday articles that the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival – once a sad and forlorn event that looked to be circling the drain – has very much found its feet in recent years and is now one of my highlights of the year. 2024’s happened over the first weekend of June. I gave my marine reptiles talk again, attended a book signing (both Ancient Sea Reptiles and Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved were on sale), and went to a special showing of Tony Pinto’s 2024 documentary movie Why Dinosaurs?

**Caption:** it’s very appropriate that my involvement in the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival generally revolves around Mesozoic marine reptiles. At left, a stack of books to sign. At right, title slide from my talk, featuring images from the Apple TV / BBC Studios series *Prehistoric Planet*. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** it’s apt when attending a *Why Dinosaurs?* screening to do the red carpet thing and have your photo taken in front of the official backdrop. Here’s a group of us at the entrance to the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis. Left to right: Stella Ludwig, Nizar Ibrahim, Hamzah Imran and Darren Naish.

I also arrived early enough on some days to go birdwatching along the beautiful Lyme Regis coast. Massive thanks to my buddy Kieran Satchell for help with accommodation, and to Natalia Jagielska and other staff at Lyme Regis Museum for organisational help.

**Caption:** I’ve now shared scenic photos of Lyme Regis’s East Cliff Beach on numerous occasions, but here it is at high tide on a sunny morning in June. The water is clear and blue, and birds including Common whitethroat *Curruca communis* sing from the cliff-top greenery. Image: Darren Naish.

When Mary met Flip. My talk at the Fossil Festival was followed by one given by another of my colleagues – Luke Muscutt – who works on plesiosaur locomotion (Muscutt et al. 2017). As you’ll know if you’ve seen the 2024 BBC documentary Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster (which I had a hand in developing), or if you attended TetZooCon 2023, Luke has manufactured an accurately scaled robot plesiosaur. It’s called Flip and has been used in various tests to see how live plesiosaurs might have performed as swimmers.

I’m pleased to say that Flip was in attendance at the 2024 Fossil Festival. Late on Sunday, Luke took Flip to meet the Mary Anning statue, a great photo opportunity. 2024 was the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Anning's Plesiosaurus, so this was doubly appropriate.

**Caption:** Mary Anning holds Flip the robot plesiosaur during the 2024 Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, with marine reptile workers (left to right) Richard Forrest, Judyth Sassoon, and Luke Muscutt. Down at the bottom is little Darren Naish, who’s evidently shorter in some photos than in others. Image: Hel Naish.

Numerous little froglets were leaving pond 2 at this time, and I photographed what I could. We (John Conway and I) finally got the advertising for TetZooCon 2024 off the ground, and tickets immediately started selling and selling well. New articles at Tetrapod Zoology included my tribute to the late Richard Ellis, and more on squamates (the small-eyed snake Micropechis, the Abronia alligator lizards, and grayiid water snakes). The new North American ceratopsian Lokiceratops saw print in June (June 20th, actually), and I got to write a news piece about it for BBC Wildlife. I also got to cover the very exciting Namibian stem-tetrapod Gaiasia of the Permian for BBC Wildlife in early July.

The philosophy of All Yesterdays. Deeply relevant to my own interests and to the history of this blog was a late June talk by Adrian Currie for Chris Manias’s Popularising Palaeontology workshop. Titled ‘Palaeoart as Science?’, it focused on the philosophy of All Yesterdays, a little book described by some as “potentially the most influential book on palaeoart ever written”.

Conflict exists between the need of the palaeoartist to depict ancient organisms as holistic objects (and to thus avoid speculation) versus their epistemic responsibility, so… what to do? Well, that was the whole point of the talk. I sure wanted to attend the whole thing, but it clashed with a meeting at work so I only caught part of it.

**Caption:** frogs arrive in great numbers in pond 2 during late January and early February, but adults are obvious – as here – throughout the summer. This photo from June 2024 shows at least eight frogs at the water surface. Part of the reason that frogs do this is to ambush insects that come to the pond to drink or (in the case of damselflies and such) lay their eggs. Common pondweed *Lemna minor* is visible in this photo but has since been successfully eliminated from the pond. Images: Darren Naish.

Watching cetaceans and seabirds. In early July, I travelled to Plymouth to board the Pont-Aven for my annual bout of whale surveying – organized and led by ORCA – across the Cornish Sea and the Bay of Biscay. Again, it was spectacularly successful. Of cetaceans, we saw Common Delphinus delphis, Striped Stenella coeruleoalba and Bottlenose Tursiops truncatus dolphin, Harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena, Cuvier's beaked whale Ziphius cavirostris, Northern minke Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and an incredible 17 Fin whales B. physalus. The Cuvier’s were the highlight for me – this is about the fourth time I’ve seen beaked whales in the wild – and included a substantially scarred male. A Bottlenose dolphin calf (seen adjacent to adults off the Spanish coast) and some Fin whale juveniles seen with their mothers were special moments too.

**Caption:** sea-watching on trips that revolve around marine mammals involves a lot of what you might expect… peering for long periods at large stretches of water. You see animals of many sorts, but the skies in this part of the world are amazing too. I don’t take for granted the complex, dynamic cloudscapes we get here on the Atlantic fringes. Climatic change means that the atmosphere in general is becoming cloudier. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** I remain absolutely awed by the fact that I’ve now observed live, wild ziphiid whales on a number of occasions. This is a male *Ziphius* with a very white head, observed in the Bay of Biscay. The extensive scarring across his back is very distinctive and this individual could likely be identified from some of these markings if witnessed again. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** not the best photo in the world, but this *probably* shows a lone Harbour or Common porpoise witnessed in the afternoon, on the approach to Spain. Its brief, secretive reveal was typical for its species, but that very rounded, blunt-tipped apex to the dorsal fin is a bit unusual. Image: Darren Naish.

After photographing some dolphins, I lifted my binoculars off my neck, not realising that the strap for my Canon E380 was tangled up with the binocular strap. Down the camera went, the lens hood smashing hard on the deck. The hood wasn’t broken, and the camera and its lens functioned fine for the rest of the trip, but the thread on the lens was broken and… goodbye lens # 3.

**Caption:** at left, a guillemot showing characteristic disturbance on the water surface. At right, part of a Manx shearwater flock. Images: Darren Naish.

Seabirds are seen on these trips as well as cetaceans, our list for 2024 including Northern gannet Morus bassanus and both Manx Puffinus puffinus and Cory's Calonectris borealis shearwater. I love these trips and will keep going on them as long as I can. ORCA is a marine conservation charity and you can find out about their trips here. Oh, thanks to train delays, some of us almost missed departure, and – thanks to additional train delays – some of us then suffered additional difficulties in getting back home. I use trains here in the UK a lot, and oh my god are they a joke.

**Caption:** I’ve said before that I aim to photograph every Common slow-worm *Anguis fragilis* I encounter, and I guess that goes for deceased ones too. This dead adult female was discovered under a log near Minstead in the New Forest in September 2024, cause of death unknown… but there are what *look like* two holes caused by canine teeth on the left side of its head. A burying beetle was in attendance. In life, slow-worm teeth are all but invisible, since they’re concealed by the lips and gums. But you’ll note that a specimen doesn’t need to be skeletonized for dehydration and decomposition to make the teeth visible in both the upper and lower jaws. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** much of the coastline of southern England is pretty spectacular if conditions are right. But maybe this can be said about coastlines everyone. This is the coast of Barton on Sea in west Hampshire, right opposite The Needles on the Isle of Wight, looking east during July 2024. What might you see in the water? Well….

**Caption:** from high up on the shore at Barton on Sea, I saw the rectangular head of a good-sized animal in the water, and knew instantly what it was. A person and dog at the water’s edge were watching it too, and it didn’t seem worried about getting away in the hurry. So I aimed to get closer…

**Caption:** as suspected, it was a Grey seal *Halichoerus grypus*, and I got photos of it both as a long and amorphous dark body in the water, and as a co-operative animal that pointed its snout sky-ward and also peered at people and other animals on the land. Grey seals are amazing animals and I’ve had good, close views of them on several occasions now. Images: Darren Naish.

A trip to Tokyo. During early August I published a long-in-development article on dogman at Tetrapod Zoology. Predictably enough, it proved popular and also resulted in my appearance as a guest on ep 46 (season 3) of MonsterTalk (which you can listen to here). We also did a podcats episode of our own on the same subject… the only podcast we got round to recording and releasing during the whole of the year! The big event of the month was a family trip to Tokyo, my first ever visit to Japan and one that could only happen due to a special, all-inclusive discount deal we were lucky enough to find.

I did enough things in Tokyo to write an entire essay (don’t worry, I won’t). Highlights relevant to the TetZooniverse include trips to Ueno Zoo (go here for a review article), Tama Zoological Park (which I have yet to write about), and Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science. As with so much in Tokyo, the museum is overwhelming in terms of content and quality. There are exhibits on modern natural history, the diversity of life as a whole, palaeoanthropology, dinosaurs, fossil mammals and ... oh my, the shop. I am forever disappointed by museum shops in the UK, but Japan sure knows how to do them right.

**Caption**: the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo is incredible, and stuffed full of so much fantastic stuff that it’s hard to get round it all in a day. Here’s part of the dinosaur hall, showing numerous fantastic display pieces, some of which are familiar if you know the technical literature on these animals. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption**: a montage of just three great items on show at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Left to right: the Miocene desmostylian *Paleoparadoxia tabatai* (I took many photos!), the elasmosaurid *Futabasaurus suzukii* (ditto), and Hachi, the famous faithful dog. Hachi is one of the museum’s most popular exhibits, and the room housing him was one of the busiest there during my visit. Images: Darren Naish.

On that note, I should mention in passing that I succeeded in obtaining a fair number of animal figures while there, essentially all of which are unavailable here in Europe. I wish I’d obtained more, but I couldn’t go completely nuts on the spending. We visited quite a few Godzilla-relevant locations in Tokyo. I didn’t see much wildlife, excepting arthropods.

**Caption:** I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again… spending time in green spaces is important, possibly vital, to human wellbeing, and we should see their preservation from a selfish perspective as much as an environmentally conscious one. Here is part of the beech-dominated section of Telegraph Woods that I walk to on regular occasion. This place and others proved vital to me during the covid pandemic. Image: Darren Naish.

SVPCA in Southampton. Almost immediately on returning, I had to get things sorted for 2024’s SVPCA (Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy), this year held at the University of Southampton’s School of Biological Sciences, where I have visiting researcher status. It was a good meeting with much of interest: Chris Barker gave a talk on work he, Lucy Handford, Neil Gostling, myself and others have done on a theropod dinosaur tooth assemblage from the Wealden of East Sussex, and more on that in a minute.

**Caption:** oh wow, *Ancient Sea Reptiles* mentioned and even promoted in someone else’s talk! Ok, the speaker happens to be a good friend and co-author of mine – it’s plesiosaur locomotion expert Luke Muscutt again – but that still counts as a win. Images: Darren Naish.

I also gave a talk myself – an invited talk – and in fact it was the very last talk of the entire conference. It was devoted to my experience of dealing with independent researcher and author Brian Ford and his 'all dinosaurs were aquatic' rhetoric. Near the end of the talk, I included a slide on ‘other contrarians I’ve written about’, and among those is Professor Alan Feduccia, the ‘birds are not dinosaurs’ (BAND) guy (see the 2023 article Alan Feduccia’s Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs: Forays in Postmodern Paleontology for more). Mike Howgate – who also pushes the naïve, erroneous BAND narrative – was present in the audience (in fact, he’d earlier given a talk about the supposed absence of the furcula across non-bird Theropoda) and responded during the Q&A to my inclusion of Feduccia as a 'contrarian'. It was, apparently, a disgrace that I dare accuse Feduccia of being a contrarian, one that I should be ashamed of. We argued back and forth, and it certainly wasn’t a constructive end to what had otherwise been a positive event.

**Caption:** Darren Naish talks about contrarianism and pseudoscience. Brian Ford and his aquatic dinosaurs might be irrelevant nonsense in one little corner of the intellectual world (remember that his book only sold a few thousand copies, at best), but… is it part of the same ecosystem as pseudoarchaeology and other brands of crankery? Images: Darren Naish.

I’m angry with myself, since I didn't do a sufficiently good job of explaining WHY Feduccia is a contrarian, and indeed why his approach is anti-scientific. As I tried to make clear in my review of Feduccia’s most recent book… yes, the specifics of the argument are faulty, but perhaps more important is the illogical style of argument that's employed: the use of whataboutism, naive falsification and personal incredulity as if they're good arguing tactics. I also wish that I'd thought more beforehand on what it is that makes someone a contrarian, or a crank, since I gave a poor answer when asked about that too and wish I'd done better. I've been thinking a lot about the matter of crankery since that exchange and am preparing an article on it.

The last TetZooCon, the first TetZooTour. SVPCA out of the way, and I gave another dinosaur-themed talk, this time on dinosaur behaviour, at The Novium in Chichester. It was a tie-in for their soon-to-close exhibition on dinosaur ontogeny, amusingly titled Dinosaurs: Hungry Hatchlings!

**Caption:** there might be little… perhaps no… real fossil material on show, but I really like this style of display, on show at The Novium, Chichester, and photographed here in September 2024. The combination of life-sized reconstructions, artwork, and an assortment of fossils with data panels, arranged together behind glass, has an appeal… though I wouldn’t arrange things exactly as per this specific montage. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** more from The Novium, showing (upper left) *Protoceratops* and (right) *Psittacosaurus* models, with a *Tyrannosaurus* montage at lower left. This psittacosaur model is supposed (I think) to represent *P. gobiensis*, so don’t go assuming that it ‘must’ be shown with tail filaments. Not sure about all the armour though… very hypothetical. Images: Darren Naish.

But the big event of September was of course… the last TetZooCon, held at Bush House, London. This event involved a massive amount of work and organisation, and the good news is that it went extremely well. A long article here reports what happened. A live, on-stage recording of the podcast was made but still hasn’t been released because John is a slacker. TetZooCon out of the way, I joined a coach-load of others as we set off on the first ever TetZooTour, and of course I don’t need to talk about that either since a long article already exists on it too. It was also a massive success and I look forward to running similar ventures in the future (albeit not in 2025).

I owe huge thanks to everyone who helped make TetZooCon and the TetZooTour what they were: John Conway, Chris Manias, Steve White, all the speakers, stall-holders and assistants, Georgia Witton-Maclean, Mike and Sue at Everything Dinosaur, driver Marc Bacon, Hel, Toni, and everyone who attended and participated.

**Caption:** I have about a million photos of things that happened during the TetZooTour and still haven’t had a chance to share them (though they *were* shared with the tour attendees). Here are two taken on our Lyme Regis fossil hunting trip, led by Natalia Jagielska of Lyme Regis Museum. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** if you know anything about TetZooCon, you know that we had a vast amount of artwork, merch and such on sale… things are going to continue, and expand, with 2025’s DinoCon. Here are a few relevant items I obtained at TetZooCon 2024: work by Jay Balamurugan (dodo), Matt Dempsey (dinosaur skeleton and *T. rex*), and Natalia Jagielska (Jurassic stickers). Image: Darren Naish.

While one of those ‘background’ things that occurred during the year was the disbanding of TetZooCon, another was the creation of DinoCon, a new venture fronted by a new team, and overall more palaeo-themed than TetZooCon. DinoCon 2025 is being held at the University of Exeter in England’s south-west on the weekend of August 16th and 17th. It’s going to be epic and we look forward to seeing you in Exeter later this year. Be sure to check out our website here.

The Cobb stegosaur donation. On several occasions during 2024, Professor Matthew Cobb of the University of Manchester indicated that he might one day donate his entire lot of accrued model and toy stegosaurs to the Tet Zoo Towers collection. That fateful day arrived in early October. Several large boxes, packed full of stegosaurs large and small, diverse in appearance and material composition, were successfully received. A few of the more delicate models were, unfortunately, broken. Anyway… if only I had the space to have then all out on display. One day, one day.

**Caption:** part of – yes, part of – the Cobb stegosaur donation. You’ll perhaps recognise some familiar toys and models, but note as well that there are stegosaur-themed objects of diverse sort here. Image: Darren Naish.

Cryptozoology and Neanderthals in Germany. Also in October… another dream trip, this time to the Neanderthal Museum at Mettmann in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, where I was an invited speaker at the German Cryptozoology Symposium 2024. My hosts – Tobias Möser and Markus Bühler – very kindly took me to Cologne Zoological Garden before the meeting began; we were also joined by my long-standing friend Kristina Henschke. It was great, and a long article on the zoo is still due to appear here. For now, all you get is a few pictures…

**Caption:** a scene from the 2024 German Cryptozoology Symposium. Markus Bühler is a long-time reader of Tetrapod Zoology (he has often published comments here as well) and it was great to finally meet him. Here, Markus is discussing discoveries pertaining to European *Gallotia* lizards. His talk also covered surprising finds made in the world of lake-dwelling trout. Image: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** Cologne Zoo houses a phenomenal collection of birds. At left, Magellanic or Fuegian steamer duck *Tachyeres pteneres*. At right, Blue, Paradise or Stanley crane *Anthropoides paradisea*. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** at left, Black stork *Ciconia nigra*, one of several Eurasian species housed in a really interesting open-air structure combining vintage stonework with large trees. At right, White-browed, Burchell’s or Lark-heeled coucal *Centropus superciliosus*. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** more from Cologne Zoo. From left to right: Green peacock *Pavo muticus*, a life-sized photo of a Siberian or Amur tiger *Panthera tigris altaica* with this blog’s author, Blue-throated macaw *Ara glaucogularis*. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** some carnivorans of Cologne Zoo. A vocal California sea lion *Zalophus californianus* at left, a resting Spectacled bear *Tremarctos ornatus* at right. Images: Darren Naish.

As for the meeting itself, I gave the Mesozoic marine reptiles talk again. Yeah, it’s mostly on the evolution, ecology and natural history of Mesozoic animals but it does of course have relevance to cryptozoology as well given all those hypotheses about the survival of mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and so on beyond the Cretaceous and into the present. The meeting done, and I was very much looking forward to visiting the Neanderthal Museum itself, mostly because of the famous and excellent hominin sculptures by the Kennis brothers. They didn’t disappoint, and the museum itself is… interesting, albeit not as Neanderthal-themed as I was hoping. It’s more arranged around ‘that which makes us human’, which – I submit – is substantially less interesting.

**Caption:** woodland scenes in the Neander Valley, basically at the spot where Neanderthal people fossils were first discovered. Well, actually… the first Neanderthal found in the scientific era comes from Gibraltar where it was discovered in 1848, a bit before the first German find of 1856. A large metal arrow and a stone carving of a brain have both been added to the site. I dislike them both and think that they distract from its aesthetic. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** some (not all) of the Kennis brothers hominin models on show at the Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann. Left to right: *Homo ergaster*, *H. sapiens*, adult male Neanderthal (Mr. N!), Neanderthal girl. There are more, including other *H. sapiens* individuals and an australopithecine. Images: Darren Naish.

After the meeting, a group of us trekked to the Neanderthal discovery site in the Neander Valley before visiting the nearby Heck cattle and horses. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the Neander Valley is very much a conventional, picturesque, northern European deciduous woodland, the specific rocky outcrop that yielded the Neanderthal fossils no longer existing. The cattle and horses can both be viewed at close range. The whole thing was a real thrill that I was hugely grateful to experience: thanks Tobias, Markus and everyone else involved.

**Caption:** Heck cattle that live between Mettmann and Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. They’re good looking cattle, but I don’t know how closely they really resemble Aurochs. They’re friendly and very approachable for one thing, and they’re quite a bit smaller than the originals. The two males here are sparring, not fighting. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** Heck horse close to Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, where it’s part of a small group that live in semi-captive conditions. They’re supposed to resemble Tarpan but lack the erect manes of that extinct horse. At least some do have a low number of leg stripes though. Image: Darren Naish.

My copies of the Spanish edition of Dinopedia arrived in October. Spanish-speaking countries – including Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Spain itself – have been extremely important in the building of our views on Mesozoic dinosaurs, so it’s fitting and significant that the book now exists in this language. A long article on my recollections of working with Sir David Attenborough was published at the patreon (sorry, I can’t share it publicly. At least, not yet).

**Caption:** ¡Mi libro *Dinopedia* ya existe en español! Espero que los lectores de España, México, Chile y otros países de habla hispana lo disfruten. Muchos de estos países tienen una importancia enorme en términos de lo que nos han enseñado sobre los dinosaurios. [My book *Dinopedia* now exists in Spanish! I hope that readers in Spain, Mexico, Chile and other Spanish-speaking countries enjoy it. Many of these countries have massive importance in terms of what they’ve taught us about dinosaurs.] Images: Darren Naish.

Goodbye Zar. November had a glum start. For more than a decade now, we've had pet guinea-pigs, and for about seven years we've kept Zar, a Teddy (a breed marked for their short, dense, 'rex-type' coat). During September and October, Zar went rapidly downhill, with one issue occurring after the other in different parts of the body. I've learnt a lot about guinea-pigs, most of this thanks to Zar in particular, and I'm sad that he is no more. While digging his grave, I discovered a crumpled shirt in the bottom of the hole I’d made. I extracted it and opened it up. Within was the complete skeleton of a snake, most likely a Corn snake Pantherophis guttatus. What are the odds.

**Caption:** a Zar montage. The two photos at right were taken in 2019 and 2020, and it’s weird now to see how young he looked. I was pretty attached to this little animal, RIP. Images: Darren Naish.

November saw publication of my second technical paper of the year, that on the Ford ‘all (non-bird) dinosaurs were aquatic’ nonsense mentioned above (Naish 2024). An accompanying Tet Zoo article is here. Ford asked for a pdf, and then responded "Interesting - all the more recent evidence substantiates my view. All I need is time to revisit it. But I shall". My plan at one point was to put out a press release on this article (which appeared in Historical Biology), since one angle the paper takes is to compare Ford and his tactics with Trumpian 'post-truthism'. I couldn't make time for this, wasn't ready when the paper saw release, and am frankly too depressed about Trump that using this connection as a light-hearted but informative way of bigging up the research isn't something I want to do.

**Caption:** a new-ish feature at Marwell Wildlife, a great zoo close to me, is the Thriving Through Nature exhibit, which opened in early 2023. It includes (at left) this very impressive rock-dominated aridland display, which features hyraxes, several lizards, and pupfishes. At right, typhlonectid caecilians are on show in the zoo’s tropical house and can be observed swimming and foraging under the water. Images: Darren Naish.

**Caption:** another view from Marwell Wildlife. Scimitar oryx or Scimitar-horned oryx *Oryx dammah* have been kept at Marwell since its inception in the 1970s and served as the zoo’s official emblem for some time. Marwell is also good on zebras; Imperial or Grevy’s zebra *Equus grevyi* are visible here (there’s a Tet Zoo article on that species **here**). Image: Darren Naish.

November’s real big science news concerned the publication of the Siberian Homotherium cub (yeah… cub, not kitten), a huge deal if you’re interested in Pleistocene animals, extinct cats, or both. I didn’t cover it at Tetrapod Zoology but did write about it for BBC Wildlife. I attended another local herpetology meeting, this time the joint meeting of the British Herpetological Society (BHS) and Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) at the Bournemouth Natural Science Society, and my efforts to rescue more squamate-themed articles from the archives continued with contributions on leiosaurids and chameleons.

**Caption:** at left, the Bournemouth Natural Science Society (BNSS) building, a location now regularly associated with meetings and conferences relevant to my interests. I have no idea whether this was true prior to the mid-2000s! After the recent BHS-ARC conference, a group of us went on an, erm, urban fieldtrip about Bournemouth, and here’s a captive musk turtle we encountered. Musk turtles have been covered at Tet Zoo in the past, but the article concerned has been destroyed by *Scientific American* and I can’t find it anywhere. Images: Darren Naish.

This was also the time of the year in which Steve White and I were mostly done with the compiling of Mesozoic Art II, the successor to our successful and much lauded Mesozoic Art of 2022. At the time of writing (January 2025), the final cover for MAII has been released and the final proofs have just recently been checked. We’re due to publish in September 2025, unfortunately too late for a launch event at DinoCon. Mesozoic Art II is already available for pre-order here.

**Caption:** there was never an aim to have these books serve as ‘portfolios’ of where we’re at with respect to modern palaeoart, but there’s no avoiding that this is the role they serve, at least in part. We aim to boost and showcase the work and art of world-class contributors, worldwide, and it’s been very rewarding to see the excitement with which these books are received.

**Caption:** another New Forest scene, this time from October 2024. Taken from somewhere in the vicinity of Beaulieu Heath. Good luck spelling ‘Beaulieu’ if you’re dyslexic. Image: Darren Naish.

Pond adventures. A pond renovation job occupied my weekends throughout November and part of December too. Over recent years, the relatively young-ish pond 2 on my property has become used by a gradually increasing number of frogs. Which is great. But the shallow part of the pond that the frogs use for spawning is too small for the number of frogs and amount of spawn now expected. In addition, the pond contains an old carpet buried beneath it that I really wanted to remove and dispose of properly. And thus changes were made.

**Caption:** the pond I’m mostly talking about in the text here is still too much of a mess for me to want to share photos. But this additional, smaller pond (in Sheila’s garden) is good and ready to go. I want to dig more ponds! If you’re local to me, contact me and I’ll come dig and design one for you. Images: Darren Naish.

The pond was emptied (my aim being to cause minimum disturbance to wildlife, hence the end-of-year timing), the hole containing it was very much modified, and it was reassembled. Water was put back in, and rain happened too. But the water level didn’t go up, it went down, and then it went down some more. There was evidently a hole somewhere in the liner. I got another one and had to repeat part of the process. I went to install the liner aaaand realized immediately that it was too small. I’d ordered one that was the wrong size. So I got another one. Things worked out eventually, and right now pond 2 is complete and fully ready for the frogs that will start calling, competing and fighting during the latter parts of January. The small liner obtained by mistake was used to create another pond on another property, and that’s in good shape and ready to be used by wildlife as well.

**Caption:** birds of many sorts were observed during 2024. Here are Ruddy turnstones *Arenaria interpres* in winter plumage – we just call them turnstones in the UK, seeing as we only have the one species – at the edge of the land in Milford on Sea, southern Hampshire, in November. Image: Darren Naish.

Wealden theropods, Scotland, and hello 2025. December saw the publication of the year’s third of my technical papers, this one being another contribution to our understanding of theropod diversity in the English Wealden Supergroup. As discussed in the Tet Zoo article here, it concerns our analysis of isolated theropod dinosaur teeth discovered in the Hastings Group from the older part of the Wealden (Barker et al. 2024). It received a surprising amount of coverage in the popular press.

In my capacity as a designer and curator of museum exhibits, I travelled by train to Glasgow, specifically the University of Strathclyde, for a one-day workshop event on museum displays organized by Will Tattersdill and Jordan Kistler. There are many things I’d like to see brought to life for show in a museum space – after all, the primary subjects you read about here at Tet Zoo all involve physical things and imagery – so fingers crossed for the future.

**Caption:** I went to Glasgow and talked sea monsters, and that explains the unusual maned animal on the name badge here. At right, Glasgow was cold and misty during my stay. Images: Darren Naish.

As 2024 drew to a close and 2025 kicked into gear, I found myself massively occupied with book editing, DinoCon organisation, and the setting up of media projects that will develop throughout 2025 and beyond. Here in the first month of the year I’m massively overloaded and somewhat despairing about my chances to write regularly for the blog. Almost everything I do professionally arose because of work and time put in here at Tet Zoo, and I have no plans to cut back or reduce my blogging output. Yes, generating novel content for the blog comes at some personal cost, but I want the material I write to be out there, online, and accessible.

**Caption:** one of the last things I accomplished in the year (as in, between Jan 21st 2024 and Jan 21st 2025) was the very overdue review of Creative Beast’s Beasts of the Mesozoic (BOTM) giant *T. rex* figure. I’ve released it on social media but not yet uploaded it to YouTube. Images: Darren Naish.

Subject coverage across the year. Soooo…. let’s play the good ol’ game of phylogenetic representation. I’ve given up on any chance of things ever being ‘fairly’ balanced round here, and I guess I should resign myself to the fact that each year is, basically, a thing of chaos and compromise. In blogging, as in life I guess. Anyway, here’s a list of the year’s articles arranged by subject…

Miscellaneous

Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: New Forest Wildlife Park, April 2024
In Memory of Richard Ellis, Influential Artist and Author, June 2024
Announcing TetZooCon 2024, the 11th Tetrapod Zoology Convention, June 2024
Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo, September 2024
The Last TetZooCon, October 2024
The Inaugural 2024 TetZooTour of Southern England, October 2024

Amphibians

Live Spawnwatch Action From Pond 2 at Tet Zoo Towers, February 2024

Turtles

Megalochelys, Truly a Giant Tortoise, January 2024

Squamates

Do Lizards Really Have ‘Mite Pockets’?, March 2024
Meeting Lake Zacapu’s Garter Snake, March 2024
Ray Hoser, Number 1 Taxonomic Vandal, May 2024
The Mysterious Dibamids, May 2024
Side-Stabbing Stiletto Snakes, Redux for 2024, May 2024
The Rehabilitation of Günther’s Black Cameroonian Snake, May 2024
Ikaheka and Other ‘Palatine Draggers’, Cryptozoic Elapid Snakes of Melanesia, June 2024
Arboreal Alligator Lizards of Mesoamerica... and Beyond!, July 2024
Grayiids: Africa Has Water Snakes Too, July 2024
Smaug, Ouroborus, Flat Lizards and More, August 2024
Leiosaurid Lizards: South America, Land of Iguanians, November 2024
What's With All These New Chameleon Names? Chameleons, Part 1, November 2024

Pterosaurs

Azhdarchid Progress, a Personal View, October 2024

Non-bird dinosaurs

The Third Edition of Naish and Barrett's Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, February 2024
T. rex the Tool Maker -- Testing Controversial Claims About Dinosaur Smarts, April 2024
Post-Truthism, Brian J Ford’s Aquatic Dinosaurs, and the Fate of ‘Too Big To Walk’, November 2024
A New Theropod Dinosaur Assemblage from the Older Part of the English Wealden, December 2024
My Weird 2000 Paper on Tree-Climbing Dinosaurs, December 2024
Heptasteornis, My Beloved; Alvarezsaurids in Europe, the Backstory, January 2025
An American Tyrant in London, Collector's Edition, January 2025

Cryptozoology

A Cryptozoologist’s Bibliography: Matt Bille’s Of Books and Beasts, March 2024
Werewolves in America; the Tale of Dogman, August 2024
Nessie Point and Counterpoint; Who Owns the ‘Facts’ on the Loch Ness Monster?, November 2024

And here’s that data portrayed as a graph…

It's obvious from the graph that 2024 was unusual in terms of coverage here. I’m surprised to see that I never found time to write about mammals (or indeed synapsids of any sort) or birds: that seems very weird. I’m also really weirded out by the total absence of fossil marine reptiles here, given the importance they obviously had what with the many events that revolved around my Ancient Sea Reptiles book.

The ‘equal’ coverage received by amphibians, turtles and pterosaurs is vaguely encouraging but for the fact that we’re talking about lone articles. Non-bird dinosaurs were well served, both because I had a reasonably healthy year in terms of technical publications (Barker et al. 2024, Caspar et al. 2024, Naish 2024) but also because of a few articles relating to articles of the past. A few cryptozoology-themed articles kept that subject alive at the blog as well. But of course – as deliberately planned – 2024 was Squamate Year at Tet Zoo, in which I aimed to rescue and republish as many articles on that group as I could (for those who don’t know, my older articles at ver 2 and ver 3 have been ruined by their now defunct hosters, and I feel compelled to rescue all of this otherwise lost material). I didn’t get through half as many articles as I wanted to, so I’d like to make 2025 a Squamate Year as well. I’d be interested to know what you, dear reader, feel about this… is that enough squamates for now, or are you good for me to continue?

**Caption:** here’s Teddy the West Highland terrier in two of his guises. He accompanied me on numerous walks throughout the course of the year, often accompanying these adventures with observations on urban planning and the socio-political landscape. A leg operation during the latter part of 2024 put a temporary end to this, however. Images: Darren Naish.

And that’s where I must end. I found 2024 an unbelievably full-on year with too many things happening for me to really keep track of. That’s not because I deliberately seek out all of these overlapping tasks and events: it’s an inevitable consequence of what I’m involved in at this point of my life and career. 2025 is looking to be the same, with tons of stuff happening. It all feels very chaotic.

**Caption:** I just know that you want to hear more about the fabled rediscovery of the Safari Ltd Great crested newt model I mentioned earlier in the article. Well, here are assorted images, including (lower left) a screengrab from the ‘discovery’ video I shared on social media and (at right) a montage created for Instagram. At upper left is a screengrab from eBay, giving you some idea of what some people think that this figure is worth. I might have made a few rash amphibian-themed purchases in my time… but even I think this is ridiculous.

As ever, some major slow-burn giant projects weren’t finished during the year, which frustrates me now just as much as it has before. Nevertheless, things are looking good for 2025, so stay tuned for some very exciting announcements. Huge thanks as ever to everyone who reads the blog, to everyone who leaves comments (except for the haters and weirdos), and especially to those who provide support at patreon. And here’s to another year of operation!

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