Deepest fish ever

Arent they cute?

Famous again

I'm famous again. Well, sort of. I played a fairly minor role in some interesting new research on the rise of the dinosaurs that suggests it was their competitors, the crurotarsans (crocodiles and their antecedents), that had the greater range of body plans and indistinguishable rates of evolution back in the Triassic when both groups first appeared. The dinosaurs came to dominate, perhaps not because they were superior, but simply that they got lucky with two rounds of mass extinction hurting the crurotarsans much more, leaving only the true crocs to soldier on through the Mesozoic.

Goat-based humour

Goats seem to provide a decent history of humorous stories, at least on the BBC website. First was the Sudanese man forced to marry a goat, that sadly later died. And most recently a number of goats were freed from prison after being unfairly "charged with being sold illegally by the roadside." This put me in mind of perhaps the funniest youtube clip I have ever seen:

Reading level

I saw this on John's blog and thought I'd see if I could match him. (Apparently so). But how does it work?

Back once again

Hi all. It's been a long time, but I have decided to attempt resuscitation of this blog (which still gets more traffic than my 'proper' web site). Check back soon for a post on my fifteen minutes of fame following the publication of my first lead-authored paper on a new dinosaur supertree.

Mystery organism revealed

The culprit is the model organism, Onthophagus nigriventris. Although most of us will know it as a dung beetle. So Sarda was right, if vague. John Orcutt's brave descent of the Linnean hierarchy went unrewarded, but John Hopkin came closest - even going so far as to provide the correct genus. I, however, was spot on.

Well done me.

You might like to know that the striking horns in the original photo are just one of a variety of phenotypic expressions in this species (see photo below).

Mystery organism

As Sarda has instituted the 'mystery fossil' I thought I might steal her idea (which she stole from someone else anyway) and have a mystery organism instead.

I came across the above in a paper I was recently reading. Can you guess what it is?