Crocodiles of the World – part III! Part I is here; part II is here. The Saltwater crocodile Crocodylus porosus, also known as the Estuarine crocodile, Indopacific crocodile or Saltie, is one of the world’s most famous crocodile species, probably being second in line after the Nile croc C. niloticus. Part of the reason this [...]

Welcome to part II in the Crocodiles of the World series. In the previous part we began our tour of the crocodile species themselves by looking at the Mugger or Marsh crocodile Crocodylus palustris, a robust, (mostly) tropical Asian crocodile that’s probably closely related to the species within the Indopacific assemblage (though read on). Here [...]

Prior to the epic destruction wrought upon their kind by the noble and beautiful Homo sapiens, crocodiles had it pretty good. One thing that I’ve read several times and found especially annoying is the idea that crocodiles, alligators and gharials are “the last remnants of a once mighty empire”, or something along those lines. No, [...]

Of the many unlikeable and inaccurate stereotypes maintained about animals in popular consciousness, among the most frustrating is what I term “old man turtle”. This is the idea that turtles (by which I mean, all members of Testudines) are like decrepit, weak, bony little old men housed inside a box. It’s not fair, and it’s [...]

For no particular reason whatsoever, here are some montages featuring the covers of books I’ve written and/or edited. Long-time readers might be familiar with the backstory to Tetrapod Zoology Book One (Naish 2010a), Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective (Moody et al. 2010) and The Great Dinosaur Discoveries (Naish 2008), but I’d still [...]

Time for more petrels. Having introduced general aspects of petrel biology, diversity and evolution in the previous articles (part I, part II, part III, part IV), it’s now time to get through the different petrel lineages. As explained in the previous article, recent molecular phylogenetic studies indicate that true petrels (Procellariidae) consist of four major [...]

Some considerable time ago – it was, I discover to my surprise, April 2010 – I was lucky enough to participate in the Great Crocodilian Dissection Event at the RVC (Royal Veterinary College, UK), planned by the mighty and benevolent Prof John Hutchinson. John actually received a job-lot of numerous crocodilian specimens and arranged to [...]

It’s well known that monitor lizards (or varanids) sometimes practise cannibalism (that is, predation within their own species), and it should be no surprise to learn that big monitor species sometimes (or even often) prey on and eat smaller ones. The phenomenon whereby predators predate on other, typically smaller, predators is termed intraguild predation, and [...]

Like modern birds, and like their close relatives among the theropod dinosaurs, the birds of the Mesozoic Era laid eggs and, we reasonably infer, made nests. But what else do we know about reproductive behaviour in Mesozoic birds? Essentially, we know very little, and by “very little” I actually mean “just about nothing”. A new [...]

Matt Wedel kindly passed on the photos you see here. They show the Man-eater of Mfuwe, an enormous male lion Panthera leo that terrorised the small town of Mfuwe (and the surrounds) in the Luangwa River Valley of eastern Zambia. The photos were taken in Chicago’s Field Museum where the specimen has been on display [...]