When doing school sessions with the BDP, we always give an opportunity for the kids to ask us any of the burning questions they have about dinosaurs. In a recent session, in this moment, a keen child raised their hand and asked, “What is the longest ever insect?”
This is, of course, a demonstration of a child thoroughly misunderstanding the assignment, but that doesn’t stop it from being a legitimately intriguing question. What is the longest ever insect?
Guest Author: Dr Romain Sabroux
Marie Curie Fellow in Earth Sciences, University of Bristol
I have to make a confession. I am not much of a diver.
As a marine biologist, this probably sounds odd. But if you make something as demanding as SCUBA diving, especially when you are on an actual scientific expedition and that you need to sample several times per day for a whole month, you need a good reason. My reason would be the animals I have been studying for eight years now: the pycnogonids, also known as sea spiders.
Guest Author: James Ormiston
Palaeontology MSci Graduate / Palaeoartist
‘Herpetón‘ – Noun, from the Ancient Greek ἑρπετόν meaning:
A four-legged animal, or an animal that creeps, e.g. a lizard or snake
Gather ‘round ye rock hounds and I shall tell ye the tale of the slippery serpent of the Severn. ‘tis a tale of obscure mystery, war, obsessive Victorian collectors and a headless reptile over 200 million years old. That reptile is Pachystropheus.
Guest Author – Sophie Pollard
Current Palaeobiology MSc Student
No matter how much or how little you know about mythology, you know about dragons. They’re pretty much everywhere. From the feathered Quetzalcoatl of Aztec culture to the many-headed Mesopotamian deity Tiamat, supernatural serpents have been causing floods, kidnapping women, and making a general nuisance of themselves to the heroes of our favourite stories for as long as anyone can remember.
Allow me a short digression into something nerdy. It’s niche and weird but I slipped in some science along the way. Whilst doing a bit of reading for another project the other day I stumbled across a curious link between two very different worlds; the science of Palaeontology, and the fictional antagonist of Middle-Earth. I subsequently went on to discover that link again, and then again. All of which led me to ask; why does Sauron keep popping up in palaeo?
As this article is being first posted, the world lies on the precipice of the next big palaeo-media drama debacle. One week from today, the movie “65” will be released in cinemas, an action film that, judging from all trailers and pre-release information, can be best summed up as ‘Adam Driver from the future shoots dinosaurs.’
Guest Author – Sophie Pollard
Current Palaeobiology MSc Student
Teeth, or at least tooth-like structures, can be found in every jawed vertebrate group living today, and it’s rare to find any lineage which has lost them completely. There is no doubt that teeth have been a key development in vertebrate evolutionary history, but where did they come from in the first place?
The answer is much more complicated than you might expect!
When it comes to iconic animals of extinction, there are none better known (or as frequently name-dropped) than the Dodo. An animal so synonymous with the idea of being extinct that it even became a saying, “As dead as a Dodo.” But if you speak to most people and ask what they know about the Dodo, that’s pretty much where the knowledge starts and ends. However, there is a real species behind the legend and it holds more than a few surprises.
Guest Author: James Ormiston
Palaeontology MSci Graduate / Palaeoartist
Ammonites are wonderful things. Staring into their ribbed spirals can be a hypnotic experience. A shape that is vaguely familiar…yet also alien and ancient. Geometrically satisfying, chronologically dizzying. Although being very common, it’s this slight “otherness” which all but guarantees that if you collect fossils, even only a little, you probably have an ammonite in your collection. They have become a poster child for fossils worldwide.
Guest Author: Sophie Pollard
Palaeobiology MSc Student
While citizens of the city of Bristol and the rest of the UK will remember the summer of 2022 for its record-breaking heatwave, records of a different kind have been set in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska, with sockeye salmon returning in higher numbers than any recorded before. This is great news for the fauna of Katmai National Park, and by extension, for fans of Katmai National Park’s Fat Bear Week, an annual event in which the bears of Katmai compete to see who best drags the competition, by how much their bellies drag along the ground.
