Latest news: Eotyrannus (again) and more (Patreon)

Hello dear patrons, I hope you’re well and that things have been going as well as can be expected. My apologies as ever for lack of appearance here and for few updates, things continue to be heavy on the workload front – which is good, but means little time for the various projects I aim to complete. I have had to abandon progress on the textbook for the short term. HOWEVER, there is news, and here it is…

This month (December 2021) has seen the long-awaited publication of the multi-authored Quetzalcoatlus monograph, led by Kevin Padian and Matthew Brown (image above shows the monograph cover [featuring a John Conway artwork]). We’ve literally been waiting decades for this work, and its appearance is significant if you’re interested in azhdarchid pterosaurs. To be clear: I was nothing whatsoever to do with this work (though my colleague John Conway was). I did get access to it before it was published and am hence quoted in various press releases and news articles and such. The appearance of the work inspired me to write about recent developments in the world of azhdarchids for TetZoo, go here: https://tetzoo.com/blog/2021/12/8/the-quetz-monograph-lives

Work continues on the marine reptiles book. It has to be completed by the end of this month and I’m not optimistic. I don’t understand why I wasn’t able to get more done earlier in the year, but… I just wasn’t. Anyway, it’s my main ‘spare time’ project at the moment and is due to be published in 2022. It includes tons of material never before included in a popular book.

Eotyrannus, again. You’ll have seen my recent updates about progress with the Eotyrannus monograph. I have great news, which is that it has now been ACCEPTED for publication in PeerJ and the final hoops are being jumped through at the moment. Publication will happen in 2022. I commissioned a new skeletal reconstruction by Dan Folkes and it turns out that Eotyrannus likely looked a bit different from how I’d imagined. Here it is; you're the first people to see it outside of PeerJ editors, Dan, and my coauthor Andrea Cau. I cannot express what a big deal it will be to finally get this work published.

More Wealden dinosaur stuff. Several technical projects are happening, but on the backburner right now. All appear devoted to Wealden dinosaurs! I and the team at Neil Gostling’s group at Southampton University are writing up another new Wealden spinosaurid, I also plan to finish at least one of the papers on Yaverlandia (I have two in prep), and another paper on Eotyrannus – this time just on its unusual nasal bones – is currently in prep too.

Dinopedia is out. Finally, you’re likely aware that Dinopedia is now out and selling (here's a weird image of me talking about it). I’ve only seen a couple of reviews. One or two have made the inevitable comments on the content being a bit heavy on taxonomy/phylogeny (good luck writing about dinosaurs and not including that stuff; I always get criticised for it but literally have no idea how to avoid it, nor would I want to), but overall the response is positive. I’m hoping to see reviews that actually appreciate what I’ve said since there are no other published works that review the last few decades the way I have.

Ok, that’s it for now. Thanks as always for your support. 2021 has been a very odd year but I think I, happy about the things I’ve achieved, it’s hard to say. 2022 is going to be very odd for reasons I can’t yet discuss.