Author Archives: twilightbeasts

Meet Long Tusk

Some of you may have been lucky enough to see these incredible animals in the wild. Others may have felt a strong tug at your heart seeing one in a zoo. Most, if not all, of us have seen these … Continue reading

Posted in Deinotherium, Mastodon, Woolly Mammoth, Zygolophodon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Small but mighty

Our planet’s climate fluctuations move to the slow, almost imperceptible dance steps of tilts in our axis and wobbles in our precession around the star we call the Sun. These movements which cause natural global-scale climate changes are known as … Continue reading

Posted in Horned Gopher | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Doing the crawl?

The life aquatic has lured many animal groups back into its liquid embrace. Marine iguanas, penguins, whales and dolphins, sea-cows and manatees, seals and sea-lions all returned to the sea from land (and air!) adapted forms. It makes a lot … Continue reading

Posted in Giant Swimming Sloth, Thalassocnus | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Eye of the beholder

By looks alone there are many animals that do not win our hearts. People don’t coo over wasps; vultures are grotesque; don’t get me started on elephant seals. Sadly this is due to what we see as beautiful. David Hume, the … Continue reading

Posted in Hyena, Pachycrocuta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Bear from Clare – new evidence for an early human presence in late Pleistocene Ireland

Many people know at least something of the gradual flooding of the palaeolandscape of Doggerland, off the east coast of Britain. They have a pretty good idea of how the sea encroached on that early European land bridge from around … Continue reading

Posted in Brown Bear, Homo sapiens, Irish Elk, Mega-flood | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Going underground

South America is a place full of stories about mysterious beasts. Standing seven feet tall, with long red hair and big sharp claws, tales of the mapinguari, have been passed down in South American Indian folklore. An odd tapir/jaguar hybrid … Continue reading

Posted in Giant Ground Sloth | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Ice Age Mammals in Batman’s House

During summer 2015 I was lucky enough to volunteer at the Nottingham Natural History Museum (NOTNH) at Wollaton Hall in the UK. Not only was Wollaton Hall the film location for Wayne Manor in the 2012 Batman film The Dark … Continue reading

Posted in Creswell Crags | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mini-beasts, giants, and mega-floods

I have a little link to the time before the English Channel formed 450,000 years ago. Almost every day in the last academic year, a PhD student has been working in my office. He is investigating the environment and ecology … Continue reading

Posted in Mega-flood | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

How do you weigh a Dodo?

Extinction is something as real today as it has always been. What makes it even more real, and for our particularly emotional species, extremely sad is that these animals and plants are gone forever. We will never feel a dozen … Continue reading

Posted in Dodo | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Lost, as the moa is lost!

Every biologist has a gateway species. The taxon you had never heard of before that just looked so weird and unusual that you had to learn more. So, you looked up a few books, searched some library holdings, maybe photocopied … Continue reading

Posted in moa | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments