Mosasaurs and More for Ancient Sea Reptiles

Hello noble and wonderful patrons. Apologies for my silence: as you might have seen, the last several weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind... the major TV project I've been working on - the Apple TV+/BBC Studios series Prehistoric Planet - has finally come to fruition and seen its televised debut. I was involved in a great deal of the promotion and... what a ride. It was intense. I cannot talk about Prehistoric Planet here, but if you follow me on Twitter (@TetZoo) you'll have seen me talk about it a fair bit there.

Other things have been going on as well. Steve White and I finished editing Mesozoic Artover recent weeks. It's due to be published in October 2023 and there will be at least one launch event. The book can be pre-ordered already (https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mesozoic-art-9781399401364/). Getting it done was a ridiculous amount of work, and getting it finished meant a frightening amount of last-minute panic, the timing of which couldn't have been worse what with Prehistoric Planet and other events.

Ancient Sea Reptiles - to be published by the NHM in January 2023 - is also coming to completion as I write. Again, the timing couldn't have been worse, and getting it over the finish line has been really challenging. At the time of writing, I have a few captions still to do and some illustrations to get finished, but I'm getting there. The mosasaur cladogram shown above is one of several new cladograms I've included. I forget what I've said before but it meant doing new reconstructions of specific mosasaurs.

Other things have been happening too. Together with Chris Barker, Neil Gostling, Jeremy Lockwood and others, I published a new PeerJpaper on a new giant spinosaurid from the Isle of Wight's Vectis Formation. A TetZoo article on that find is here... https://tetzoo.com/blog/2022/6/8/giant-spinosaurid-dinosaur-from-the-isle-of-wight

Other Wealden dinosaur papers are in production, not least of which is the Eotyrannus monograph. I aim to have that finished soon... but how long have I been saying that for?

And that'll do for now. Thanks as always for your support - it means so much and does assist me in getting stuff done! Until next time...