EGU Blogs
Avatar photo

Jon Tennant

Jon began university life as a geologist, followed by a treacherous leap into the life sciences. He spent several years at Imperial College London, investigating the extinction and biodiversity patterns of Mesozoic tetrapods – anything with four legs or flippers – to discover whether or not there is evidence for a ‘hidden’ mass extinction 145 million years ago. Alongside this, Jon researched the origins and evolution of ‘dwarf’ crocodiles called atoposaurids. Prior to this, there was a brief interlude were Jon was immersed in the world of science policy and communication, which greatly shaped his views on the broader role that science can play, and in particular, the current ‘open’ debate. Jon tragically passed away in 2020.

SVP Day 3

November 2, 2013

OK, day 3, still alive.

The first session this morning was on saurischians dinosaurs, the major group that includes sauropods and theropods.

My supervisor, Phil Mannion, was the first talk I was awake enough for (*cough*), and gave us a run-through of sauropods from the infamous Late Jurassic (~150 million years old) Tendaguru formation from Tanzania. With new revisions, the sauropod fauna from here are remarkably similar in terms of higher taxa to sites known from Iberia, China, and the US, although only somphospondylans, a quite advanced group, are known from Tendaguru.

[Read More]

SVP Day 2

November 1, 2013

So again, I missed most of the morning, spending it in the UK Embassy getting an emergency passport. Unfortunately, this means most of the Romer Session, where early-career (thanks Phil for correction) students present for an award, was missed. Obviously, with the lack of Wi-Fi and live-tweeting, the session might as well have been conducted in a black hole.

I managed to catch the last talk though, on the evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) of diplodocoids sauropodomorphs. As these guys are quite an important constituent of Late Jurassic terrestrial ecosystems, figured this would be worth attending, and actually paying attention to.

[Read More]

SVP Day 1

November 1, 2013

So after definitely not losing my passport, I managed to make it into one of the sessions for the first day at SVP, the Society for Vertebrate Palaeontology’s annual meeting over in Los Angeles.

The session was on the impacts of ontogeny, or growth and development on our understanding of dinosaur relationships and biology.

The only one I managed to catch was on the sauropod dinosaur, Lufengosaurus, where the researcher had taken thin sections through embryonic limb bones to track the change in shape through growth, or allometric variation. The authors were able to show that, due to the variation in the proportion of cavities and bone growth that these dinos grew at extremely fast rates, which is pretty cool, and may explain how these sauropods were able to get so big.

[Read More]

Crocodiles are so hard, they even eat fruit

October 22, 2013

Seed dispersal by animals is incredibly important for plants to help them occupy new areas of land and reproduce. Usually, this happens using bugs, birds, or intrepid kittens, but probably the last animal on this planet you’d expect to disperse seeds is crocodiles – you know, those big beasties that take down bison for a snack. Well, turns out, they do, and it’s a process known as saurochory.

Not only that, but these king archosaurs, the vintage cousins of dinosaurs, the ones who you never smile at, eat fruit to get at seeds. A new study reviewed the diets of modern crocodiles, and showed that 13 of 18 species ate fruit of some sort (frugivory), along with a wide variety of plants.

[Read More]