Posts by Year

2022

New Palaeogeographical Maps in R

less than 1 minute read

I’ve added a new research page linked from my homepage and the first thing up is an extended workshop that I ran on plotting palaeogeographical maps and occ...

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2021

Building Palaeogeographic Maps in R

6 minute read

At the end of last year, I was looking at data from the Palaeobiology Database (PBDB) and wanted to draw a map of where fossils were found. I made such maps ...

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2020

The joy of a hairline sans

3 minute read

I admire good typography. Both the look and idiosyncrasies of pretty fonts, and their arrangement and use in everything from books through billboards to titl...

Brunel Sinfonia Lockdown Projects

less than 1 minute read

In my non-working time I’m a musician – playing tuba in a few local orchestras and wind bands, and piano for myself in my room. Of course playing together in...

Some palaeoart that colour my walls

2 minute read

At the moment, I, and many others, are spending much time indoors. Here in the UK, the lockdown is likely to continue for some time, in one form or another, ...

Two spaces or not two spaces?

3 minute read

I’ve seen many people notice a change made to Microsoft Word recently: typing two spaces after a full stop (or period if you’re so inclined) will now be show...

New Digs

less than 1 minute read

Hi, it’s me again.

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2018

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2015

A new look

less than 1 minute read

It’s spring cleaning time, so I’ve decided to shake up the blog (ha! yes this really is meant to be a blog) and give it a bit of a refresh by changing the de...

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2014

Writing links

less than 1 minute read

In the last post, I detailed a bit about my general writing workflow. I thought it would be useful to summarise the software that I’ve mentioned and give a b...

Where have I been?

13 minute read

So … hi there. How have things been with you? I’ve been away from this blog for a while, but don’t worry!: I haven’t been idle … not all of the time anyway.

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2013

A dash of new ichthyosaurs

less than 1 minute read

There have been a couple of new ichthyosaurs named in the past month. Both are from the Lower Triassic and so tell us new things about the early evolution of...

Recently in my life

less than 1 minute read

I haven’t posted anything here for a while: second year PhD syndrome has finally kicked in with a heavier work load. Hopefully this should ease a little towa...

The ichthyosaurian roundup of last year

24 minute read

Twenty-twelve was a big year for ichthyosaurology. For me, it was my first full academic and calendar years as a PhD student at the University of Bristol stu...

A plethora of ichthyosaurs

less than 1 minute read

If you’ve followed dinosaurpalaeo like I have, you’ll have seen Heinrich Mallison’s continuing series on the palaeontology of SW Germany. The latest instalme...

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2012

2012 in review

less than 1 minute read

Here is a review, part one of the year. It was conveniently prepared by Wordpress.com, hence it looks so pretty and shiny and has appeared this year. These a...

New, new, new

less than 1 minute read

Y’know, it’s the same old thing: you wait ages for new ichthyosaurs, then several come along at once! I notice this seems to have started after putting up my...

Ichthyosaurian update

less than 1 minute read

A little update to the site, with some ichthyosaur news.

New ichthyosaur species!

less than 1 minute read

Not long after posting my recent Ichthyosaur taxonomy page, with its list of valid genera, I find myself needing amend it; but in a good way.

Ichthyosaurs all aswim

less than 1 minute read

There hasn’t been much ichthyosaurs themselves over the past few posts. So, just to keep you die-hards happy, here’s a little montage featuring a gamut of ic...

Lookee here

less than 1 minute read

Following common sense, and good manners. I have put up notice on the right of the main page that this blog is now licensed under Creative Commons Open Acces...

Open the doors, let the people come

3 minute read

A while ago, I promised that I’d talk a bit more about Open Access and the open access movement. Here is the blog post that I finally give to you, a little l...

It’s fun to stay at the SVPCA!

2 minute read

Yesterday, I was in Oxford, at the Natural History Museum for the annual set of joy that is the Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy...

Pages and pages and pages

2 minute read

Ichthyosaurs: a day in the life… is growing, the website that is. Following a hectic week of much reference checking and cross-checking, I have compiled a li...

Of Leicester, the apple in its own eye

2 minute read

This past week A few weeks ago, at the beginning of August, I went to Leicester; ‘why’ you might ask? That’s a very good question, and one that I might not b...

Reaching out to teach

7 minute read

This past month I’ve been thinking a bit about public outreach in science.  Several things have spurred this on:

Who’s useless at writing a blog: I am!

2 minute read

As I’m sure some of you may have noticed, I haven’t posted any new things recently — this month in fact.  It has been quite a busy time: I’ve taken visits to...

Brevis: What on Earth is Palaeontology?

4 minute read

These brevia (using Latin so you can feel even better about reading this blog!) will be a series of short pieces about important or relevant topics that are ...

My blog so far

less than 1 minute read

There’s a great little tool over at wordle.net. It allows to to input text, or set a URL, and will create a world cloud of this — more often used worlds are ...

What I read today: “On homology”

1 minute read

Here’s something new.  I had planned to read many, many papers early in PhD, but so far have only managed to read many.  This ‘what I read today’ section wil...

A little funny!

less than 1 minute read

Something to keep you smiling. Thanks to Nathan for showing me this. A new palaeontology post will be arriving soon; keep your eyes open!

My PhD: Part 3: the return of the ichthyosaurs

5 minute read

In this, the final of my original trilogy describing my planned studies, I will talk about the ‘spin-offs’ from looking at the British genera and phylogeny. ...

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2011

My PhD: Part 2: the ichthyosaurs strike back

5 minute read

In the last post, I talked about the British Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs.  This will make up the first part of my thesis.  The other main part will look at ic...

My PhD plans: Part 1: a new ichthyosaur

7 minute read

Well, having given a presentation on the plans for my PhD, I feel as though I can now share it with the world.  That and I’ve had agreement on what I plan to...

Geological time

2 minute read

Wow, if all goes well this should be two posts in two days!  I hope you are as impressed as I am.

Ichthyosaurs: what are they?

5 minute read

Well, I had planned to write once every week or so, but, as you can see, that hasn’t gone to plan so far.  In theory that should mean that I have a significa...

Apologies

less than 1 minute read

Apologies to those who have read this and want to hear more, I have another post in the works and plans for others in the future. Keep posted, especially tow...

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