I've long considered the Triassic to be the most fascinating period in Earth's history (aside from, perhaps, our own). As well as being a crucial period in understanding the history of Earth's ecosystems and recovery from extinction events, the Triassic has always had an allure and mystery to me, owed in part to its enigmatic, almost alien animals. Researchers have likewise been confounded by many mysteries relating to the Triassic over the years, including the origin of ornithischian dinosaurs. The origins of another group at roughly the same time have proved equally enigmatic: the pterosaurs, yet again.

I was inspired by the impressive diversity of pterosaurs that I recently saw in Prehistoric Planet to write this post. The last of the pterosaurs were more diverse than we could have imagined a few decades ago, and it is my hope that this post will serve to paint you a picture of the world that they lived in.

Very pleased to have (finally!) written a crocodilian article for the blog. Find out what we know about the curious dwarf crocodiles (Osteolaemus) here.

Following up on my 2016 post about Hawaiian solitaires, I wrote up this short blog post tonight to meditate (belatedly) on the USFWS memo from last September which delisted this once endangered, now extinct, bird. More posts are in the pipeline - I promise.

At long last, archosaurophiles... The follow up to 2016′s The Fabrosaur Heresies and touches on Ornithoscelida. You’re not tired of Ornithoscelida yet, are you? More coming soon.

And here’s your yearly pittance, archosaurophiles.

What would your reaction be if I told you that there was a dinosaur family... that never existed? If you have much familiarity with the science of classifying organisms, then you shouldn't be very surprised at all. Our taxonomies are, after all, ephemeral little things, at best only convenient labels for the diversity we see in the natural world, and never a perfect reflection of reality. It often turns out, especially when considering long-extinct taxa like non-avian dinosaurs, that even important or well-known groups eventually turn out to be hopelessly poly- or paraphyletic, or else to be based on such little solid material that they end up being scientifically useless. With these prospects in mind, same as the last time we talked about murky archosaurian taxonomy, we'll be delving back into the Triassic, that most complicated of time periods. There we'll consider just one such problem - that there's something wrong with our fabrosaurs...

Only six passerine lineages seem to have made it to Hawaii in its history. Of these, one (Mohoidae, the Hawaiian honeyeaters) is now entirely extinct, the only avian family to have become so in the modern era. Another, Hawaii's sole native corvid, the Hawaiian crow or 'alalā, is currently extinct in the wild and persists only in captivity. Of Hawaii's two sylviids ("Old World warblers") one is extinct and another critically endangered. Even out of the largest of the endemic passerine groups, the Hawaiian honeycreepers (fringillid finches of the subfamily Carduelinae), a great number of species are either extinct or in danger of extinction. Hawaii's three monarch flycatcher species (Monarchidae) seem to have fared the best, by contrast, but on the whole it wouldn't be too great an exaggeration to say that all of Hawaii's native songbirds are in dire straits indeed. But more on these other groups another day - the sixth lineage is comprised of Hawaii's five thrushes, which will be the focus of today's post...