H2VP

On the note of shameless plugs, readers of pterosaur.net may be interested to know that Justin Hall and I have launched a paleo blog called H2VP that will focus primarily on functional morphology and biomechanics of fossil vertebrates. We will be discussing pterosaurs from time-to-time (though I will be posting the dedicated pterosaur work here), as well as other Mesozoic animals that pterosaur enthusiasts may have interest in (right now theropods are featuring strongly, and an article on Mosasaurs will be forthcoming soon).

The blog can be found at: http://h2vp.blogspot.com/

Crazyass pterosaurs and massive, shameless self-promotion

It's been a good while since I've posted anything here at Pterosaur.Net, and with good reason: a fair number of little projects, writing a book, moving house and the continued search for employment have kept me pretty busy for the last few months. One little project that I thought would be of interest to Pterosaur.Net readers, however, is my own website, the ego-trip/interactive CV/desperate bid for work that is Markwitton.com.

I've never designed a website before, resulting in a pretty simple design but, happily, I reckon it's fairly easy to read and navigate. I'll wager that Pterosaur.Net readers will find the full details of my upcoming Princeton University Press book, simply called (for the time being, anyway), Pterosaurs of most interest: you can find a full contents listing, sample imagery and an entire sample chapter, that dedicated to the recently-discovered weirdo pterosaurs from China, the boreopterids. Long term denizens of this blog may remember that Dave Hone mentioned Zhenyuanopterus, a recently discovered boreopterid, on these pages in March of 2010, and you can see a couple of the same critters lazily decorating the top of this post. They're crazy looking animals, bearing tiny, piggy-little eyes and buttloads of needle-like teeth that look useless for anything but straining pasta. But what sort of pterosaurs are they? How many boreopterids are there? Where and how did they live? Point your browser here to find out. (Snazzy Markwitton.com logo shown below)


Other pages of note include new illustrations, technical drawings and details of the 2010 London Royal Society/University of Portsmouth pterosaur exhibition and other sculptures. Oh, and a full list of my technical publications, including links and downloadable pdfs, can be found here. Please take a look and, by all means, drop me a line if you have any comments (especially if you have any functionality issues: I'm sure there's some kinks to work out. The same goes for typos I may have missed, for that matter).

No promises to post anything here anytime soon, I'm afraid: I'm moving house in the coming weeks and am quite desperate to get this book of mine finished, so I simply won't have the time. I genuinely don't know how regular bloggers manage to keep up their output: they must never sleep. Or eat. Or get distracted for long periods in the shower by their toes. In any case, I hope to get back to regular posting at some point in the future, but can't quite say when. Until then, thanks in advance for taking a peep at my site, and I hope you enjoy what you find.