TetZooCon 2022

SVP was not the only event to return to in-person gatherings this year. For one, 2022 also marked the reestablishment of a physical meeting for TetZooCon. To accommodate its ever-growing list of attendees, this year the convention moved to a new setting (for the second time in its history), Bush House at King's College London. The venue itself was excellent, though I should mention that I found locating affordable nearby accommodation challenging-to-impossible, and based on comments I'd seen leading up to the convention, I was not the only attendee who encountered that problem. Everything worked out in the end though, at least for me. That's a note to make for next year: book things as early as possible!

Even years after we stopped updating TetZoo Time, it was nice to see it remembered at TetZooCon.

As usual for TetZooCon, I enjoyed all the talks I attended, but I thought the multiple panel discussions covering a range of topics were particularly fun. Three panel discussions were held this year: one where the authors of All Yesterdays (John Conway, Memo Kösemen, and Darren Naish) reflected on the ten years since the book's publication, one focused on pterosaurs (with Natalia Jagielska, Liz Martin-Silverstone, Mark Witton, and John Conway), and one on designing fictional aliens (with Gert van Dijk, Jennifer Colbourne, Joschua Knüppe, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dougal Dixon, and Memo Kösemen).

This year, I participated in the paleoart workshop, which consisted of several activities: Chris Manias soliciting the audience for ideas on how to design a paleoart exhibition, Mark Witton encouraging us to restore Tanystropheus based on his skeletal diagram of the animal, and Rhys Griffin giving a presentation on 3D-scanning the Crystal Palace dinosaur statues. Already being familiar with Witton's thoughts on the ecology of Tanystropheus (at least, his thoughts circa 2015), I chose to go with a more whimsical take on his prompt.

I lamented this at the last in-person TetZooCon, but after years of doing digital art, I find myself increasingly unaccustomed to drawing with pencil and paper...

We also saw the return of the notoriously difficult TetZooCon trivia quiz. Once again, I wondered whether this year's increased attendance would dash my chances of performing as well on the quiz as I had historically. Much to my surprise, nope... first place!

Is it okay to take (let alone win) the TetZooCon quiz if you're a potential quiz answer? My friend Emilio Río Rodríguez and I both wondered. (I was not the correct answer to the quiz question.)

Even though there was a vast selection of fantastic quiz prizes to pick from, the choice for me was obvious, thanks to Natee Himmapaan donating a print of their incredible rendition of the Mononykus from Prehistoric Planet.

Natee was even kind enough to show me the original illustration! With digital art, I'm used to working on a big canvas that is shrunk down to display the completed work. Natee's finely detailed art is remarkable in how it retains its high quality when enlarged as a print, despite its small physical size.

Special thanks as well to Darren Naish for holding the sketchbook.

I'm normally very frugal about spending money at conferences and conventions, but I knew I also had to get a print of Joanna Kobierska's depiction of Asteriornis!

The type specimen of Asteriornis was recently returned to the Maastricht Natural History Museum (along with the type specimen of the newly named Janavis), so TetZooCon happened just in time for those of us at the Field Palaeobiology Lab to include Kobierska's print in a farewell photoshoot we did for the fossil!

Asteriornis with a selection of the artwork it has inspired. Clockwise from bottom: works by Joanna Kobierska, Phillip Krzeminski, David Orr, myself, Katrina van Grouw, and Michael Rothman, with a life-sized 3D print of the skull in the center painted by Juan Benito Moreno.

The day after the main event, some of us embarked on a field trip to see the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals). Even though I've lived in the UK for over six years at this point (how?!), I'd never had the chance to visit these historic statues, so I was excited to join. I'm glad I did. The weather was nice (other than a brief period of light rain), there were lots of birds to see, and Darren provided a highly informative guided tour going over the history of the statues and the animals they were based on.

As discussed by Mark Witton and Ellinor Michel in their talk at TetZooCon, the Xiphodon statue in the foreground below had been moved from its original location and presumed lost. During the preparation of their book, The Art and Science of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, Michel rediscovered the statue, which had long been misidentified as a "Megaloceros fawn".

Of course, I needed to get at least one photo of the classic Iguanodon statues (though they were modeled after fossils no longer classified as Iguanodon).

A living theropod perched on top of a classic interpretation of an extinct theropod. It might be hard to get more poetic than that.