His research interests were in the comparative anatomy of vertebrates, tetrapod phylogeny, and evolution.

[3] Tatarinov became interested in science from his school years but he was conscripted into the army at the age of 17 in 1943 but discharged in 1944 after suffering from an infection.

He studied population genetics under Berg and then took a keener interest in organismal evolution after being influenced by G.P.

As a student he was a witness to the historic clash between Lysenko and the geneticists in 1948 which was to affect Soviet biology.

Tatarinov believed in deep parallelisms in vertebrate evolution and did not accept the ideas of phylogeny reconstruction that make use of parsimonious character changes.