'DUMB' ANIMALS..

["D.W.Naish" <dwn194@soton.ac.uk>]

I think you're a bit confused there Chris (go back and read the original message
- IT'S FROM AN AUSTRALIAN).

Kakapos and Koalas, Cuscus, Kangaroos, Kiwi... wish I lived in the Antipodes.
We're stuck with feral boars, black pumas, adders, a bear and 20 places named
after beavers and 200 named after wolves here in the UK. Yaaawwwn. And then
there's lake monsters. Oh yeah, and Iguanodon, Hypsilophodon, Megalosaurs, 
brand new allosaurids and a brachiosaurid, Scelidosaurus.... and marine
reptiles.


Calling Koalas 'arboreal wombats' is appealing, but kind of cheating seeing as
koalas aren't descendants of wombats, nor as closely related as their
superficial similarities might imply (their ancestors diverged prior to the
Oligocene). There's a great article by Colin Tudge published in a national
newspaper some years back about WHY koalas have such small brains. Hoatzins,
those odd South American leaf-eating dinosaurs, do too and it seems that it's
to minimise the amount of energy they need to expend upon it and also to
maximise the amount of toxins they can absorb (from their foodplants) before
they are in nay danger of keeling over. I wonder if any of this is at all
applicable to Mesozoic dinosaurs? Incidentally, in the same article is an
excellent hypothesis on why genetic tests may not reveal the truth about the
affinities of bats (i.e. monophyletic or diphyletic).

DON'T FORGET THAT THIS LIST IS CALLED 'DINOSAUR LIST'. Doh!

The correct quote was: "Look at those half-moon shaped bones in the wrist, no
wonder these guys learned how to fly.." - team of volunteers all chuckle to
themselves (which is strange, as you'd think they'd now at least something 
about dinosaurs) - "Well, maybe dinosaurs have more in common with present day
birds than they do with reptiles. Look at the vertebra, full of air sacs and
hollows just like a bird, look at the pubic bone, turned back just like in a
bird - and even the word 'raptor' means.. 'bird of prey'" - "That doesn't look
very scary, more like a ...a 6 foot turkey..."

DARREN NAISH