SECOND ATTEMPT: DOGS FOR '96!!

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

Guess I still haven't recovered from the New Year hangover...sorry about that
everyone. Hello again, hope you all had good holidays. Tiny theropods,
_Protoavis_ papers (I'll mail you in a minute Tim), mammoths and **arghgh**
extinct whales aside.. here's my first bash at asserting myself in 1996...

Asserting? Who am I tryin' to kid.

Betty talked about paraphyly of descendants, and used domestic dogs as an
example. Dogs are traditionally given their own species, _Canis familiaris_, but
canologists.. canidologits.. those who study dogs, I hear, lean towards a
subspecific definition for domestic dogs, as cat-ologists have done with mogs
(now _Felis sylvestris cattus_, usually). Prob is, domestic dogs, like cats, are
polyphyletic, being descended from various wolf subspecies (e.g. in India from
the Indian wolf, in Europe from - hey! - the European wolf etc etc) that arose
in several (several, not many) areas where they were domesticated. Untangling
the mess this creates, especially when hybridism amongst the subspecies
descendants is thrown in, would be impossible. Descendants with less hybridism
in their ancestry, like dingos and New Guinea singing dogs ('Their Bach is worse
than their bitehoven' - Milligan), are paradoxically both more alike their
lupine ancestors and most distinct from their relatives, hence the specific
names they have been given in the past (e.g. '_Canis dingo_'). Fact is, with
animals where we have a really good idea of lineage succession, the adaptive
grades they went through, and the diversity of morphology of their
ecotypes/morphs, paraphyletic lumping in the only answer. Anthropologists (some
would say) have this problem with _Homo_ species, and those who work on
_Mammuthus_ seem to ignore it (to offence intended to proboscideologists.....
err.. sp?). Well I guess that doesn't help, but I needed a break from reading
the hundreds of messages I've amassed over my absence.. back to the slog then..

"Oooh - bats!"  "They're great survivors"

DARREN NAISH