RE: Species & Giraffe necks

[<TWILLIAMS@canr1.cag.uconn.edu>]

Tom Holtz wrote, with regards to lions and tigers:

> Basically, yes.  As Josh has pointed out, they are just about impossible to
> tell apart from postcranial skeletons.  [...]
> If tigers were extinct but lions survived, we
> might assume that tigers were maned pack hunters: if vice versa, we might
> assume that lions were maneless solitary or small-group hunters.


I've seen leopards featured up in a tree, often with a carcass (or 
part of a carcass) dragged up with them.   Can tigers or lions climb 
trees the way a leopard does?  I was wondering - does a leopard have 
any special adaptations in its skeleton for climbing trees, not 
present in a lion or a tiger?  

Extrapolating this to dinosaurs, some little (or not-so-little) 
theropods could have spent some of their time in trees, without their 
skeletons necessarily showing any obvious adaptations for climbing.  
I'm thinking dromaeosaurids, troodontids (but not tyrannosaurids).


Tim