Re: Cladistics and biology: Long(sidetrack)

["Cunningham, Betty" <bcunning@nssi.com>]

>There is no reason to speculate that dinosaurs drove mammals into the darkness 
>because of their superiority: nocturnality (or at least twilight activit) is a 
>primitive feature in tetrapods (found in primitive mammals, lissamphibians, and
>the terrestrial outgroup, lungfish [coelocanths being deep enought that 
>"nocturnality" may not be a valid concept]).

ok, so this isn't actually a dinosaur question, but....
  I'm rather curious of the modern Coelecanth-lungfish groups.  How do cladists 
group the Bicher (I have a small Ornate Bicher in a nocturnal set-up 
tank)(begins with a p-something), the Ropefish, Coelecanths, and Lungfishes.
  I'm aware of lungfish from Asia and Africa; Ropefish from Africa, and Bichers 
from Africa (the Rift Valley).  So how do cladists group them?  I've got a 
japanese book that seems excellent on Jurassic Fishes, however it appears to be 
Linnean, and I don't really know how these would be group as to ancestry.  Are 
there signs of fossil groups in Antartica?  It would seem by the distribution of
the modern species, that there should be some fossil signs of the land-dwelling 
(well, pond and river dwelling, at least) somewhere in Antartica-right?
   Why wouldn't there be something modern surviving somewhere in the Amazon with
all those other fish?  Or are most South American fishes more modern in lineage 
than African fishes?  Wouldn't South America have been connected during the 
distribution of the predessessors' lifetimes?

Thanks-

-Betty