COELACANTHS, CATS AND SEALS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

As usual, everything interesting happens at once. 

Just when I am in the middle of rereading Keith Thomson's 1991 
book_Living Fossil_, I learn that _Latimeria_ has been fished up off 
the coast of Indonesia! Where are the newswire reports?

Today, Brooks, Makovicky, Gauthier and Bonde had their _Nature_ 
paper published on postcranial pneumaticity in _Archaeopteryx_, and 
the latest _JVP_ has just arrived.. papers on the long-awaited N. 
American alvarezsaur, the new American protocetid (curiously 
paralleled by the new _JP_ paper - a taxon I was told was to be 
named.. well, something different from _Georgiacetus_ [and both of 
these when the library is badgering me to return Thewissen et al's 
_Ambulocetus_ monograph], form and function in primitive frogs (and, 
as we learnt at SVPCA, little protofrogs are now known from the late 
Palaeozoic - stay tuned), and lots more. Now all I have to do is find 
the abstracts volume.

And last night, _X Creatures_ covered the big cats abroad in the 
British countryside. Aside from the _Architeuthis_ episode, this was 
the first one that wasn't ultra-sceptical, and I understand that the 
final verdict was that the things are *probably* out there. Having 
seen undoubted big cat trackway casts and bona fide 100% definite 
video footage of big cats (i.e. _Panthera_), all coming from the UK, 
and having interviewed a lot of (IMHO) sincere witnesses, I have no 
doubts whatsoever that ABCs are a fact. Which is cool: it's nice 
having macropredators around.

Meanwhile, my coastal field study site yesterday yielded a selection 
of cat ribs and metatarsals, and a scapula (_Felis catus_), a small 
synsacrum and what appears to be a human rib (cool). All we need is 
more seals to help sort out the Chilean stuff Stig Walsh and I are 
working on. Phocids or otariids.. it's not always easy to tell, but 
we do have cf. _Acrophoca_! 

And all of this when I am trying to sort out the horrible taxonomy of 
the small Wealden theropods for my thesis. Dead cormorants and a 
swan, replica azhdarchid bones (Arry II) and an assortment of 
Pliocene whales and seabirds have filled up the office. Because the 
rooms at home can only fit 70 box files, I am bringing all the marine 
mammal stuff to Portsmouth. Which will mean the hire of a truck.

Now you know why I haven't been emailing.

"The tigers of wrath are stronger than the horses of instruction"

DARREN NAISH
darren.naish@port.ac.uk