Re: PNEUMASTATICS & FROGS

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> (as per Matt Wedel et al. in the excellent
> _Acta Pal. Pol._ _Sauroposeidon_ paper)

Is there one in _Acta Pal. Pol._ too, or do you mean the SVP paper?

> as well as a dorsal one, the latter connected (somehow) to the
> external nares.

The cranial air sinus system extending into the neck?

> Quick note: there is a radiation of arboreal plethodontid salamanders
> (_Bolitoglossa_ and co: they have prehensile tails and adhesive foot
> pads and are tiny). Molecular phylogenies indicate that they arose in the
> Miocene however.

Thanks -- I didn't know there were arboreal urodeles!

> Finally.. David mentioned mystery big cats in Australia which are
> 'often seen' (or words to that effect).

"Regularly seen", I wrote, and meant "every few years or decades". :-]

> Reports of 'Queensland tigers'
> (widely hypothesised in the cryptozoological literature to be extant
> thylacoleonids) range only from the late 1800s to the 1930s or so,
> with one or two more recent supposed sightings (Gilroy
> notwithstanding). Only a handful of these actually match the
> _Thylacoleo_-like incarnation of this beast devised by Heuvelmans
> (1958).

Indeed (who's Gilroy?). All "evidence" that I have is Heuvelmans' hardly
updated 1995 edition of his 1955 (1958 in English?) book "On the Track of
Unknown Animals". The ~descriptions~ never mention the peculiar dentition
and thumb of thylacoleonids (difficult to observe in the wild, one might
suppose), most are somewhat small, and few have been ~seen~ in trees.

> Most Australian researchers now think that 'tiger' sightings
> were actually of thylacines (P. Chapple pers. comm.).

Some ~descriptions~ sound more like this. (BTW, surviving thylacines on the
Australian mainland are rather unusual either...)

> I could say more
> but, hey, two words: DINOSAUR LIST.

OK, I'll shut up on this now. Any more comments/questions offlist, please.
:-)