Archaeopteryx and Sucking Walruses

["Williams, Tim" <TiJaWi@agron.iastate.edu>]

The "neomura/negibacteria/megaclassification" (phew!) paper mentioned by Ken
is very long (at c.70 pages), and I won't pretend to understand it by simply
skimming the bits that seemed interesting.  However, I noticed that
Cavalier-Smith does give a nod in the direction of Sir Gavin de Beer, who
came up with the term "mosaic evolution", inspired by his work on
_Archaeopteryx_.  However, I think Cavalier-Smith's citation of de Beer's
paper is incorrect:

De Beer, G. (1954) _Archaeopteryx_ and evolution.  Adv Sci 42: 160-170. 

I have it as Volume 11, not 42.
 


Darren Naish wrote:

>Walruses do not use their teeth to crush prey, as was once thought - 
>they are suction feeders that cruise head-down along the seabed and 
>suck off the protruding soft parts of bivalves. 

I've heard a similar suggestion for sperm whales; that they use their jaws
and throat to generate a vortex to "suck up" prey (e.g. giant squids).

P.S.  On a nit-picky note, the plural of walrus is always walruses, never
walri (as someone wrote - not Darren) - as platypodes or platypuses (not
platypi) and rhinocerotes or rhinoceroses (not rhinoceri).