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Archaeopteryx and Sucking Walruses
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).