Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!sarah!cs.albany.edu!tarski.albany.edu!kell From: kell@cs.albany.edu (Brian A. Kell) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Walrus reproductive system Summary: mystery down under Message-ID: Date: 3 Jun 91 15:26:33 GMT References: <1991Jun3.103857.1951@world.std.com> Sender: kell@cs.albany.edu Organization: Computer Science Department, SUNY at Albany, Albany, NY 12222 Lines: 30 In-reply-to: rsilver@world.std.com's message of 3 Jun 91 10:38:57 GMT I'm not a biologist, but... Once, when visiting Los Angeles, I went to the La Brea tar pits, which contain an unusually large number of animal bones dating from a few 10's of thousands of years ago. Mastodons and saber-toothed tigers are some of the more famous finds, but, apparently, the most commonly found bones belong to an animal known as the "dire wolf", a cousin of today's canines. Over the years, they have discovered literally tons of dire wolf bones in the tar. On one wall in the museum a few hundred dire wolf skulls were displayed, arranged in order of increasing cranium size, etc. On another wall were a few hundred femurs, I think. And, on another wall were a few hundred "penis bones". The were, if I remember correctly, about half the length and twice the thickness of a pencil. On a fully reconstructed dire wolf skeleton, the penis bone was displayed in the appropriate location, suspended by a wire -- the bone was not attached to any other part of the skeleton. I am told (unathoritatively) that penis bones are normal in canines. I have no idea about walrus, though. ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Kell SUNY/Albany Department of Computer Science brian@isadora.albany.edu BK7295@ALBNYVMS.BITNET ----------------------------------------------------------------------