It is usually a sign of intellectual laziness to cite oneself as an authority with the line “I read some place that…”, but when standing about in chattering company you go with what you got. And this is all I got. I did read some place that if a paleontologist were to be handed a tiger skeleton it would be very hard and maybe impossible for him or her to say for sure if it belonged to a tiger or a lion.
That may be untrue. But as a result I’ve had fixed in my mind that these two greatest of great cats are very similar under the skin and are probably very closely related. Ask anybody – what’s the tiger’s closest living relative (other than another tiger)? Most’ll guess the lion. So it comes as a surprise that, according to the BBC‘s Matt Walker, a new study concludes that the closest living relatives of the tiger clan are snow leopards. It appears that lions are closer to the jaguars of the New World than they are to tigers. So say the Texas A & M researchers in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
It’s rather a modest story. It gets to the point efficiently. However, one suggests, Walker ought to fire up the on line editing routine. He left out what most of us and probably he too learned early on the science beat. Be sure to give the institutional affiliations of the people you’re quoting, citing, or otherwise mentioning. Maybe it’s there but I keep looking and not seeing it. The story’s attraction at BBC, it further appears, is the opportunity it affords to bring attention to the outlet’s new package of info to help celebrate what the WWF organization calls 2010 – the Year of the Tiger.
Grist for the Mill: Journal abstract ;
– Charlie Petit
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