Marsupial evolution

Huh? marsupials and placentals are certainly related.

- Snip unrelated personal attack - Predator or prey: Same underlying purpose camouflage.How about Tigers strips and Zebra stripes or Leopard spots and Giraffes spots? And Zebras are hunted during night and low light conditions. The underlying molecular machinery and physics behind the making of spots and strips is the same in marsupial and placental mammals so I do not find it too surprising to find pattern convergence.

Your original objection, if I understood it correctly, is how can a predator such as thylacinus have similar markings as a prey animal such as a banded duiker.For convenience from your prior post... I suggestion that prey and predator adopt similar markings as they both benefit from camouflage in the form of discontinuous color markings and that the underlying molecular mechanisms and physics is similar so it is not to hard understand the convergence. I provided a reference that talked about that further.However, I forgot to mention that markings can serve as camo in addition to species recognition and sexual preferences. That need to be considered.You ignore that issue and post a host of other objections such as, why are the stripes on the thylacinus on their back? If I spent time on that issue I would guess the question would just morph again. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Just curious why you are mentioning a kennel?However I noticed this picture over on the Thylacine wiki This image shows quite nicely the value of discontinuous color markings as camouflage, eventhough that was not the intent of the picture.Also noticed mentioned on the Wiki that the color markings were more prominent on young Thylacines and faded as they aged. This suggest that maybe the color markings provided advantage when the Thylacines where young and vulnerable (ie, at a stage when they themselves were prey).Again tho I would stress that the similar markings in animals between predator and prey or marsupial and placental mammals is due to the same underlying molecular mechanism.

Martin is referring to a very rare duiker of Sierra LeoneWhich indeed has a similar pattern like Thylacine except it covers the majority of its body.The page cannot be foundOh and in addition I found another marsupial with similar markings accented towards the back. How and why the observation that animals within the Class Mammalia have similar markings destroys Evolutionary theory is still a mystery.

No they do not! The method of giving birth is a *major* internal bodily function modification that also requires in additional commensurate behavioral modifications.The Thylacine share attributes of other marsupials. For example at this reference:http://www.naturalworlds.org/...turalhistory/behaviour_1.htmThere are two images of Thylacine in a kangaroo like pose, standing upright resting on its elongated back feet and even using the end of its very stiff tail for support. Further the Thylacine as known to a powerful jumper.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

I do not believe that analogy has any justification or provides any insight. The back stage does not influence the substance of a play in a significant way. However, it may help to understand a play by understanding the person wrote the play - that would be more appropriate.Back to the molecular how...Recently I was reading an essay by Gould on Male Nipples when he commented that Francis Crick once responded to Gould's strong functionalist (everything must have a purpose) bias with the comment (paraphased from memory)
"Why do biologist always try to understand the value of an attribute *before* you understand the underlying molecular how" Edited by iceage, : No reason given.