Re: On predation.
Bill Burnett (bbur@wpo.nerc.ac.uk)
Mon, 6 Nov 1995 10:11:46
(H. M. Hubey) writes:
>bbur@wpo.nerc.ac.uk (Bill Burnett) writes:
>>Actually the Australian aborigines entered the continent via a land bridge
>>from PNG somewhere between 40000 and 100000 years ago, depending on who you
>I've read this too but like much of these kind of statements, I don't know
>if they have actually found something lying below the surface of
>the ocean that they have traced all the way to Australia or if they
>have found something that would have made Australia very close to
>Asia and assumed that there was a land bridge.
The Torres Strait is the piece of water between Australia and Papua New
Guinea. It's very shallow. All the way across. That's where the land bridge
was (actually I think it was more extensive but I can't recall, anyone know?).
The Great Barrier Reef follows the edge of the continental shelf, it used to
follow the shoreline like Western Australian coral reefs do today. Rising sea
levels cut the land bridge and left the GBR 30-200km offshore. You can trace
the reef edge and hence the continental shelf NE from Cape York (the NE tip of
Australia) across the Strait and towards E New Guinea.
> In any case, even if there was no land bridge they were much closer and the
> crocs would not have had to travel far.
I actually agreed with you there, believe it or not. Try reading my post
again. But you didn't remind me who was suggesting trans-Atlantic crocs,
which is unlikely (so I agree with you twice... :-)) In any case the
things you find in Florida are alligators so why do we need 'salties' to swim
that far?
Bill
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