It is truly wonderful to hear of rain at last, in the  Florida "fire
belt"!  I have been praying, and will continue to do so, that this
drawn-out catastrophe will come to an end soon.  Wish i could send you
some of our rain- we have had far too much recently!
 
        A question for any cowrie-evolution fans out there:  Why do you think
Cypraeid shapes , which used to include such a lot of wild and crazy
variation (until rather recently in the fossil record), are now so
similar to each other (as in +/- egg-shaped, sometimes with a hump)?
The "standard" response would be that the wierder spp simple didn't make
the cut - maybe they kept getting caught in creavasses or were easier
for predators to spot than  the more generic-brand populations.
However, i am not entirely comfortable with this seemingly-too-simple,
Darwinian hypothesis:  Does anyone have other suggestions??
 
                                                                                                Curious as ususl in Canada,
                                                                                                Ross M.
 
P.S.:  Thanks for the reminder about the not-silent auction, John!!  I
kept waiting for "just the right item" to come along, but the time is
too short for that now.