After all, Lewis & Clarke got across the US without motor vehicles. However, by and large, most people find that transport over longer distances works considerably better if you do happen to have a car, train or plane handy. Before internal combustion engine technology became available, we lived with the limitations imposed by the technology available then, now we exploit the opportunities afforded by newer technology.

The same applies to taxonomy: before DNA sequence information became available, people worked with what they had: morphology. Now DNA information is easily available, and systematists are using it. It is not necessarily the magic bullet many people assume it to be, but it certainly does provide a huge amount of additional informationa nd a totally different perspective on the evolution of groups of organisms.

As far as pythons, specifically, are concerned, I might add that there has not so far been a comprehensive, published DNA-based study of the different genera. The most recent revision, on which the currently most widely accepted genera are based, was by Kluge (1993), and was based entirely on morphology.

Finally, as far as your charcaters are concerned, the various pythong genera have been defined based on a wide suite of often skeletal characters. The type of characters that you say are inconsistent are the ort of *identifying* charcaters that you will find in herpetoculture books or field guides - they are not necessarily the main characters used in reconstructing phylogenies, which led to the definition of the genera in the firstplace.

Cheers,

WW
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