I am very interested in the alleged phenomena of vestigial tails.  I
have surfed lightly on the subject and found a few web sites about it
but most contain second-hand stories about "He said he saw..." or "I
heard there was one..."

I am wondering if any late 20th century physicians' reports really
exist regarding this occurrence.  Please take your time in answering
as I am not in a rush for the information.  I only want to be able to
cite an authentic source and I wonder if there are any online.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 17 Nov 2002 17:43 PST

Am I correct in assuming that you are primarily interested in this
phenomenon as it occurs in human beings?

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Clarification of Question by journalist-ga on 17 Nov 2002 22:30 PST

LMAO.  The things we take for granted...yes ma'am, vestigial tails in
human beings.  :)

Thanks for an interesting hunt! For a while I was chasing my own tail,
but I did find some useful data for you.

The best source I found which offers recent medical citations
involving vestigial tails in humans is a lengthy article on
macroevolution. The author, Douglas Theobald, Ph.D, names numerous
reference sources in the paragraph beginning with the sentence
"Primarily due to intense medical interest, humans are one of the best
characterized species and many developmental anomalies are known."

EVC Forum: "29 Evidences for Macroevolution, Part 2"
http://www.evcforum.net/RefLib/EvidencesMacroevolution2.html

There is brief mention of the vestigial tail phenomenon here:

Coxxyx.org: "The human tail. Report of a case of coccygeal
retroposition in childhood"
http://www.coccyx.org/medabs/falzoni.htm

This newsgroup post gives a number of citations which were obtained in
a Medline search:

Talk.origins Newsgroup Post
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=i3YkBDAP5mI2Ewnc%40keatinge.demon.co.uk&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

A search on PubMed using the keywords "human vestigial tail" brought
up these 8 citations:

1:  Grange G, Tantau J, Pannier E, Aubry MC, Viot G, Fallet-Bianco C,
Terrasse G, Cabrol D. Related Articles, Links

Prenatal diagnosis of fetal tail and postabortum anatomical
description.
Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol. 2001 Nov;18(5):531-3.
PMID: 11844178 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

2:  Yamada S, Mandybur GT, Thompson JR. Related Articles, Links  

Dorsal midline proboscis associated with diastematomyelia and tethered
cord syndrome. Case report.
J Neurosurg. 1996 Oct;85(4):709-12.
PMID: 8814181 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

3:  Greco TL, Sussman DJ, Camper SA. Related Articles, Links  

Dishevelled-2 maps to human chromosome 17 and distal to Wnt3a and
vestigial tail (vt) on mouse chromosome 11.
Mamm Genome. 1996 Jun;7(6):475-6. No abstract available.
PMID: 8662242 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

4:  Falzoni P, Boldorini R, Zilioli M, Sorrentino G. Related Articles,
Links

[The human tail. Report of a case of coccygeal retroposition in
childhood]
Minerva Pediatr. 1995 Nov;47(11):489-91. Italian.
PMID: 8684345 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

5:  Abbott JF, Davis GH, Endicott B, Pfleghaar K, Wapner RJ. Related
Articles, Links

Prenatal diagnosis of vestigial tail.
J Ultrasound Med. 1992 Jan;11(1):53-5. No abstract available.
PMID: 1740834 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

6:  Belzberg AJ, Myles ST, Trevenen CL. Related Articles, Links  

The human tail and spinal dysraphism.
J Pediatr Surg. 1991 Oct;26(10):1243-5.
PMID: 1779337 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

7:  Dubrow TJ, Wackym PA, Lesavoy MA. Related Articles, Links  

Detailing the human tail.
Ann Plast Surg. 1988 Apr;20(4):340-4. Review.
PMID: 3284435 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

8:  Dao AH, Netsky MG. Related Articles, Links  

Human tails and pseudotails.
Hum Pathol. 1984 May;15(5):449-53.
PMID: 6373560 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

National Library of Medicine PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=&DB=PubMed

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "human" "vestigial tail"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=human+%22vestigial+tail

Google Groups Search: "vestigial tail"
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22vestigial+tail%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en

I hope this gives you a good start in your quest for "de tail." ;-)

If the items I've mentioned do not provide the kind of material you
need, please request clarification, and I'll cheerfully resume the
search.

Best wishes,
pinkfreud

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 17 Nov 2002 23:07 PST

Journalist,

Thanks for the five-star rating and the most generous bonus, the "tip
of my tail," so to speak.

Now I'm going off to write a story about twin infants who were born
with vestigial caudal appendages.

The name of this magnum opus? 

"A Tail of Two Kiddies." ;-)

~Pink

Dang, I should have known you would scoop "de tail" pun I had ready
for my comment.  ;)  Thank you for a most excellent answer!