1.
Megaannum
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A year is the orbital period of the Earth moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earths axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by changes in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar regions around the globe, four seasons are recognized, spring, summer, autumn. In tropical and subtropical regions several geographical sectors do not present defined seasons, but in the seasonal tropics, a calendar year is an approximation of the number of days of the Earths orbital period as counted in a given calendar. The Gregorian, or modern, calendar, presents its calendar year to be either a common year of 365 days or a year of 366 days, as do the Julian calendars. For the Gregorian calendar the average length of the year across the complete leap cycle of 400 years is 365.2425 days. The ISO standard ISO 80000-3, Annex C, supports the symbol a to represent a year of either 365 or 366 days, in English, the abbreviations y and yr are commonly used. In astronomy, the Julian year is a unit of time, it is defined as 365.25 days of exactly 86400 seconds, totalling exactly 31557600 seconds in the Julian astronomical year. The word year is used for periods loosely associated with, but not identical to, the calendar or astronomical year, such as the seasonal year, the fiscal year. Similarly, year can mean the period of any planet, for example. The term can also be used in reference to any long period or cycle, west Saxon ġēar, Anglian ġēr continues Proto-Germanic *jǣran. Cognates are German Jahr, Old High German jār, Old Norse ár and Gothic jer, all the descendants of the Proto-Indo-European noun *yeh₁rom year, season. Cognates also descended from the same Proto-Indo-European noun are Avestan yārǝ year, Greek ὥρα year, season, period of time, Old Church Slavonic jarŭ, Latin annus is from a PIE noun *h₂et-no-, which also yielded Gothic aþn year. Both *yeh₁-ro- and *h₂et-no- are based on verbal roots expressing movement, *h₁ey- and *h₂et- respectively, the Greek word for year, ἔτος, is cognate with Latin vetus old, from the PIE word *wetos- year, also preserved in this meaning in Sanskrit vat-sa- yearling and vat-sa-ras year. Derived from Latin annus are a number of English words, such as annual, annuity, anniversary, etc. per annum means each year, anno Domini means in the year of the Lord. No astronomical year has an number of days or lunar months. Financial and scientific calculations often use a 365-day calendar to simplify daily rates, in the Julian calendar, the average length of a year is 365.25 days. In a non-leap year, there are 365 days, in a year there are 366 days
2.
Precambrian
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The Precambrian is the earliest period of Earths history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is a supereon that is subdivided into three eons of the time scale. It spans from the formation of Earth about 4.6 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, about 541 million years ago, the Precambrian accounts for 89% of geologic time. Relatively little is known about the Precambrian, despite it making up roughly seven-eighths of the Earths history, the Precambrian fossil record is poorer than that of the succeeding Phanerozoic, and fossils from that time are of limited biostratigraphic use. This is because many Precambrian rocks have been metamorphosed, obscuring their origins, while others have been destroyed by erosion. A stable crust was apparently in place by 4,412 Ma, the term Precambrian is recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy as a general term including the Archean and Proterozoic eons. It is still used by geologists and paleontologists for general discussions not requiring the more specific eon names and it was briefly called the Cryptozoic eon. A specific date for the origin of life has not been determined, carbon found in 3.8 billion year old rocks from islands off western Greenland may be of organic origin. Well-preserved microscopic fossils of bacteria older than 3.46 billion years have found in Western Australia. Probable fossils 100 million years older have been found in the same area, there is a fairly solid record of bacterial life throughout the remainder of the Precambrian. The oldest fossil evidence from that era of such complex life comes from the Lantian formation of the Ediacarian period, a very diverse collection of soft-bodied forms is found in a variety of locations worldwide and date to between 635 and 542 Ma. These are referred to as Ediacaran or Vendian biota, hard-shelled creatures appeared toward the end of that time span, marking the beginning of the Phanerozoic era. By the middle of the following Cambrian period, a diverse fauna is recorded in the Burgess Shale. The explosion in diversity of lifeforms during the early Cambrian is called the Cambrian explosion of life, while land seems to have been devoid of plants and animals, cyanobacteria and other microbes formed prokaryotic mats that covered terrestrial areas. Evidence of the details of plate motions and other activity in the Precambrian has been poorly preserved. It is generally believed that small proto-continents existed prior to 4280 Ma, the supercontinent, known as Rodinia, broke up around 750 Ma. A number of glacial periods have been identified going as far back as the Huronian epoch, one of the best studied is the Sturtian-Varangian glaciation, around 850–635 Ma, which may have brought glacial conditions all the way to the equator, resulting in a Snowball Earth. The atmosphere of the early Earth is not well understood, most geologists believe it was composed primarily of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other relatively inert gases, and was lacking in free oxygen
3.
Cambrian
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The Cambrian Period was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 mya and its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latinised form of Cymru, the Welsh name for Wales, as a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some later periods. The rapid diversification of lifeforms in the Cambrian, known as the Cambrian explosion, most of the continents were probably dry and rocky due to a lack of vegetation. Shallow seas flanked the margins of several continents created during the breakup of the supercontinent Pannotia, the seas were relatively warm, and polar ice was absent for much of the period. The United States Federal Geographic Data Committee uses a barred capital C ⟨Є⟩ character similar to the capital letter Ukrainian Ye ⟨Є⟩ to represent the Cambrian Period, the proper Unicode character is U+A792 Ꞓ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH BAR. Despite the long recognition of its distinction from younger Ordovician Period rocks and older Supereon Precambrian rocks, the base of the Cambrian lies atop a complex assemblage of trace fossils known as the Treptichnus pedum assemblage. Pedum in Namibia, Spain and Newfoundland, and possibly, in the western USA, the stratigraphic range of T. pedum overlaps the range of the Ediacaran fossils in Namibia, and probably in Spain. The Cambrian Period followed the Ediacaran Period and was followed by the Ordovician Period, the Cambrian is divided into four epochs and ten ages. Currently only two series and five stages are named and have a GSSP, because the international stratigraphic subdivision is not yet complete, many local subdivisions are still widely used. In some of these subdivisions the Cambrian is divided into three epochs with locally differing names – the Early Cambrian, Middle Cambrian and Furongian, rocks of these epochs are referred to as belonging to the Lower, Middle, or Upper Cambrian. Trilobite zones allow biostratigraphic correlation in the Cambrian, each of the local epochs is divided into several stages. The International Commission on Stratigraphy list the Cambrian period as beginning at 541 million years ago, the lower boundary of the Cambrian was originally held to represent the first appearance of complex life, represented by trilobites. The recognition of small shelly fossils before the first trilobites, and Ediacara biota substantially earlier and this formal designation allowed radiometric dates to be obtained from samples across the globe that corresponded to the base of the Cambrian. Early dates of 570 million years ago quickly gained favour, though the used to obtain this number are now considered to be unsuitable. A more precise date using modern radiometric dating yield a date of 541 ±0.3 million years ago, most continental land was clustered in the Southern Hemisphere at this time, but was drifting north. Large, high-velocity rotational movement of Gondwana appears to have occurred in the Early Cambrian, the sea levels fluctuated somewhat, suggesting there were ice ages, associated with pulses of expansion and contraction of a south polar ice cap. In Baltoscandia a Lower Cambrian transgression transformed large swathes of the Sub-Cambrian peneplain into a epicontinental sea, the Earth was generally cold during the early Cambrian, probably due to the ancient continent of Gondwana covering the South Pole and cutting off polar ocean currents
4.
Ordovician
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The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.2 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period 485.4 million years ago to the start of the Silurian Period 443.8 Mya. Lapworth recognized that the fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian periods. It received international sanction in 1960, when it was adopted as a period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress. Life continued to flourish during the Ordovician as it did in the earlier Cambrian period, invertebrates, namely molluscs and arthropods, dominated the oceans. The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event considerably increased the diversity of life, fish, the worlds first true vertebrates, continued to evolve, and those with jaws may have first appeared late in the period. Life had yet to diversify on land, about 100 times as many meteorites struck the Earth during the Ordovician compared with today. The Ordovician Period began with a major extinction called the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event and it lasted for about 42 million years and ended with the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event, about 443.8 Mya which wiped out 60% of marine genera. The dates given are recent radiometric dates and vary slightly from those found in other sources and this second period of the Paleozoic era created abundant fossils that became major petroleum and gas reservoirs. The boundary chosen for the beginning of both the Ordovician Period and the Tremadocian stage is highly significant and it correlates well with the occurrence of widespread graptolite, conodont, and trilobite species. The base of the Tremadocian allows scientists to relate these species not only to each other and this makes it easier to place many more species in time relative to the beginning of the Ordovician Period. A number of terms have been used to subdivide the Ordovician Period. In 2008, the ICS erected an international system of subdivisions. There exist Baltoscandic, British, Siberian, North American, Australian, the Ordovician Period in Britain was traditionally broken into Early, Middle and Late epochs. The corresponding rocks of the Ordovician System are referred to as coming from the Lower, Middle, the Floian corresponds to the lower Arenig, the Arenig continues until the early Darriwilian, subsuming the Dapingian. The Llanvirn occupies the rest of the Darriwilian, and terminates with it at the base of the Late Ordovician. The Sandbian represents the first half of the Caradoc, the Caradoc ends in the mid-Katian, during the Ordovician, the southern continents were collected into Gondwana. Gondwana started the period in equatorial latitudes and, as the period progressed, drifted toward the South Pole, the small continent Avalonia separated from Gondwana and began to move north towards Baltica and Laurentia, opening the Rheic Ocean between Gondwana and Avalonia
5.
Silurian
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The Silurian is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at 443.8 million years ago, to the beginning of the Devonian Period,419.2 Mya. As with other periods, the rock beds that define the periods start and end are well identified. The base of the Silurian is set at a major Ordovician-Silurian extinction event when 60% of marine species were wiped out, a significant evolutionary milestone during the Silurian was the diversification of jawed and bony fish. However, terrestrial life would not greatly diversify and affect the landscape until the Devonian, the Silurian system was first identified by British geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, who was examining fossil-bearing sedimentary rock strata in south Wales in the early 1830s. He named the sequences for a Celtic tribe of Wales, the Silures, inspired by his friend Adam Sedgwick and this naming does not indicate any correlation between the occurrence of the Silurian rocks and the land inhabited by the Silures. As it was first identified, the Silurian series when traced farther afield quickly came to overlap Sedgwicks Cambrian sequence, however, charles Lapworth resolved the conflict by defining a new Ordovician system including the contested beds. An early alternative name for the Silurian was Gotlandian after the strata of the Baltic island of Gotland, the French geologist Joachim Barrande, building on Murchisons work, used the term Silurian in a more comprehensive sense than was justified by subsequent knowledge. He divided the Silurian rocks of Bohemia into eight stages and his interpretation was questioned in 1854 by Edward Forbes, and the later stages of Barrande, F, G and H, have since been shown to be Devonian. Despite these modifications in the groupings of the strata, it is recognized that Barrande established Bohemia as a classic ground for the study of the earliest fossils. The epoch is named for the town of Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, the Wenlock, which lasted from 433.4 ±1.5 to 427.4 ±2.8 mya, is subdivided into the Sheinwoodian and Homerian ages. It is named after Wenlock Edge in Shropshire, England, during the Wenlock, the oldest known tracheophytes of the genus Cooksonia, appear. The first terrestrial animals also appear in the Wenlock, represented by air-breathing millipedes from Scotland. The Ludlow, lasting from 427.4 ±1.5 to 423 ±2.8 mya, comprises the Gorstian stage, lasting until 425.6 million years ago, and it is named for the town of Ludlow in Shropshire, England. The Pridoli, lasting from 423 ±1.5 to 419.2 ±2.8 mya, is the final and it is named after one locality at the Homolka a Přídolí nature reserve near the Prague suburb Slivenec in the Czech Republic. Přídolí is the old name of a field area. The high sea levels of the Silurian and the flat land resulted in a number of island chains. The southern continents remained united during this period, the melting of icecaps and glaciers contributed to a rise in sea level, recognizable from the fact that Silurian sediments overlie eroded Ordovician sediments, forming an unconformity. The continents of Avalonia, Baltica, and Laurentia drifted together near the equator and this event is the Caledonian orogeny, a spate of mountain building that stretched from New York State through conjoined Europe and Greenland to Norway
6.
Devonian
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The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60 million years from the end of the Silurian,419.2 million years ago, to the beginning of the Carboniferous,358.9 Mya. It is named after Devon, England, where rocks from this period were first studied, the first significant adaptive radiation of life on dry land occurred during the Devonian. Free-sporing vascular plants began to spread across dry land, forming extensive forests which covered the continents, by the middle of the Devonian, several groups of plants had evolved leaves and true roots, and by the end of the period the first seed-bearing plants appeared. Various terrestrial arthropods also became well-established, Fish reached substantial diversity during this time, leading the Devonian to often be dubbed the Age of Fish. The first ray-finned and lobe-finned bony fish appeared, while the placodermi began dominating almost every aquatic environment. The ancestors of all four-limbed vertebrates began adapting to walking on land, as their strong pectoral, in the oceans, primitive sharks became more numerous than in the Silurian and Late Ordovician. The first ammonites, species of molluscs, appeared, trilobites, the mollusk-like brachiopods and the great coral reefs, were still common. The Late Devonian extinction which started about 375 million years ago severely affected marine life, killing off all placodermi, and all trilobites, save for a few species of the order Proetida. The palaeogeography was dominated by the supercontinent of Gondwana to the south, the continent of Siberia to the north, while the rock beds that define the start and end of the Devonian period are well identified, the exact dates are uncertain. According to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the Devonian extends from the end of the Silurian 419.2 Mya, another common term is Age of the Fishes, referring to the evolution of several major groups of fish that took place during the period. Older literature on the Anglo-Welsh basin divides it into the Downtonian, Dittonian, Breconian and Farlovian stages, in the Late Devonian, by contrast, arid conditions were less prevalent across the world and temperate climates were more common. The Devonian Period is formally broken into Early, Middle and Late subdivisions, the rocks corresponding to those epochs are referred to as belonging to the Lower, Middle and Upper parts of the Devonian System. Early Devonian The Early Devonian lasted from 419.2 ±2.8 to 393.3 ±2.5 and began with the Lochkovian stage, which lasted until the Pragian. It spanned from 410.8 ±2.8 to 407.6 ±2.5, and was followed by the Emsian, which lasted until the Middle Devonian began,393. 3±2.7 million years ago. Middle Devonian The Middle Devonian comprised two subdivisions, first the Eifelian, which gave way to the Givetian 387. 7±2.7 million years ago. Late Devonian Finally, the Late Devonian started with the Frasnian,382.7 ±2.8 to 372.2 ±2.5, during which the first forests took shape on land. The first tetrapods appeared in the record in the ensuing Famennian subdivision. This lasted until the end of the Devonian,358. 9±2.5 million years ago, the Devonian was a relatively warm period, and probably lacked any glaciers
7.
Carboniferous
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The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period,298.9 Mya. The name Carboniferous means coal-bearing and derives from the Latin words carbō and ferō, and was coined by geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822. Based on a study of the British rock succession, it was the first of the system names to be employed. The Carboniferous is often treated in North America as two periods, the earlier Mississippian and the later Pennsylvanian. Terrestrial life was established by the Carboniferous period. Amphibians were the dominant land vertebrates, of one branch would eventually evolve into amniotes. Arthropods were also common, and many were much larger than those of today. Vast swaths of forest covered the land, which would eventually be laid down, the atmospheric content of oxygen also reached their highest levels in geological history during the period, 35% compared with 21% today, allowing terrestrial invertebrates to evolve to great size. A major marine and terrestrial extinction event, the Carboniferous rainforest collapse, occurred in the middle of the period, the later half of the period experienced glaciations, low sea level, and mountain building as the continents collided to form Pangaea. In the United States the Carboniferous is usually broken into Mississippian and Pennsylvanian subperiods, the Silesian is roughly contemporaneous with the late Mississippian Serpukhovian plus the Pennsylvanian. In Britain the Dinantian is traditionally known as the Carboniferous Limestone, the Namurian as the Millstone Grit, and the Westphalian as the Coal Measures and Pennant Sandstone. There was also a drop in south polar temperatures, southern Gondwanaland was glaciated throughout the period and these conditions apparently had little effect in the deep tropics, where lush swamps, later to become coal, flourished to within 30 degrees of the northernmost glaciers. Mid-Carboniferous, a drop in sea level precipitated a major extinction, one that hit crinoids. This sea level drop and the unconformity in North America separate the Mississippian subperiod from the Pennsylvanian subperiod. This happened about 323 million years ago, at the onset of the Permo-Carboniferous Glaciation, the Carboniferous was a time of active mountain-building, as the supercontinent Pangaea came together. The southern continents remained tied together in the supercontinent Gondwana, which collided with North America–Europe along the present line of eastern North America, in the same time frame, much of present eastern Eurasian plate welded itself to Europe along the line of the Ural mountains. Most of the Mesozoic supercontinent of Pangea was now assembled, although North China, the Late Carboniferous Pangaea was shaped like an O. There were two major oceans in the Carboniferous—Panthalassa and Paleo-Tethys, which was inside the O in the Carboniferous Pangaea, other minor oceans were shrinking and eventually closed - Rheic Ocean, the small, shallow Ural Ocean and Proto-Tethys Ocean
8.
Permian
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The Permian is a geologic period and system which spans 46.7 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period 298.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Triassic Period 252.2 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozoic Era, the following Triassic Period belongs to the Mesozoic Era, the concept of the Permian was introduced in 1841 by geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, who named it after the city of Perm. The Permian witnessed the diversification of the early amniotes into the groups of the mammals, turtles, lepidosaurs. The world at the time was dominated by two known as Pangaea and Siberia, surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa. The Carboniferous rainforest collapse left behind vast regions of desert within the continental interior, amniotes, who could better cope with these drier conditions, rose to dominance in place of their amphibian ancestors. The Permian ended with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the largest mass extinction in Earths history, in which nearly 90% of marine species and it would take well into the Triassic for life to recover from this catastrophe. Recovery from the Permian-Triassic extinction event was protracted, on land, the term Permian was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil, the region now lies in the Perm Krai of Russia. This could have in part caused the extinctions of marine species at the end of the period by severely reducing shallow coastal areas preferred by many marine organisms. During the Permian, all the Earths major landmasses were collected into a supercontinent known as Pangaea. The Cimmeria continent rifted away from Gondwana and drifted north to Laurasia, a new ocean was growing on its southern end, the Tethys Ocean, an ocean that would dominate much of the Mesozoic Era. Large continental landmass interiors experience climates with extreme variations of heat and cold, deserts seem to have been widespread on Pangaea. Such dry conditions favored gymnosperms, plants with seeds enclosed in a cover, over plants such as ferns that disperse spores in a wetter environment. The first modern trees appeared in the Permian, the climate in the Permian was quite varied. At the start of the Permian, the Earth was still in an Ice Age, glaciers receded around the mid-Permian period as the climate gradually warmed, drying the continents interiors. In the late Permian period, the drying continued although the temperature cycled between warm and cool cycles, Permian marine deposits are rich in fossil mollusks, echinoderms, and brachiopods. By the close of the Permian, trilobites and a host of other groups became extinct. Terrestrial life in the Permian included diverse plants, fungi, arthropods, the period saw a massive desert covering the interior of Pangaea
9.
Triassic
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The Triassic is a geologic period and system which spans 50.9 million years from the end of the Permian Period 252.17 million years ago, to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.3 Mya. The Triassic is the first period of the Mesozoic Era, both the start and end of the period are marked by major extinction events. Therapsids and archosaurs were the terrestrial vertebrates during this time. A specialized subgroup of archosaurs, called dinosaurs, first appeared in the Late Triassic, the vast supercontinent of Pangaea existed until the mid-Triassic, after which it began to gradually rift into two separate landmasses, Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The global climate during the Triassic was mostly hot and dry, however, the climate shifted and became more humid as Pangaea began to drift apart. The end of the period was marked by yet another mass extinction, the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event. The Triassic is usually separated into Early, Middle, and Late Triassic Epochs, from the east, along the equator, the Tethys sea penetrated Pangaea, causing the Paleo-Tethys Ocean to be closed. Later in the mid-Triassic a similar sea penetrated along the equator from the west, the remaining shores were surrounded by the world-ocean known as Panthalassa. All the deep-ocean sediments laid down during the Triassic have disappeared through subduction of oceanic plates, thus, the supercontinent Pangaea was rifting during the Triassic—especially late in that period—but had not yet separated. In North America, for example, marine deposits are limited to a few exposures in the west, thus Triassic stratigraphy is mostly based on organisms that lived in lagoons and hypersaline environments, such as Estheria crustaceans. At the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, Africa was joined with Earths other continents in Pangaea, Africa shared the supercontinents relatively uniform fauna which was dominated by theropods, prosauropods and primitive ornithischians by the close of the Triassic period. Late Triassic fossils are found throughout Africa, but are common in the south than north. The time boundary separating the Permian and Triassic marks the advent of an event with global impact. At Paleorrota geopark, located in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in these formations, one of the earliest dinosaurs, Staurikosaurus, as well as the mammal ancestors Brasilitherium and Brasilodon have been discovered. The Triassic continental interior climate was hot and dry, so that typical deposits are red bed sandstones and evaporites. Pangaeas large size limited the effect of the global ocean, its continental climate was highly seasonal, with very hot summers. The strong contrast between the Pangea supercontinent and the global ocean triggered intense cross-equatorial monsoons, the best studied of such episodes of humid climate, and probably the most intense and widespread, was the Carnian Pluvial Event. On land, the vascular plants included the lycophytes, the dominant cycadophytes, ginkgophyta, ferns, horsetails
10.
Jurassic
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The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that spans 56.3 million years from the end of the Triassic Period 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era, also known as the Age of Reptiles, the start of the period is marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. The Jurassic is named after the Jura Mountains within the European Alps, by the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses, Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. This created more coastlines and shifted the continental climate from dry to humid, on land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated by both dinosauromorph and crocodylomorph archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds also appeared during the Jurassic, having evolved from a branch of theropod dinosaurs, other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards, and the evolution of therian mammals, including primitive placentals. Crocodilians made the transition from a terrestrial to a mode of life. The oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, the chronostratigraphic term Jurassic is directly linked to the Jura Mountains. The name Jura is derived from the Celtic root jor, which was Latinised into juria, the Jurassic period is divided into the Early Jurassic, Middle, and Late Jurassic epochs. The Jurassic System, in stratigraphy, is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle, the separation of the term Jurassic into three sections goes back to Leopold von Buch. The Jurassic North Atlantic Ocean was relatively narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the following Cretaceous period, the Tethys Sea closed, and the Neotethys basin appeared. Climates were warm, with no evidence of glaciation, as in the Triassic, there was apparently no land over either pole, and no extensive ice caps existed. In contrast, the North American Jurassic record is the poorest of the Mesozoic, the Jurassic was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the primary inorganic marine precipitate of calcium carbonate. Carbonate hardgrounds were thus very common, along with calcitic ooids, calcitic cements, the first of several massive batholiths were emplaced in the northern American cordillera beginning in the mid-Jurassic, marking the Nevadan orogeny. Important Jurassic exposures are found in Russia, India, South America, Japan, Australasia. As the Jurassic proceeded, larger and more groups of dinosaurs like sauropods and ornithopods proliferated in Africa. Middle Jurassic strata are well represented nor well studied in Africa. Late Jurassic strata are also poorly represented apart from the spectacular Tendaguru fauna in Tanzania, the Late Jurassic life of Tendaguru is very similar to that found in western North Americas Morrison Formation. During the Jurassic period, the primary living in the sea were fish
11.
Cretaceous
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The Cretaceous is a geologic period and system that spans 79 million years from the end of the Jurassic Period 145 million years ago to the beginning of the Paleogene Period 66 Mya. It is the last period of the Mesozoic Era, the Cretaceous Period is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation Kreide. The Cretaceous was a period with a warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites and rudists, during this time, new groups of mammals and birds, as well as flowering plants, appeared. The Cretaceous ended with a mass extinction, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs. The end of the Cretaceous is defined by the abrupt Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, the name Cretaceous was derived from Latin creta, meaning chalk. The Cretaceous is divided into Early and Late Cretaceous epochs, or Lower and Upper Cretaceous series, in older literature the Cretaceous is sometimes divided into three series, Neocomian, Gallic and Senonian. A subdivision in eleven stages, all originating from European stratigraphy, is now used worldwide, in many parts of the world, alternative local subdivisions are still in use. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds of the Cretaceous are well identified. No great extinction or burst of diversity separates the Cretaceous from the Jurassic and this layer has been dated at 66.043 Ma. A140 Ma age for the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary instead of the usually accepted 145 Ma was proposed in 2014 based on a study of Vaca Muerta Formation in Neuquén Basin. Víctor Ramos, one of the authors of the study proposing the 140 Ma boundary age sees the study as a first step toward formally changing the age in the International Union of Geological Sciences, due to the high sea level there was extensive space for such sedimentation. Because of the young age and great thickness of the system. Chalk is a type characteristic for the Cretaceous. It consists of coccoliths, microscopically small calcite skeletons of coccolithophores, the group is found in England, northern France, the low countries, northern Germany, Denmark and in the subsurface of the southern part of the North Sea. Chalk is not easily consolidated and the Chalk Group still consists of sediments in many places. The group also has other limestones and arenites, among the fossils it contains are sea urchins, belemnites, ammonites and sea reptiles such as Mosasaurus. In southern Europe, the Cretaceous is usually a marine system consisting of competent limestone beds or incompetent marls
12.
Paleogene
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The Paleogene is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago to the beginning of the Neogene Period 23.03 Mya. It is the beginning of the Cenozoic Era of the present Phanerozoic Eon and this period consists of the Paleocene, Eocene and Oligocene epochs. The terms Paleogene System and lower Tertiary System are applied to the rocks deposited during the Paleogene Period. By dividing the Tertiary Period into two periods instead of directly into five epochs, the periods are more comparable to the duration of periods of the preceding Mesozoic and Paleozoic Eras. The trend was caused by the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. During the Paleogene, the continued to drift closer to their current positions. India was in the process of colliding with Asia, subsequently forming the Himalayas, the Atlantic Ocean continued to widen by a few centimeters each year. Africa was moving north to meet with Europe and form the Mediterranean, inland seas retreated from North America early in the period. Australia had also separated from Antarctica and was drifting towards Southeast Asia, mammals began a rapid diversification during this period. Some of these mammals would evolve into forms that would dominate the land, while others would become capable of living in marine, specialized terrestrial. Those that took to the oceans became modern cetaceans, while those that took to the trees became primates, the group to which humans belong. Birds, which were well established by the end of the Cretaceous. In comparison to birds and mammals, most other branches of life remained unchanged during this period. As the Earth cooled, tropical plants became less numerous and were now restricted to equatorial regions, deciduous plants, which could survive through the seasonal climates the world was now experiencing, became more common. The Paleogene is notable in the context of offshore oil drilling, and especially in Gulf of Mexico oil exploration and these rock formations represent the current cutting edge of deep-water oil discovery. Lower Tertiary explorations to date include, Kaskida Oil Field Tiber Oil Field Jack 2 Paleogene Microfossils, 180+ images of Foraminifera
13.
Neogene
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The Neogene is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period 23.03 million years ago to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period 2.58 Mya. The Neogene is sub-divided into two epochs, the earlier Miocene and the later Pliocene, some geologists assert that the Neogene cannot be clearly delineated from the modern geological period, the Quaternary. During this period, mammals and birds continued to evolve into modern forms. Early hominids, the ancestors of humans, appeared in Africa near the end of the period, some continental movement took place, the most significant event being the connection of North and South America at the Isthmus of Panama, late in the Pliocene. This cut off the ocean currents from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean. The global climate cooled considerably over the course of the Neogene, the terms Neogene System and upper Tertiary System describe the rocks deposited during the Neogene Period. The continents in the Neogene were very close to their current positions, the Isthmus of Panama formed, connecting North and South America. The Indian subcontinent continued to collide with Asia, forming the Himalayas, sea levels fell, creating land bridges between Africa and Eurasia and between Eurasia and North America. The global climate became seasonal and continued an overall drying and cooling trend which began at the start of the Paleogene. The ice caps on both poles began to grow and thicken, and by the end of the period the first of a series of glaciations of the current Ice Age began, marine and continental flora and fauna have a modern appearance. The reptile group Choristodera became extinct in the part of the period. Mammals and birds continued to be the dominant terrestrial vertebrates, the first hominids, the ancestors of humans, appeared in Africa and spread into Eurasia. In response to the cooler, seasonal climate, tropical plant species gave way to deciduous ones, grasses therefore greatly diversified, and herbivorous mammals evolved alongside it, creating the many grazing animals of today such as horses, antelope, and bison. The Neogene traditionally ended at the end of the Pliocene Epoch, just before the definition of the beginning of the Quaternary Period. However, there was a movement amongst geologists to also include ongoing geological time in the Neogene, by dividing the Cenozoic Era into three periods instead of seven epochs, the periods are more closely comparable to the duration of periods in the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras. The International Commission on Stratigraphy once proposed that the Quaternary be considered a sub-era of the Neogene, with a date of 2.58 Ma. In the 2004 proposal of the ICS, the Neogene would have consisted of the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, thus the Neogene Period ends bounding the succeeding Quaternary Period at 2.58 Mya. Digital Atlas of Neogene Life for the Southeastern United States — by San Jose State University via Web Archive
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Pliocene
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The Pliocene Epoch is the epoch in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years BP. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era, the Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene. As with other geologic periods, the geological strata that define the start and end are well identified but the exact dates of the start. The boundaries defining the Pliocene are not set at an easily identified worldwide event, the upper boundary was set at the start of the Pleistocene glaciations. The Pliocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell, the name comes from the Greek words πλεῖον and καινός and means roughly continuation of the recent, referring to the essentially modern marine mollusc faunas. H. W. Fowler called the term a regrettable barbarism, in the official timescale of the ICS, the Pliocene is subdivided into two stages. From youngest to oldest they are, Piacenzian Zanclean The Piacenzian is sometimes referred to as the Late Pliocene, in the system of North American Land Mammal Ages include Hemphillian, and Blancan. The Blancan extends forward into the Pleistocene, South American Land Mammal Ages include Montehermosan, Chapadmalalan and Uquian. In the Paratethys area the Pliocene contains the Dacian and Romanian stages, as usual in stratigraphy, there are many other regional and local subdivisions in use. In Britain the Pliocene is divided into the stages, Gedgravian, Waltonian, Pre-Ludhamian, Ludhamian, Thurnian, Bramertonian or Antian, Pre-Pastonian or Baventian, Pastonian and Beestonian. The exact correlations between these stages and the ICS stages is still a matter of detail. The formation of an Arctic ice cap is signaled by a shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic. Mid-latitude glaciation was probably underway before the end of the epoch, the global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas. Continents continued to drift, moving from positions possibly as far as 250 km from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current locations, africas collision with Europe formed the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean. The border between the Miocene and the Pliocene is also the time of the Messinian salinity crisis, Sea level changes exposed the land-bridge between Alaska and Asia. Pliocene marine rocks are exposed in the Mediterranean, India. Elsewhere, they are exposed largely near shores, the change to a cooler, dry, seasonal climate had considerable impacts on Pliocene vegetation, reducing tropical species worldwide. Deciduous forests proliferated, coniferous forests and tundra covered much of the north, tropical forests were limited to a tight band around the equator, and in addition to dry savannahs, deserts appeared in Asia and Africa
15.
Southern cassowary
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The southern cassowary also known as double-wattled cassowary, Australian cassowary or two-wattled cassowary, is a large flightless black bird. It is a ratite and therefore related to emu, ostrich, presently, most authorities consider the southern cassowary monotypic, but several subspecies have been described. Cassowaries are closely related to the kiwis, both families diverging from a common ancestor approximately 40 million years ago, the binomial name Casuarius casuarius is derived from its Malay name kesuari. The southern cassowary was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae, as Struthio casuarius, from a specimen from Seram and it is now the type species of the genus Casuarius. The southern cassowary has been described under a number of scientific names. The southern cassowary has stiff, bristly black plumage, a face and neck, red on the nape. A horn-like brown casque, measuring 13 to 16.9 cm high, the bill can range from 9.8 to 19 cm. The three-toed feet are thick and powerful, equipped with a lethal dagger-like claw up to 12 cm on the inner toe, the plumage is sexually monomorphic, but the female is dominant and larger with a longer casque, larger bill and brighter-colored bare parts. The juveniles have brown longitudinal striped plumage and it is the largest member of the cassowary family and is the second heaviest bird on earth, at a maximum size estimated at 85 kg and 190 cm tall. Normally this species ranges from 127 to 170 cm in length, the height is normally 1.5 to 1.8 m and females average 58.5 kg and males averaging 29 to 34 kg. Most adult birds will weigh between 17 and 70 kg and it is technically the largest Asian bird and the largest Australian bird. The southern cassowary is distributed in Indonesia, New Guinea and northeastern Australia and it mainly inhabits tropical rainforests but may make use of nearby savannah forests or mangroves stands. The species prefers elevations below 1,100 m in Australia and it forages on the forest floor for fallen fruit and is capable of safely digesting some fruits toxic to other animals. It also eats fungi, and some insects and small vertebrates, the southern cassowary is a solitary bird, which pairs only in breeding season, in late winter or spring. The male builds a nest on the ground, a mattress of herbaceous plant material 5 to 10 centimetres thick and this is thick enough to let moisture drain away from the eggs. The male also incubates the eggs and raises the chicks alone, a clutch of three or four eggs are laid measuring 138 by 95 millimetres. They have a surface and are initially bright pea-green in colour although they fade with age. Cassowaries make a call during mating season and hissing and rumblings otherwise
16.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
17.
Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
18.
Chordate
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Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland
19.
Bird
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Birds, a subgroup of Reptiles, are the last living examples of Dinosaurs. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. Birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, the fossil record indicates that birds evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, Birds, especially those in the southern continents, survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the species, the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have evolved for swimming. Many species annually migrate great distances, Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or, rarely, Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents, most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilised, songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser, Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry, the first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use, Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda, Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria
20.
Casuariiformes
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The bird order Casuariiformes has four surviving members, the three species of cassowary, and the only remaining species of emu. The emus are classified in the family Dromaiidae, while the cassowaries are all located within the Casuariidae family, all four living members of the order are very large flightless birds native to Australia-New Guinea, but some possible extinct taxa occurred in other landmasses. The emus form a family, characterized by legs adapted for running. As with all ratites, there are several contested theories concerning their evolution, a combination of all these approaches with considerations of plate tectonics at least is necessary for resolving this issue. The total number of species described, based on minor differences in casque shape and color variations. Now, however, only 3 species are recognized, and most authorities only acknowledge few subspecies or none at all, the fossil record of casuariforms is interesting, but not very extensive. Regarding fossil species of Dromaius and Casuarius, see their genus pages, some Australian fossils initially believed to be from emus were recognized to represent a distinct genus, Emuarius, which had a cassowary-like skull and femur and an emu-like lower leg and foot. In addition, the first fossils of mihirungs were initially believed to be from giant emus and it has been suggested that the South American genus Diogenornis was a casuraiiform bird, instead of a member of the current South American ratite lineage, the rheas. If this was the case, not only it expanded the range of this lineage spatially. The Pliocene indian Hypselornis has also linked to emus and cassowaries. A new emu from the Late Oligocene Etadunna Formation, the Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World. In del Hoyo, Josep, Elliott, Andrew, Sargatal, handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 1, Ostrich to Ducks
21.
Casuariidae
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The bird family Casuariidae has three surviving members, the three species of cassowary. All living members of the family are large flightless birds native to Australia-New Guinea. Some Australian fossils initially believed to be from emus were recognized to represent a distinct genus, Emuarius, which had a skull and femur. A new emu from the Late Oligocene Etadunna Formation, systema Naturae 2000 / Classification, Family Casuariidae. The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World, pp. 90–97 in, del Hoyo, J. Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. eds. Handbook of the Birds of the World, Vol 1, Ostrich to Ducks
22.
Johann Jakob Kaup
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Johann Jakob von Kaup was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in a mathematical order in nature. After studying at Göttingen and Heidelberg he spent two years at Leiden, where his attention was devoted to the amphibians and fishes. He then returned to Darmstadt as an assistant in the grand ducal museum and he also wrote Classification der Säugethiere und Vögel, and, with Heinrich Georg Bronn, Die Gavial-artigen Reste aus dem Lias. A particularly important incident in the history of paleontology involves Kaup, in 1854 he bought the American mastodon found in 1799 in Orange County, New York. This is the mastodon immortalized in Charles Willson Peales painting of the 1801 excavation and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Kaup, Johann Jakob
23.
Mathurin Jacques Brisson
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Mathurin Jacques Brisson was a French zoologist and natural philosopher. The earlier part of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history, his works in this field included Le Règne animal. As a young man, he was a disciple and assistant of R. A. F. Reaumur, for a period of time he was an instructor of physical sciences and natural history to the family of the monarch. He held the chair of physics at the College of Navarre, a significant work involving the specific weight of bodies was his Pesanteur Spécifique des Corps. In his investigations of electricity, Brisson was opposed to the theories of Priestley and he died at Croissy-sur-Seine near Paris. Regnum animale in classes IX distributum sive Synopsis methodica, ornithologia, sive Synopsis methodica sistens avium divisionem in ordines, sectiones, genera, species, ipsarumque varietates. Bauche, Paris, Leiden 1760–63, with engraved illustrations by François-Nicolas Martinet, supplementum Ornithologiæ sive Citationes, descriptionesque antea omissæ & species de novo adjectæ, ad suaquaque genera redactæ. Lettres de deux Espagnols sur les manufactures, observations sur les nouvelles découvertes aërostatiques. Traité élémentaire ou Principes de physique, trattato elementare ovvero Principi di fisica. Suplemento al Diccionario universal de física, Principes élémentaires de lhistoire naturelle et chymique des substances minérales. Anfangsgründe der Naturgeschichte und Chemie der Mineralien, instruction sur les nouveaux poids et mesures. Elements of the history and chymical analysis of mineral substances. Ritchie, Walker, Vernor & Hood, London 1800, tratado elemental ó principios de física. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Brisson. Dictionnaire raisonné de physique, 2nd éd, Planches - Linda Hall Library
24.
Type species
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A similar concept is used for suprageneric groups called a type genus. In botanical nomenclature, these terms have no standing under the code of nomenclature. In botany, the type of a name is a specimen which is also the type of a species name. The species name that has that type can also be referred to as the type of the genus name, names of genus and family ranks, the various subdivisions of those ranks, and some higher-rank names based on genus names, have such types. In bacteriology, a species is assigned for each genus. Every named genus or subgenus in zoology, whether or not currently recognized as valid, is associated with a type species. In practice, however, there is a backlog of untypified names defined in older publications when it was not required to specify a type, a type species is both a concept and a practical system that is used in the classification and nomenclature of animals. The type species represents the species and thus definition for a particular genus name. In the Glossary, type species is defined as The nominal species that is the type of a nominal genus or subgenus. The type species permanently attaches a formal name to a genus by providing just one species within that genus to which the name is permanently linked. The species name in turn is fixed, in theory, to a type specimen, for example, the type species for the land snail genus Monacha is Monacha cartusiana. That genus is placed within the family Hygromiidae. The type genus for that family is the genus Hygromia, the concept of the type species in zoology was introduced by Pierre André Latreille. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature states that the name of the type species should always be cited. It gives an example in Article 67.1, Astacus marinus Fabricius,1775 was later designated as the type species of the genus Homarus, thus giving it the name Homarus marinus. However, the species of Homarus should always be cited using its original name. 3, the type of the genus name Elodes is quoted as the type of the species name Hypericum aegypticum, Glossary of scientific naming Genetypes – genetic sequence data from type specimens. Holotype Paratype Principle of Typification Type Type genus
25.
Carl Linnaeus
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Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the father of modern taxonomy. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus, Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his education at Uppsala University. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands and he then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, at the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message, Tell him I know no man on earth. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, Swedish author August Strindberg wrote, Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist. Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum, The Pliny of the North and he is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany, the abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species names is L. In older publications, sometimes the abbreviation Linn. is found, Linnæus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. He was the first child of Nicolaus Ingemarsson and Christina Brodersonia and his siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, and Emerentia Linnæa. One of a line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Stenbrohult, Samuel Brodersonius, a year after Linnæus birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, and his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult. The family moved into the rectory from the curates house, even in his early years, Linnæus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and often showed flowers to Linnaeus, soon Linnæus was given his own patch of earth where he could grow plants
26.
Northern cassowary
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The northern cassowary also known as the single -wattled cassowary or gold-neck cassowary, is a large, stocky flightless bird of northern New Guinea. They are members of the superorder Paleognathae, edward Blyth first identified the northern cassowary from a specimen from an aviary located in Calcutta, India, in 1860. The genus name Casuarius is derived from the Malay word kesuari cassowary, officially, there are no subspecies, though some authors list several subspecies. It has hard and stiff black plumage, blue facial skin and it has a bright red or yellow colored neck and wattle. The feet are huge and strong with long, dagger-like claw on its inner toe and these birds measure 149 cm long and stand 1. 5–1.8 m in height. Compared to the cassowary, the northern cassowary has a slightly shorter bill, at 12 to 13.7 cm. Casuariidae is the family of the northern cassowary, there are only four members, three of which are Cassowaries, the other, the only remaining species of emu. Emus were classified in a different family until it was decided that they are enough to the cassowaries that they could be classified in the same family. All four members of the Casuariidae are large flightless birds, the northern cassowary and the emu share homologous features. For example, both have a patch of colour on their face/neck, but the functions of these differ. The emu’s patch is of a colour and is used as a form of camouflage where it is located. The northern cassowary’s patch of blue is brighter, and is used for attracting mates, the northern cassowary is distributed and endemic to coastal swamp and lowland rainforests of northern New Guinea and the islands of Yapen, Batanta and Salawati. They prefer elevations below 490 m, as with other cassowaries, it is a shy and solitary bird. Their diet consists mainly of fruits and small animals and they make grunting and hissing sounds, like other cassowaries. In breeding season, the female lays three to five green eggs on a well camouflaged nest prepared by male, she leaves the nest. The male raises the chicks alone for nine months. Due to ongoing habitat lost and overhunting in some areas, the Northern Cassowary is evaluated as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, native people use the bones and eggs, and take the chicks to be raised for meat. As logging opens up more areas of the forest, hunting will be more of a problem and their occurrence range is 186,000 km2 and a 2000 estimate placed their numbers at 9300
27.
Dwarf cassowary
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The dwarf cassowary also known as the Bennetts cassowary, little cassowary, mountain cassowary, or mooruk, is the smallest of the three species of cassowaries. The scientific name commemorates the Australian naturalist George Bennett and he was the first scientist to examine these birds after a few were brought to Australia aboard a ship. Recognising them as a new species of cassowary, he sent specimens back to England, on the west side of Geelvink Bay, western Irian, there is a distinctive form that may merit a split. C. papuanus is the tentative name, there are no officially recognized sub-species, however, some authors believe there should be. The Karam or Kalam people of the New Guinea Highlands classify bats and flying birds as one group, yaket, and the dwarf cassowary, yaket are bony with wings and fly in the air, while kobtiy are bony without wings and are terrestrial and of the forest. They distinguish kobtiy from other bony, wingless animals because kobtiy are not quadrupedal like dogs, John Gould first identified the dwarf cassowary from a specimen from New Britain, in 1857. The dwarf cassowary is a bird but is slightly smaller than other living cassowaries. It is between 99 and 150 cm long and weighs between 17.6 and 26 kg and it is a flightless bird with hard and stiff black plumage, a low triangular casque, pink cheek and red patches of skin on its blue neck. Compared to other cassowaries, the dwarf cassowary is shorter, with a length of 24.5 cm, with a slightly smaller bill. The feet are large and powerful, equipped with claws on the inner toe. Females have longer casques, brighter skin color and are larger in size. The dwarf cassowary is distributed throughout forests of New Guinea, New Britain. In areas without other species of cassowaries, it live in the lowlands also. Its range of range is approximately 258,000 km2. The species feeds mainly of fruits and small animals and insects. A solitary bird, it only in breeding season. It possibly undertakes seasonal migrations in part of its range, however, the species was downgraded to Least Concern in 2015, as current populations appear to be stable and there is substantially less hunting pressure than in the past. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh
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Synonym (taxonomy)
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For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name to the Norway spruce, which he called Pinus abies. This name is no longer in use, it is now a synonym of the current scientific name which is Picea abies, unlike synonyms in other contexts, in taxonomy a synonym is not interchangeable with the name of which it is a synonym. In taxonomy, synonyms are not equals, but have a different status, for any taxon with a particular circumscription, position, and rank, only one scientific name is considered to be the correct one at any given time. A synonym cannot exist in isolation, it is always an alternative to a different scientific name, given that the correct name of a taxon depends on the taxonomic viewpoint used a name that is one taxonomists synonym may be another taxonomists correct name. Synonyms may arise whenever the same taxon is described and named more than once, independently. They may also arise when existing taxa are changed, as when two taxa are joined to one, a species is moved to a different genus. To the general user of scientific names, in such as agriculture, horticulture, ecology, general science. A synonym is a name that was used as the correct scientific name but which has been displaced by another scientific name. Thus Oxford Dictionaries Online defines the term as a name which has the same application as another. In handbooks and general texts, it is useful to have mentioned as such after the current scientific name. Synonyms used in this way may not always meet the strict definitions of the synonym in the formal rules of nomenclature which govern scientific names. Changes of scientific name have two causes, they may be taxonomic or nomenclatural, a name change may be caused by changes in the circumscription, position or rank of a taxon, representing a change in taxonomic, scientific insight. A name change may be due to purely nomenclatural reasons, that is, based on the rules of nomenclature, the earliest such name is called the senior synonym, while the later name is the junior synonym. One basic principle of zoological nomenclature is that the earliest correctly published name, synonyms are important because if the earliest name cannot be used, then the next available junior synonym must be used for the taxon. Objective synonyms refer to taxa with the type and same rank. For example, John Edward Gray published the name Antilocapra anteflexa in 1855 for a species of pronghorn, however, it is now commonly accepted that his specimen was an unusual individual of the species Antilocapra americana published by George Ord in 1815. Ords name thus takes precedence, with Antilocapra anteflexa being a subjective synonym. Objective synonyms are common at the level of genera, because for various reasons two genera may contain the type species, these are objective synonyms
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Ratite
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A ratite is any of a diverse group of large, flightless birds of the infraclass Palaeognathae. The systematics involved have been in flux, the modern bird superorder Palaeognathae consists of ratites and flighted Neotropic tinamous. Unlike other flightless birds, the ratites have no keel on their sternum – hence the name from the Latin ratis, without this to anchor their wing muscles, they could not fly even if they were to develop suitable wings. Recent research has indicated that ratites are a group, tinamous fall within them. This implies that flightlessness is a trait that evolved independently multiple times in different ratite lineages, most parts of the former supercontinent Gondwana have ratites, or did have until the fairly recent past. So did Europe in the Paleocene and Eocene, from where the first flightless paleognaths are known, ostriches were present in Asia as recently as the Holocene, although the genus is thought to have originated in Africa. However, the order may have evolved in Eurasia. A recent study posits a Laurasian origin for the clade, the African ostrich is the largest living ratite. A large member of species can be nearly 2.8 metres tall, weigh as much as 156 kilograms. Of the living species, the Australian emu is next in height, reaching up to 1.9 metres tall, like the ostrich, it is a fast-running, powerful bird of the open plains and woodlands. Also native to Australia and the islands to the north are the three species of cassowary, shorter than an emu, but heavier and solidly built, cassowaries prefer thickly vegetated tropical forest. They can be dangerous when surprised or cornered because of their razor sharp talons. In New Guinea, cassowary eggs are brought back to villages and they reach up to 1.7 metres tall and weigh as much as 59 kilograms South America has two species of rhea, large fast-running birds of the Pampas. The larger American rhea grows to about 1.4 metres tall, the smallest ratites are the five species of kiwi from New Zealand. Kiwi are chicken-sized, shy, and nocturnal and they nest in deep burrows and use a highly developed sense of smell to find small insects and grubs in the soil. Kiwi are notable for laying eggs that are large in relation to their body size. A kiwi egg may equal 15 to 20 percent of the mass of a female kiwi. The smallest species of kiwi is the little spotted kiwi, at 0.9 to 1.9 kilograms and 35 to 45 centimetres and they became extinct by A. D.1400 due to hunting by Māori settlers, who arrived around A. D.1280
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Flightless bird
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Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species including the well known ratites, the smallest flightless bird is the Inaccessible Island rail. The largest flightless bird, which is also the largest living bird, is the ostrich, ostriches are farmed for their decorative feathers, meat and their skins, which are used to make leather. Flightlessness has evolved in many different birds independently, there were also other families of flightless birds, such as the now extinct Phorusrhacidae, that evolved to be powerful terrestrial predators. Furthermore, they share traits of being giant, flightless birds with vestigial wings, long legs. New ecological influences selectively pressured different taxon to converge on flightless modes of existence by altering them morphologically and behaviorally and this is mostly observed in islands lacking predators and competition. However, ratites occupy environments that are occupied by a diverse amount of mammals. It is thought that they first originated through allopatric speciation caused by breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, however recent evidence suggests this hypothesis first proposed by Joel Cracraft in 1974 is incorrect. Rather ratites arrived in their locations via a flighted ancestor. Gigantism is not a requirement for flightlessness, the kiwi does not exhibit gigantism along with tinamous, even though they co-occur with the moa and rhea that both exhibit gigantism. This could be the result of ancestral flighted birds arrival or because of competitive exclusion, the first flightless bird to arrive in each environment utilized the large flightless herbivore or omnivore niche, forcing the later arrivals to remain smaller. In environments where flightless birds are not present, it is possible that after the K/T Boundary there were no niches for them to fill and they were pushed out by other herbivorous mammals. New Zealand has more species of birds than any other country. One reason is that until the arrival of humans roughly a thousand years ago, there were no land predators in New Zealand. Ratites belong to the superorder Palaeognathae birds, which include the volant tinamou, some birds evolved flightlessness in response to the absence of predators, for example on oceanic islands. Incongruences between ratite phylogeny and Gondwana geological history indicate the presence of ratites in their current locations is the result of an invasion by flying birds. Moreover, tinamou nesting within flightless ratites indicates ancestral ratites were volant and this indicates that the distinctive flightless nature of ratites is the result of convergent evolution. Two key differences between flying and flightless birds are the wing bones of flightless birds and the absent keel on their breastbone
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Keel (bird anatomy)
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A keel or carina in bird anatomy is an extension of the sternum which runs axially along the midline of the sternum and extends outward, perpendicular to the plane of the ribs. The keel provides an anchor to which a birds wing muscles attach, keels do not exist on all birds, in particular, some flightless birds lack a keel structure. However, this classification has fallen into disuse as evolutionary studies have shown that many birds have evolved from flighted birds. The current definition of Carinatae now includes all extant birds
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Tropical forest
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The biome includes several types of forests, Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests, commonly known as tropical rainforests, are forests which receive high rainfall throughout the year. These forests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the Amazon basin of South America, the Congo basin of central Africa, some trees in these forests drop some or all of their leaves during the winter dry season. These forests are found in parts of South America, in Central America and around the Caribbean, in coastal West Africa, parts of the Indian subcontinent, montane rain forests, are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas. Those with elevations high enough to regularly encounter low-level cloud cover are known as cloud forests, flooded forests, including freshwater swamp forests and peat swamp forests. In contrast to TSMF, tropical forest regions with lower levels of rainfall are home to tropical dry broadleaf forests, temperate rain forests also occur in certain humid temperate coastal regions. Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earths land surface, scientists estimate that more than half of all the worlds plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests
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New Guinea
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New Guinea is a large Island in the South West Pacific region. It is the worlds second-largest island, after Greenland, covering an area of 785,753 km2. The island is divided between two countries, Papua New Guinea to the east, and Indonesia to the west, the island has been known by various names. The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West and its etymology is unclear, one theory states that it is from Tidore, the language used by the Sultanate of Tidore, which controlled parts of the islands coastal region. The name came from papo and ua, which means not united or, ploeg reports that the word papua is often said to derive from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning frizzly-haired, referring to the highly curly hair of the inhabitants of these areas. When the Portuguese and Spanish explorers arrived in the island via the Spice Islands, when the Dutch colonized it as part of Netherlands East Indies, they called it Nieuw Guinea. The name Irian was used in the Indonesian language to refer the island and Indonesian province, the name was promoted in 1945 by Marcus Kaisiepo, brother of the future governor Frans Kaisiepo. It is taken from the Biak language of Biak Island, and means to rise and this name of Irian is the name used in the Biak language and other languages such as Serui, Merauke and Waropen. The name was used until 2001, when the name Papua was again used for the island, the name Irian, which was originally favored by natives, is now considered to be a name imposed by the authority of Jakarta. New Guinea is an island to the north of Australia, and it is isolated by the Arafura Sea to the west and the Torres Strait and Coral Sea to the east. A spine of east–west mountains, the New Guinea Highlands, dominates the geography of New Guinea, stretching over 1,600 km from the head to the tail of the island. The western half of the island of New Guinea contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4,884 m high, the tree line is around 4,000 m elevation and the tallest peaks contain permanent equatorial glaciers—which have been retreating since at least 1936. Various other smaller mountain ranges occur both north and west of the central ranges, except in high elevations, most areas possess a warm humid climate throughout the year, with some seasonal variation associated with the northeast monsoon season. At 4,884 metres, Puncak Jaya makes New Guinea the worlds fourth highest landmass, Puncak Mandala, located in Papua, is the second highest peak on the island at 4,760 metres. Puncak Trikora, also in Papua, is 4,750 metres, mount Wilhelm is the highest peak on the PNG side of the border at 4,509 metres. Its granite peak is the highest point of the Bismarck Range, mount Giluwe 4,368 metres is the second highest summit in PNG. It is also the highest volcanic peak in Oceania, another major habitat feature is the vast southern and northern lowlands. Stretching for hundreds of kilometres, these include lowland rainforests, extensive wetlands, savanna grasslands, the southern lowlands are the site of Lorentz National Park, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site
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Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
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Common ostrich
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The ostrich or common ostrich is either one or two species of large flightless birds native to Africa, the only living member of the genus Struthio, which is in the ratite family. In 2014, the Somali ostrich was recognized as a distinct species, the common ostrich shares the order Struthioniformes with the kiwis, emus, rheas, and cassowaries. However, phylogenetic studies have shown that it is the group to all other members of Palaeognathae. It is distinctive in its appearance, with a neck and legs, and can run at up to about 70 km/h. The common ostrich is the largest living species of bird and lays the largest eggs of any living bird, the common ostrichs diet consists mainly of plant matter, though it also eats invertebrates. It lives in groups of 5 to 50 birds. When threatened, the ostrich will either hide itself by lying flat against the ground, if cornered, it can attack with a kick of its powerful legs. Mating patterns differ by region, but territorial males fight for a harem of two to seven females. The common ostrich is farmed around the world, particularly for its feathers and its skin is used for leather products and its meat is marketed commercially, with its leanness a common marketing point. Common ostriches usually weigh from 63 to 145 kilograms, or as much as two adult humans, ostriches of the East African race averaged 115 kg in males and 100 kg in females, while the nominate subspecies was found to average 111 kg in unsexed adults. Exceptional male ostriches can weigh up to 156.8 kg, at sexual maturity, male common ostriches can be from 2.1 to 2.8 m in height, while female common ostriches range from 1.7 to 2.0 m tall. New chicks are fawn in colour, with brown spots. During the first year of life, chicks grow at about 25 cm per month, at one year of age, common ostriches weigh approximately 45 kilograms. Their lifespan is up to 40–45 years, the feathers of adult males are mostly black, with white primaries and a white tail. However, the tail of one subspecies is buff, females and young males are greyish-brown and white. The head and neck of both male and female ostriches is nearly bare, with a layer of down. The skin of the neck and thighs is pinkish gray. The eyes are shaded from sunlight from above, However, the head and bill are relatively small for the birds huge size, with the bill measuring 12 to 14.3 cm
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Emu
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The emu is the second-largest living bird by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird, the emus range covers most of mainland Australia, but the Tasmanian emu and King Island emu subspecies became extinct after the European settlement of Australia in 1788. The bird is common for it to be rated as a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Emus are soft-feathered, brown, flightless birds with long necks and legs, Emus can travel great distances, and when necessary can sprint at 50 km/h, they forage for a variety of plants and insects, but have been known to go for weeks without eating. They drink infrequently, but take in copious amounts of water when the opportunity arises, breeding takes place in May and June, and fighting among females for a mate is common. Females can mate several times and lay clutches of eggs in one season. The male does the incubation, during this process he hardly eats or drinks, the eggs hatch after around eight weeks, and the young are nurtured by their fathers. They reach full size after around six months, but can remain as a unit until the next breeding season. The emu is an important cultural icon of Australia, appearing on the coat of arms, the bird features prominently in Indigenous Australian mythology. The birds were known on the eastern coast before 1788, when the first Europeans settled there, total length seven feet two inches. The long spines which are seen in the wings of the sort, are in this not observable. The legs are stout, formed much as in the Galeated Cassowary, the species was named by ornithologist John Latham in 1790 based on a specimen from the Sydney area of Australia, a country which was known as New Holland at the time. In his original 1816 description of the emu, the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot used two names, first Dromiceius and later Dromaius. Most modern publications, including those of the Australian government, use Dromaius, another theory is that it comes from the word ema, which is used in Portuguese to denote a large bird akin to an ostrich or crane. In Victoria, some terms for the emu were Barrimal in the Dja Dja Wurrung language, myoure in Gunai, the birds were known as murawung or birabayin to the local Eora and Darug inhabitants of the Sydney basin. The emu was long classified, with its closest relatives the cassowaries, in the family Casuariidae, however, an alternate classification was proposed in 2014 by Mitchell et al. based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA. This splits off the Casuariidae into their own order, the Casuariformes, the cladogram shown below is from their study. Two different Dromaius species were present in Australia at the time of European settlement, the insular dwarf emus, D. baudinianus and D. n. minor, originally present on Kangaroo Island and King Island respectively, both became extinct shortly after the arrival of Europeans
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Frugivore
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A frugivore /fruːdʒᵻvɔːr/ is a fruit eater. It can be any type of herbivore or omnivore where fruit is a preferred food type, because approximately 20% of all mammalian herbivores also eat fruit, frugivory is common among mammals. Since frugivores eat a lot of fruit, they are dependent on the abundance. Frugivores can either benefit fruit-producing plants by dispersing seeds, or they can hinder plants by digesting seeds along with the fruits, when both the fruit-producing plant and the frugivore species benefit by fruit-eating behavior, their interaction is called mutualism. Seed dispersal is important for plants because it allows their progeny to move away from their parents over time, the advantages of seed dispersal may have led to the evolution of fleshy fruits, which entice animals to eat the fruits and move the plants seeds from place to place. While many fruit-producing plant species would not disperse far without frugivores, many types of animals are seed dispersers. Mammal and bird species represent the majority of seed-dispersing species, however, frugivorous tortoises, lizards, amphibians, and even fish also disperse seeds. For example, cassowaries are a species because they spread fruit through digestion. While frugivores and fruit-producing plant species are present worldwide, there is evidence that tropical forests have more frugivore seed dispersers than the temperate zone. Frugivore seed dispersal is a phenomenon in many ecosystems. However, it is not a specific type of plant–animal interaction. For example, a species of frugivorous bird may disperse fruits from several species of plants. This lack of specialization could be because fruit availability varies by season and year, furthermore, different seed dispersers tend to disperse seeds to different habitats, at different abundances, and distances, depending on their behavior and numbers. There are a number of characteristics that seem to be adaptive characteristics to attract frugivores. Many animal-dispersed fruits advertise their palatability to animals with bright colors, Fruit pulp is generally rich in water and carbohydrates and low in protein and lipids. However, the nutritional composition of fruits varies widely. The seeds of animal-dispersed fruits are often adapted to survive digestion by frugivores, for example, seeds can become more permeable to water after passage through an animals gut. This leads to higher germination rates, some mistletoe seeds even germinate inside the dispersers intestine
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Omnivore
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Omnivore /ˈɒmnivɔər/ is a consumption classification for animals that have the capability to obtain chemical energy and nutrients from materials originating from plant and animal origin. Often, omnivores also have the ability to incorporate food sources such as algae, fungi, omnivores come from diverse backgrounds that often independently evolved sophisticated consumption capabilities. For instance, dogs evolved from primarily carnivorous organisms while pigs evolved from primarily herbivorous organisms, what this means is that physical characteristics are often not reliable indicators of whether an animal has the ability to obtain energy and nutrients from both plant and animal matter. The variety of different animals that are classified as omnivores can be placed into categories depending on their feeding behaviors. Frugivores include maned wolves and orangutans, insectivores include swallows and pink fairy armadillos, granivores include large ground finches, all of these animals are omnivores, yet still fall into special niches in terms of feeding behaviors and preferred foods. Being omnivores gives these animals more food security in times or makes possible living in less consistent environments. The word omnivore derives from the Latin omnis, and vora, from vorare, having been coined by the French, traditionally the definition for omnivory was entirely behavioral by means of simply including both animal and vegetable tissue in the diet. This has subsequently conditioned two context specific definitions, behavioral, This definition is used to specify if a species or individual is actively consuming both plant and animal materials. Physiological, This definition is used in academia to specify species that have the capability to obtain energy. Though Carnivora is a taxon for species classification, no equivalent exists for omnivores. The Carnivora order does not include all species, and not all species within the Carnivora taxon are carnivorous. It is common to find physiological carnivores consuming materials from plants or physiological herbivores consuming material from animals, e. g. felines eating grass, from a behavioral aspect, this would make them omnivores, but from the physiological standpoint, this may be due to zoopharmacognosy. Physiologically, animals must be able to both energy and nutrients from plant and animal materials to be considered omnivorous. For instance, it is documented that animals such as giraffes, camels. Felines, which are regarded as obligate carnivores, occasionally eat grass to regurgitate indigestibles, aid with hemoglobin production. Occasionally, it is found that animals historically classified as carnivorous may deliberately eat plant material, for example, in 2013 it was considered that American alligators may be physiologically omnivorous once investigations had been conducted on why they occasionally eat fruits. It was suggested that alligators probably ate fruits both accidentally but also deliberately, life-history omnivores is a specialized classification given to organisms that change their eating habits during their life cycle. Some species, such as grazing waterfowl like geese, are known to eat animal tissue at one stage of their lives
39.
Fungus
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A fungus is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, Fungi, which is separate from the other eukaryotic life kingdoms of plants, a characteristic that places fungi in a different kingdom from plants, bacteria and some protists, is chitin in their cell walls. Similar to animals, fungi are heterotrophs, they acquire their food by absorbing dissolved molecules, growth is their means of mobility, except for spores, which may travel through the air or water. Fungi are the principal decomposers in ecological systems and this fungal group is distinct from the structurally similar myxomycetes and oomycetes. The discipline of biology devoted to the study of fungi is known as mycology, in the past, mycology was regarded as a branch of botany, although it is now known fungi are genetically more closely related to animals than to plants. Abundant worldwide, most fungi are inconspicuous because of the size of their structures. Fungi include symbionts of plants, animals, or other fungi and they may become noticeable when fruiting, either as mushrooms or as molds. Fungi perform a role in the decomposition of organic matter and have fundamental roles in nutrient cycling. Since the 1940s, fungi have been used for the production of antibiotics, Fungi are also used as biological pesticides to control weeds, plant diseases and insect pests. Many species produce bioactive compounds called mycotoxins, such as alkaloids and polyketides, the fruiting structures of a few species contain psychotropic compounds and are consumed recreationally or in traditional spiritual ceremonies. Fungi can break down manufactured materials and buildings, and become significant pathogens of humans, losses of crops due to fungal diseases or food spoilage can have a large impact on human food supplies and local economies. The fungus kingdom encompasses a diversity of taxa with varied ecologies, life cycle strategies. However, little is known of the biodiversity of Kingdom Fungi. Advances in molecular genetics have opened the way for DNA analysis to be incorporated into taxonomy, phylogenetic studies published in the last decade have helped reshape the classification within Kingdom Fungi, which is divided into one subkingdom, seven phyla, and ten subphyla. The English word fungus is directly adopted from the Latin fungus, used in the writings of Horace, a group of all the fungi present in a particular area or geographic region is known as mycobiota, e. g. the mycobiota of Ireland. Like plants, fungi grow in soil and, in the case of mushrooms, form conspicuous fruit bodies. The fungi are now considered a kingdom, distinct from both plants and animals, from which they appear to have diverged around one billion years ago. Fungi have membrane-bound cytoplasmic organelles such as mitochondria, sterol-containing membranes and they have a characteristic range of soluble carbohydrates and storage compounds, including sugar alcohols, disaccharides, and polysaccharides
40.
Invertebrate
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Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column, derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata, familiar examples of invertebrates include insects, crabs, lobsters and their kin, snails, clams, octopuses and their kin, starfish, sea-urchins and their kin, jellyfish, and worms. The majority of species are invertebrates, one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxa have a number and variety of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Some of the invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata are more closely related to the vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the term invertebrate paraphyletic and hence almost meaningless for taxonomic purposes, the word invertebrate comes from the form of the Latin word vertebra, which means a joint in general, and sometimes specifically a joint from the spinal column of a vertebrate. In turn the jointed aspect of vertebra derived from the concept of turning, coupled with the prefix in-, meaning not or without. The term invertebrates is not always precise among non-biologists since it does not accurately describe a taxon in the way that Arthropoda. Each of these describes an valid taxon, phylum, subphylum or family. Invertebrata is a term of convenience, not a taxon, it has very little circumscriptional significance except within the Chordata, the Vertebrata as a subphylum comprises such a small proportion of the Metazoa that to speak of the kingdom Animalia in terms of Vertebrata and Invertebrata has limited practicality. That would at least circumscribe the Chordata, however, even the notochord would be a less fundamental criterion than aspects of embryological development and symmetry or perhaps bauplan. The following text reflects earlier scientific understanding of the term and of animals which have constituted it. According to this understanding, invertebrates do not possess a skeleton of bone and they include hugely varied body plans. Many have fluid-filled, hydrostatic skeletons, like jellyfish or worms, others have hard exoskeletons, outer shells like those of insects and crustaceans. The most familiar invertebrates include the Protozoa, Porifera, Coelenterata, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Echinodermata, Mollusca, Arthropoda include insects, crustaceans and arachnids. By far the largest number of described species are insects. The following table lists the number of described extant species for major invertebrate groups as estimated in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species,2014.3. The IUCN estimates that 66,178 extant vertebrate species have been described, the trait that is common to all invertebrates is the absence of a vertebral column, this creates a distinction between invertebrates and vertebrates
41.
Vertebrate
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Vertebrates /ˈvɜːrtᵻbrᵻts/ comprise all species of animals within the subphylum Vertebrata /-ɑː/. Vertebrates represent the majority of the phylum Chordata, with currently about 66,000 species described. Vertebrates include the fish and the jawed vertebrates, which include the cartilaginous fish. A bony fish known as the lobe-finned fishes is included with tetrapods, which are further divided into amphibians, reptiles, mammals. Extant vertebrates range in size from the frog species Paedophryne amauensis, at as little as 7.7 mm, to the blue whale, vertebrates make up less than five percent of all described animal species, the rest are invertebrates, which lack vertebral columns. The vertebrates traditionally include the hagfish, which do not have proper vertebrae due to their loss in evolution, though their closest living relatives, hagfish do, however, possess a cranium. For this reason, the vertebrate subphylum is sometimes referred to as Craniata when discussing morphology, molecular analysis since 1992 has suggested that hagfish are most closely related to lampreys, and so also are vertebrates in a monophyletic sense. Others consider them a group of vertebrates in the common taxon of craniata. The word origin of vertebrate derives from the Latin word vertebratus, the Proto-Indo-European language origins are still unclear. Vertebrate is derived from the vertebra, which refers to any of the bones or segments of the spinal column. All vertebrates are built along the basic body plan, a stiff rod running through the length of the animal, with a hollow tube of nervous tissue above it. In all vertebrates, the mouth is found at, or right below, the remaining part of the body continuing after the anus forms a tail with vertebrae and spinal cord, but no gut. However, a few vertebrates have secondarily lost this anatomy, retaining the notochord into adulthood, such as the sturgeon, jawed vertebrates are typified by paired appendages, but this trait is not required in order for an animal to be a vertebrate. All basal vertebrates breathe with gills, the gills are carried right behind the head, bordering the posterior margins of a series of openings from the pharynx to the exterior. Each gill is supported by a cartilagenous or bony gill arch, the bony fish have three pairs of arches, cartilaginous fish have five to seven pairs, while the primitive jawless fish have seven. The vertebrate ancestor no doubt had more arches than this, as some of their relatives have more than 50 pairs of gills. In amphibians and some primitive fishes, the larvae bear external gills. These are reduced in adulthood, their function taken over by the gills proper in fishes, some amphibians retain the external larval gills in adulthood, the complex internal gill system as seen in fish apparently being irrevocably lost very early in the evolution of tetrapods
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Genus
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A genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of classification, genus comes above species. In binomial nomenclature, the name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. Felis catus and Felis silvestris are two species within the genus Felis, Felis is a genus within the family Felidae. The composition of a genus is determined by a taxonomist, the standards for genus classification are not strictly codified, so different authorities often produce different classifications for genera. Moreover, genera should be composed of units of the same kind as other genera. The term comes from the Latin genus, a noun form cognate with gignere, linnaeus popularized its use in his 1753 Species Plantarum, but the French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort is considered the founder of the modern concept of genera. The scientific name of a genus may be called the name or generic epithet. It plays a role in binomial nomenclature, the system of naming organisms. The rules for the names of organisms are laid down in the Nomenclature Codes. The standard way of scientifically describing species and other lower-ranked taxa is by binomial nomenclature, the generic name forms its first half. For example, the gray wolfs binomial name is Canis lupus, with Canis being the name shared by the wolfs close relatives. The specific name is written in lower-case and may be followed by names in zoology or a variety of infraspecific names in botany. Especially with these names, when the generic name is known from context. Because animals are typically only grouped within subspecies, it is written as a trinomen with a third name. Dog breeds, meanwhile, are not scientifically distinguished, there are several divisions of plant species and therefore their infraspecific names generally include contractions explaining the relation. For example, the genus Hibiscus includes hundreds of other species apart from the Rose of Sharon or common garden hibiscus, Rose of Sharon doesnt have subspecies but has cultivars that carry desired traits, such as the bright white H. syriaca Diana. Hawaiian hibiscus, meanwhile, includes several separate species, since not all botanists agree on the divisions or names between species, it is common to specify the source of the name using author abbreviations
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Systema Naturae
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Systema Naturae is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. The first edition was published in 1735, the tenth edition of this book is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature. In 1766–1768 Linnaeus published the much enhanced 12th edition, the last under his authorship, another again enhanced work in the same style and entitled Systema Naturae was published by Johann Friedrich Gmelin between 1788 and 1793. Since at least the early 1900s zoologists commonly recognized this as the last edition belonging to this series and it was also officially regarded by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature in Opinion 296 as the 13th edition of Systema Naturae. Linnaeus published the first edition of Systema Naturae in the year 1735, as was customary for the scientific literature of its day, the book was published in Latin. In it, he outlined his ideas for the classification of the natural world, dividing it into the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom. Linnaeuss Systema Naturae lists only about 10,000 species of organisms, Linnaeus developed his classification of the plant kingdom in an attempt to describe and understand the natural world as a reflection of the logic of Gods creation. His sexual system, where species with the number of stamens were treated in the same group, was convenient. Linnaeus believed in Gods creation, and that there were no deeper relationships to be expressed and he is frequently quoted to have said. The classification of animals was more natural, for instance, humans were for the first time placed together with other primates, as Anthropomorpha. As a result of the popularity of the work, and the number of new specimens sent to him from around the world, Linnaeus kept publishing new and it grew from eleven very large pages in the first edition to 2,400 pages in the 12th edition. In this same edition, he introduced two-part names for animal species, the system eventually developed into modern Linnaean taxonomy, a hierarchically organized biological classification. After Linnaeus health declined in the early 1770s, publication of editions of Systema Naturae went in two directions, another Swedish scientist, Johan Andreas Murray issued the Regnum Vegetabile section separately in 1774 as the Systema Vegetabilium, rather confusingly labelled the 13th edition. Meanwhile, a 13th edition of the entire Systema appeared in parts between 1788-1793 and it was as the Systema Vegetabilium that Linnaeus work became widely known in England following translation from the Latin by the Lichfield Botanical Society, as A System of Vegetables. In his Imperium Naturæ, Linnaeus established three kingdoms, namely Regnum Animale, Regnum Vegetabile and Regnum Lapideum. This approach, the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Kingdoms, survives today in the popular mind, notably in the form of parlour games, Is it animal. The classification was based on five levels, kingdom, class, order, genus, while species and genus was seen as God-given, the three higher levels were seen by Linnaeus as constructs. The concept behind the set ranks being applied to all groups was to make a system that was easy to remember and navigate, Linnaeuss work had a huge impact on science, it was indispensable as a foundation for biological nomenclature, now regulated by the Nomenclature Codes
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10th edition of Systema Naturae
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The 10th edition of Systema Naturae is a book written by Carl Linnaeus and published in two volumes in 1758 and 1759, which marks the starting point of zoological nomenclature. In it, Linnaeus introduced binomial nomenclature for animals, something he had already done for plants in his 1753 publication of Species Plantarum, before 1758, most biological catalogues had used polynomial names for the taxa included, including earlier editions of Systema Naturae. The first work to consistently apply binomial nomenclature across the kingdom was the 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Names published before that date are unavailable, even if they would otherwise satisfy the rules, during Linnaeus lifetime, Systema Naturae was under continuous revision. The Animal Kingdom, Animals enjoy sensation by means of an organization, animated by a medullary substance, perception by nerves. They have members for the different purposes of life, organs for their different senses and they all originate from an egg. Their external and internal structure, their anatomy, habits, instincts. The list has been broken down into the six classes Linnaeus described for animals, Mammalia, Aves, Amphibia, Pisces, Insecta. These classes were created by studying the internal anatomy, as seen in his key. Warm, red blood Viviparous, Mammalia Oviparous, Aves Heart with 1 auricle,1 ventricle, cold, red blood Lungs voluntary, Amphibia External gills, Pisces Heart with 1 auricle,0 ventricles. Linnaeus described mammals as, Animals that suckle their young by means of lactiferous teats, in external and internal structure they resemble man, most of them are quadrupeds, and with man, their natural enemy, inhabit the surface of the Earth. The largest, though fewest in number, inhabit the ocean and they are areal, vocal, swift and light, and destitute of external ears, lips, teeth, scrotum, womb, bladder, epiglottis, corpus callosum and its arch, and diaphragm. They breathe by means of gills, which are united by a bony arch, swim by means of radiate fins. Many of them are without a head, and most of them without feet. They are principally distinguished by their tentacles, by the Ancients they were not improperly called imperfect animals, as being destitute of ears, nose, head, eyes and legs, and are therefore totally distinct from Insects. In addition to repeating the species he had listed in his Species Plantarum. The species from Species Plantarum were numbered sequentially, while the new species were labelled with letters, new plant species described in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae include, The original 1758 Systema Naturae Linnaeus 1758 Classification of Animals on the Taxonomicon
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Greater rhea
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The greater rhea is a flightless bird found in eastern South America. Other names for the greater rhea include the grey, common, or American rhea, ñandú, one of two species in the genus Rhea, in the family Rheidae, the greater rhea is endemic to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. It inhabits a variety of areas, such as grasslands. Weighing 20–27 kilograms, the rhea is the largest bird in South America. In the wild, the greater rhea has a life expectancy of 10.5 years and it is also notable for its reproductive habits, and for the fact that a group has established itself in Germany in recent years. The species is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN, the greater rhea derives its scientific name from Rhea, a Greek goddess, and the Latinized form of America. It was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th-century work and he identified specimens from Sergipe, and Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, in 1758. They are from the family Rheidae, and the order Struthioniformes and they are joined in this order by emus, ostriches, cassowaries, and kiwis, along with the extinct forms moas, and elephant birds. However, subspecies of the greater rhea differ so little across their range that, without knowledge of the place of origin, the males are generally bigger than the females. Elsewhere, the lesser rhea has been cited with an average weight of 16 kg. In some areas, male greater rheas weights of up to 35 kg are not uncommon and even females of up to 30 kg have been weighed, both weights higher than the maximum known mass for the lesser rhea. Large males can weigh up to 40 kg, stand nearly 1.83 m tall and measure over 150 cm long, the head and bill are fairly small, the latter measuring 8–10.4 cm in length. The legs are long, with the tarsus measuring between 33.5 and 37 cm, and strong and have 22 horizontal plates on the front of the tarsus and they have three toes, and the hind toe is absent. The wings of the American rhea are rather long, the use them during running to maintain balance during tight turns. Greater rheas have a fluffy, tattered-looking plumage, that is gray or brown, with high individual variation, The head, neck, rump, in general, males are darker than females. Even in the wild—particularly in Argentina—leucistic individuals as well as albinos occur, hatchling greater rheas are grey with dark lengthwise stripes. The greater rhea is endemic to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, there are also feral populations of the greater rhea on Germany, Cuba and Honduras. It is absent from the tropical forests of the Mata Atlântica and planalto uplands along the coast of Brazil
Ernest Ingersoll (1920). "Cassowary". Encyclopedia Americana.