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
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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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Eocene
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The Eocene Epoch, lasting from 56 to 33.9 million years ago, is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope 12C. As with other periods, the strata that define the start and end of the epoch are well identified. The name Eocene comes from the Ancient Greek ἠώς and καινός, the Eocene epoch is conventionally divided into early, middle, and late subdivisions. The corresponding rocks are referred to as lower, middle, the Ypresian stage constitutes the lower, the Priabonian stage the upper, and the Lutetian and Bartonian stages are united as the middle Eocene. The Eocene Epoch contained a variety of different climate conditions that includes the warmest climate in the Cenozoic Era. During this period of time, little to no ice was present on Earth with a difference in temperature from the equator to the poles. Following the maximum was a descent into an icehouse climate from the Eocene Optimum to the Eocene-Oligocene transition at 34 million years ago. During this decrease ice began to reappear at the poles, greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane, played a significant role during the Eocene in controlling the surface temperature. For the early Eocene there is discussion on how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere. This is due to numerous proxies representing different atmospheric carbon dioxide content, for contrast, today the carbon dioxide levels are at 400 ppm or 0. 04%. At about the beginning of the Eocene Epoch the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere more or less doubled. During the early Eocene, methane was another gas that had a drastic effect on the climate. In comparison to carbon dioxide, methane has much effect on temperature as methane is ~34 times more effective per molecule than carbon dioxide on a 100-year scale. Most of the methane released to the atmosphere during this period of time would have been from wetlands, swamps, the atmospheric methane concentration today is 0. 000179% or 1.79 ppmv. Due to the climate and sea level rise associated with the early Eocene, more wetlands, more forests. Comparing the early Eocene production of methane to current levels of atmospheric methane, biogenic production of methane produces carbon dioxide and water vapor along with the methane, as well as yielding infrared radiation
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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
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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
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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
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Actinopterygii
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Actinopterygii /ˌæktᵻnˌɒptəˈrɪdʒi. aɪ/, or the ray-finned fishes, constitute a class or subclass of the bony fishes. These actinopterygian fin rays attach directly to the proximal or basal skeletal elements, the radials, numerically, actinopterygians are the dominant class of vertebrates, comprising nearly 99% of the over 30,000 species of fish. They are ubiquitous throughout freshwater and marine environments from the sea to the highest mountain streams. Extant species can range in size from Paedocypris, at 8 mm, to the ocean sunfish, at 2,300 kg. Ray-finned fishes occur in variant forms. The main features of a typical ray-finned fish are shown in the diagram at the left. In nearly all ray-finned fish, the sexes are separate, development then proceeds with a free-swimming larval stage. However other patterns of ontogeny exist, with one of the commonest being sequential hermaphroditism, in most cases this involves protogyny, fish starting life as females and converting to males at some stage, triggered by some internal or external factor. This may be advantageous as females become less prolific as they age while male fecundity increases with age, protandry, where a fish converts from male to female, is much less common than protogyny. Most families use external rather than internal fertilization, of the oviparous teleosts, most do not provide parental care. Viviparity is relatively rare and is found in about 6% of teleost species, male territoriality preadapts a species for evolving male parental care. There are a few examples of fish that self-fertilise, the mangrove rivulus is an amphibious, simultaneous hermaphrodite, producing both eggs and spawn and having internal fertilisation. This mode of reproduction may be related to the habit of spending long periods out of water in the mangrove forests it inhabits. Males are occasionally produced at temperatures below 19 °C and can fertilise eggs that are spawned by the female. This maintains genetic variability in a species that is otherwise highly inbred, the earliest known fossil actinopterygiian is Andreolepis hedei, dating back 420 million years. Remains have been found in Russia, Sweden, and Estonia, actinopterygians are divided into the subclasses Chondrostei and Neopterygii. The Neopterygii, in turn, are divided into the infraclasses Holostei and Teleostei, during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic the teleosts in particular diversified widely, and as a result, 96% of all known fish species are teleosts. The cladogram shows the groups of actinopterygians and their relationship to the terrestrial vertebrates that evolved from a related group of fish
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Perciformes
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Perciformes, also called the Percomorpha or Acanthopteri, are the largest order of vertebrates, containing about 41% of all bony fish. They belong to the class of ray-finned fish, and comprise over 10,000 species found in almost all aquatic ecosystems, the order contains about 160 families, which is the most of any order within the vertebrates. It is also the most variably sized order of vertebrates, ranging from the 7-mm Schindleria brevipinguis to the marlin in the Makaira genus and they first appeared and diversified in the Late Cretaceous. Among the well-known members of group are cichlids, California sheephead, bluegill, damselfish, snappers, bass. The dorsal and anal fins are divided into anterior spiny and posterior soft-rayed portions, the pelvic fins usually have one spine and up to five soft rays, positioned unusually far forward under the chin or under the belly. Scales are usually ctenoid, although sometimes they are cycloid or otherwise modified, as traditionally defined before the introduction of cladistics, the Perciformes are almost certainly paraphyletic. Other orders that should possibly be included as suborders are the Scorpaeniformes, Tetraodontiformes, of the presently recognized suborders, several may be paraphyletic, as well. These are grouped by suborder/superfamily, generally following the text Fishes of the World
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Serranidae
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The Serranidae are a large family of fishes belonging to the order Perciformes. The family contains about 450 species in 65 genera, including the sea basses and the groupers. Although many species are small, in some less than 10 cm. Representatives of this live in tropical and subtropical seas worldwide. Many serranid species are colored, and many of the larger species are caught commercially for food. They are usually found over reefs, in tropical to subtropical waters along the coasts, serranids are generally robust in form, with large mouths and small spines on the gill coverings. They typically have several rows of teeth, usually with a pair of particularly large. Although some species, especially in the Anthiadinae subfamily, only feed on zooplankton and they are typically ambush predators, hiding in cover on the reef and darting out to grab passing prey. Their bright colours are most likely a form of disruptive camouflage, many species are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning they start out as females and change sex to male later in life. They produce large quantities of eggs and their larvae are planktonic, as other fish, serranids harbour parasites, including nematodes, cestodes, digeneans, monogeneans, isopods, and copepods. A study conducted in New Caledonia has shown that coral reef-associated serranids harbour about 10 species of parasites per fish species, recent molecular classifications challenge the validity of the genera Cromileptes and Anyperodon. Each of these two genera has a species, which were included in the same clade as species of Epinephelus in a study based on five different genes. Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds, a compendium of fossil marine animal genera
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Grouper
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Groupers are fish of any of a number of genera in the subfamily Epinephelinae of the family Serranidae, in the order Perciformes. Not all serranids are called groupers, the family includes the sea basses. The common name grouper is usually given to fish in one of two genera, Epinephelus and Mycteroperca. In addition, the species classified in the small genera Anyperidon, Cromileptes, Dermatolepis, Gracila, Saloptia, fish in the genus Plectropomus are referred to as coralgroupers. These genera are all classified in the subfamily Epiphelinae, nonetheless, the word grouper on its own is usually taken as meaning the subfamily Epinephelinae. The word grouper is most widely believedto be from the Portuguese name, the origin of this name in Portuguese is believed to be from an indigenous South American language. In Australia, groper is used instead of grouper for several species, in the Philippines, it is named lapu-lapu in Luzon, while in the Visayas and Mindanao it goes by the name pugapo. In New Zealand, groper refers to a type of wreckfish, Polyprion oxygeneios, in the Middle East, the fish is known as hammour, and is widely eaten, especially in the Persian Gulf region. Groupers are teleosts, typically having a body and a large mouth. They are not built for long-distance, fast swimming and they can be quite large, and lengths over a meter and weights up to 100 kg are not uncommon, though obviously in such a large group, species vary considerably. They swallow prey rather than biting pieces off it and they do not have many teeth on the edges of their jaws, but they have heavy crushing tooth plates inside the pharynx. They habitually eat fish, octopuses, and crustaceans, some species prefer to ambush their prey, while other species are active predators. Reports of fatal attacks on humans by the largest species, the giant grouper are unconfirmed and their mouths and gills form a powerful sucking system that sucks their prey in from a distance. They also use their mouths to dig into sand to form their shelters under big rocks, research indicates roving coralgroupers sometimes cooperate with giant morays in hunting. Groupers are mostly monandric protogynous hermaphrodites, i. e. they mature only as females and have the ability to change sex after sexual maturity, some species of groupers grow about a kilogram per year and are generally adolescent until they reach three kilograms, when they become female. The largest males often control harems containing three to 15 females, groupers often pair spawn, which enables large males to competitively exclude smaller males from reproducing. As such, if a small female grouper were to change sex before it could control a harem as a male, if no male is available, the largest female that can increase fitness by changing sex will do so. Gonochorism, or a strategy with two distinct sexes, has evolved independently in groupers at least five times
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Marcus Elieser Bloch
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Marcus Elieser Bloch was a German medical doctor and naturalist. He is generally considered one of the most important ichthyologists of the 18th century, Bloch was born at Ansbach in 1723. His Jewish parents, being poor, gave him hardly any education, so that on arriving at manhood he was almost illiterate. Some knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinical literature enabled him, however, here he learned German thoroughly and mastered some Latin, taking up also the study of anatomy. After taking the degree of M. D. at Frankfort-on-the-Oder in 1747, he settled in Berlin and he found means to collect there a valuable museum of objects from all the kingdoms of nature, as well as an extensive library. His first work of importance was an essay on the different species of worms found in the bodies of other animals and his health, which had hitherto been unimpaired, began to decline. He went to Carlsbad for its recovery, but his constitution was exhausted and he died in Carlsbad on August 6,1799. Bloch is best known for his work in ichthyology. Between 1782 and 1795 he published his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische and his labour on this work occupied a considerable portion of his life, and is considered to have laid the foundations of the science of ichthyology. The publication was encouraged by a subscription, and it passed rapidly through five editions in German. Blochs collection of about 1500 specimens is today preserved at the Museum für Naturkunde of the Humboldt University of Berlin. F. Hennig, Pater Plumier, Ludwig Schmidt, G. Bodenehr and J. F. Hennig Published 1795-1797 at the authors house in Berlin. In French Bloch’s Fishes revisited - eti. uva. nl
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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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Fish
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A fish is any member of a group of animals that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. They form a group to the tunicates, together forming the olfactores. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous, tetrapods emerged within lobe-finned fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. However, traditionally fish are rendered obsolete or paraphyletic by excluding the tetrapods, because in this manner the term fish is defined negatively as a paraphyletic group, it is not considered a formal taxonomic grouping in systematic biology. The traditional term pisces is considered a typological, but not a phylogenetic classification, the earliest organisms that can be classified as fish were soft-bodied chordates that first appeared during the Cambrian period. Although they lacked a true spine, they possessed notochords which allowed them to be more agile than their invertebrate counterparts, fish would continue to evolve through the Paleozoic era, diversifying into a wide variety of forms. Many fish of the Paleozoic developed external armor that protected them from predators, the first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods. Fish are abundant in most bodies of water and they can be found in nearly all aquatic environments, from high mountain streams to the abyssal and even hadal depths of the deepest oceans. With 33,100 described species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any group of vertebrates. Fish are an important resource for humans worldwide, especially as food, commercial and subsistence fishers hunt fish in wild fisheries or farm them in ponds or in cages in the ocean. They are also caught by fishers, kept as pets, raised by fishkeepers. Fish have had a role in culture through the ages, serving as deities, religious symbols, fish do not represent a monophyletic group, and therefore the evolution of fish is not studied as a single event. Early fish from the record are represented by a group of small, jawless. Jawless fish lineages are mostly extinct, an extant clade, the lampreys may approximate ancient pre-jawed fish. The first jaws are found in Placodermi fossils, the diversity of jawed vertebrates may indicate the evolutionary advantage of a jawed mouth. It is unclear if the advantage of a hinged jaw is greater biting force, improved respiration, fish may have evolved from a creature similar to a coral-like sea squirt, whose larvae resemble primitive fish in important ways. The first ancestors of fish may have kept the form into adulthood. Fish are a group, that is, any clade containing all fish also contains the tetrapods
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Family (biology)
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In biological classification, family is one of the eight major taxonomic ranks, it is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks above the rank of genus. In vernacular usage, a family may be named one of its common members, for example, walnuts and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae. What does or does not belong to a family—or whether a family should be recognized at all—are proposed and determined by practicing taxonomists. There are no rules for describing or recognizing a family. Taxonomists often take different positions about descriptions of taxa, and there may be no broad consensus across the community for some time. Some described taxa are accepted broadly and quickly, but others only rarely, if at all, the naming of families is codified by various international codes. In zoological nomenclature, the names of animals end with the suffix -idae. The concept of rank at time was not yet settled, and in the preface to the Prodromus Magnol spoke of uniting his families into larger genera. Carolus Linnaeus used the word familia in his Philosophia botanica to denote groups of plants, trees, herbs, ferns, palms. He used this term only in the section of the book. In zoology, the family as an intermediate between order and genus was introduced by Pierre André Latreille in his Précis des caractères génériques des insectes. He used families in some but not in all his orders of insects, families can be used for evolutionary, palaeontological and generic studies because they are more stable than lower taxonomic levels such as genera and species
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Atlantic Ocean
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
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Indian Ocean
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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf, the oceans continental shelves are narrow, averaging 200 kilometres in width. An exception is found off Australias western coast, where the width exceeds 1,000 kilometres. The average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m and its deepest point is Diamantina Deep in Diamantina Trench, at 8,047 m deep, Sunda Trench has a depth of 7, 258–7,725 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the basin is covered by pelagic sediments. The remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments, glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes. The major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere is in this ocean, marginal seas, gulfs, bays and straits of the Indian Ocean include, The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April, from May until October south, in the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, and about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency, among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi, Shatt al-Arab, Indus, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jubba and Irrawaddy River. The oceans currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, during the winter monsoon, however, currents in the north are reversed. Deep water circulation is controlled primarily by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, north of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C, exceeding 28 °C to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly, surface water salinity ranges from 32 to 37 parts per 1000, the highest occurring in the Arabian Sea and in a belt between southern Africa and south-western Australia
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Pacific Ocean
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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
29.
Pehr Osbeck
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Pehr Osbeck was a Swedish explorer, naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. He was born in the parish of Hålanda on Västergötland and studied at Uppsala with Carolus Linnaeus, in 1750–1752 he travelled as chaplain on the ship Prins Carl to Asia where he spent four months studying the flora, fauna, and people of the Canton region of China. He returned home just in time to more than 600 species of plant to Linnaeus Species Plantarum. In 1757 he published the journal of his voyage to China, Dagbok öfwer en ostindisk Resa åren, in 1758, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He ended his career as the parish priest of Våxtorp and Hasslöv in Halland and his large collections are preserved in Sweden and the UK. He is commemorated by the genus Osbeckia L. of plants in the family Melastomataceae, a voyage to China and East Indies, Vol. I. A voyage to China and East Indies, Vol. II
30.
Coenraad Jacob Temminck
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Coenraad Jacob Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat, zoologist, and museum director. Coenraad Jacob Temminck was born on 31 March 1778 in Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic, from his father, who was treasurer of the Dutch East India Company, he inherited a large collection of bird specimens. Temmincks Manuel dornithologie, ou Tableau systématique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe was the work on European birds for many years. Temminck was the first director of the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden from 1820 until his death, in 1831, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1836 he became member of the Royal Institute, predecessor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts, Temminck died on 30 January 1858, at the age of 79, in Leiden, Netherlands. Histoire naturelle générale des pigeons et des gallinacés, Manuel dornithologie ou Tableau systématique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe. Sepps & Dufour, Amsterdam, Paris 1815–40, observations sur la classification méthodique des oiseaux et remarques sur lanalyse dune nouvelle ornithologie élémentaire. Nouveau recueil de planches coloriées doiseaux, pour servir de suite et de complément aux planches enluminées de Buffon, atlas des oiseaux dEurope, pour servir de complément au Manuel dornithologie de M. Temminck. Dufour & dOcagne, Paris, Leiden 1827–41, nouveau recueil de planches coloriées doiseaux. Iconographie ornithologique ou nouveau recueil général de planches peintes doiseaux Paris, coup-doeil général sur les possessions néerlandaises dans lInde archipélagique. Esquisses zoologiques sur la côte de Guiné, las Posesiones holandesas en el Archipiélago de la India. A large number of animals were named for Temminck in the 19th century. Varius × G. le partie, les mammifères Secondary works Erwin Stresemann, Analyse von C. J. Temmincks Catalogue systématique, Zoologische Mededelingen Vol.31,1953, p. 319–331 A. J. P. Raat, Alexander von Humboldt and Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Zoologische Bijdragen, Vol.21,1976, p. 19–38
31.
Hermann Schlegel
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Hermann Schlegel was a German ornithologist and herpetologist. Schlegel was born at Altenburg, the son of a brassfounder and his father collected butterflies, which stimulated Schlegels interest in natural history. The discovery, by chance, of a buzzards nest led him to the study of birds, Schlegel started to work for his father, but soon tired of it. He travelled to Vienna in 1824, where, at the university, he attended the lectures of Leopold Fitzinger, a letter of introduction from Brehm to Joseph Natterer gained him a position at the Naturhistorisches Museum. At first Schlegel worked mainly on the collection and wrote Essai sur la Physionomie des Serpens. It was at time that Schlegel met Philipp Franz von Siebold. They became firm friends and collaborated on Fauna Japonica, in 1847 he became correspondent of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, when that became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1851 he became member. When Temminck died at the beginning of 1858, Schlegel succeeded him as director of the history museum. Schlegel was particularly interested in Southeast Asia, and in 1857 sent his son Gustav to collect birds in China, Gustav arrived to find that Robert Swinhoe had gotten there first. In 1859, Schlegel sent Heinrich Agathon Bernstein to collect birds in New Guinea, after the death of Bernstein in 1865, he was succeeded by Hermann von Rosenberg. Schlegel took on an assistant, Otto Finsch. At the same time, he started to publish a magazine, Notes from the Leyden Museum, as well as a vast work of 14 volumes. He employed three talented illustrators, John Gerrard Keulemans, Joseph Smit and Joseph Wolf. The end of Schlegels life was difficult, his wife died in 1864, Finsch moved to the history museum at Bremen. Schlegel died on 17 January 1884 in Leiden, bromley, Kent, Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd.256 pp. ISBN 1-873403-97-6
32.
George Albert Boulenger
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George Albert Boulenger FRS was a Belgian-British zoologist who described and gave scientific names to over 2,000 new animal species, chiefly fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Boulenger was also an active botanist during the last 30 years of his life, Boulenger was born in Brussels, Belgium, the only son of Gustave Boulenger, a Belgian public notary, and Juliette Piérart de Valenciennes. He also made frequent visits during this time to the Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle in Paris and his position in the British Museum meant that he had to be a civil servant of the British Empire, so became a naturalized British subject. In 1882, he became an assistant in the Department of Zoology. After his retirement from the British Museum, Boulenger studied roses and published 34 papers on botanical subjects and he died in Saint Malo, France. According to biographical accounts, he was incredibly methodical and had a memory that enabled him to remember every specimen. He also had powers of writing, seldom made a second draft of anything he wrote. Boulenger also played the violin, could speak French, German, and English apart from reading Spanish, Italian, as a zoologist, he also had a working knowledge of both Greek and Latin. By 1921, Boulenger had published 875 papers totaling more than 5,000 pages, as well as 19 monographs on fishes, amphibians, the list of his publications and its index of species covers 77 printed pages. He described 1,096 species of fish,556 species of amphibians and he was famous for his monographs on amphibians, lizards and other reptiles, and fishes for example his monographs on the fishes of Africa. He was a member of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and was elected its first honorary member in 1935, in 1937, Belgium conferred on him the Order of Léopold, the highest honor awarded to a civilian. His son, Edward George Boulenger, was also a zoologist, in 1897, King Léopold II of Belgium started to recruit naturalists to help create the Congo museum. Boulenger was named chairman for this commission and his main discovery in 1921 was a strange fish from the Congo. It was eyeless and lacked pigmentation and he recognized it as new and unrelated to any extant epigean species of Africa. He wrote a paper describing this new species of cave fish. He called it Caecobarbus geertsii, from caeco = blind, barbus = barb, and geertsii, honoring a person, M. Geerts. Today, it is known as the Congo or African blind barb, Boulenger described hundreds of reptile taxa,587 species described by him are still recognised today. He also described some amphibians and many fishes, the water cobra genus Boulengerina was named for G. A
33.
Pieter Bleeker
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Pieter Bleeker was a Dutch medical doctor, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. He was famous for the Atlas Ichthyologique des Orientales Neerlandaises, his work on the fishes of East Asia published between 1862 and 1877. Bleeker was employed as a officer in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army from 1842 to 1860. During that time, he did most of his ichthyology work and he acquired many of his specimens from local fishermen, but he also built up an extended network of contacts who would send him specimens from various government outposts throughout the islands. During his time in Indonesia, he collected well over 12,000 specimens, Bleeker corresponded with Auguste Duméril of Paris. His work in ichthyology and tropical medicine was recognised by two doctorates honoris causa and it was published in 36 volumes between 1862 and his death in 1878. Between 1977 and 1983, the Smithsonian republished the work in 10 volumes, Bleeker published more than 500 papers on ichthyology, describing 511 new genera and 1,925 new species. He also worked in herpetology, describing at least 14 species of reptiles, in 1855, he became correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, department Natuurkunde, and in 1862 a member. In 1856 he was elected correspondent for the Muséum national dhistoire naturelle in Paris, in January 1864 he received a French knighthood of the Légion dhonneur. He was president of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M.2011. Xiii +296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5, P. Bleeker, Levensbericht in, Jaarboek,1877, Amsterdam, pp. 5-159 Bleeker, P, van Oijen, MJP, Loots, GMP, van Limburg, FJG. A precursor of the fish of the Indian Archipelago, the Bleeker/Günther letters and the sale of Bleeker specimens to the British Museum. Whitehead, PJP, Boeseman, M, Wheeler, AC, the types of Bleekers Indo-Pacific Elopoid and Clupeoid Fishes
34.
Theodore Nicholas Gill
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Theodore Nicholas Gill was an American ichthyologist, mammalogist, malacologist and librarian. Born and educated in New York City under private tutors, Gill early showed interest in natural history. He was associated with J. Carson Brevoort in the arrangement of the latters entomological and ichthyological collections before going to Washington D. C. in 1863 to work at the Smithsonian Institution. He catalogued mammals, fishes and mollusks most particularly although maintaining proficiency in other orders of animals and he was librarian at the Smithsonian and also senior assistant to the Library of Congress. Gill was professor of zoology at George Washington University and he was also a member of the Megatherium Club at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. Fellow members frequently mocked him for his vanity and he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1897. Besides 400 separate papers on subjects, his major publications include,1871. Arrangements of the Families of Mollusks, arrangement of the Families of Mammals. Arrangement of the Families of Fishes, catalogue of the Fishes of the East Coast of North America. Bibliography of the Fishes of the Pacific of the United States to the End of 1879, reports on Zoology for the annual volumes of the Smithsonian Institution from 1879 to. American Malacologists, A national register of professional and amateur malacologists and private shell collectors,494 pp. Obituary in The Auk, October 1914, Number 4. Appletons Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske, six volumes, New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1887–1889 Smithsonian biography of Theodore Gill A pdf biography of T. H. Gill at the National Academy of Sciences webstire
35.
Areolate grouper
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The areolate grouper is a fish of a genus of groupers. It is a fish that inhabits coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region. They are produced through aquaculture and commercially fished and they currently face no threats to their survival. The areolate grouper is a fish that lives near coral reefs. Its coloration is whitish to gray with rounded brownish spots, it is identifiable by a narrow, white. It has 11 dorsal spines, 15-17 dorsal soft rays,3 anal spines and 8 anal soft rays, several Middle Eastern and Asian languages have common names for this fish, as well. It is often confused with the brownspotted grouper found in the Persian Gulf, the areolate grouper is found in the tropical region ranging from 35°N - 33°S, 29°E - 180°E. They are found in the Indo-Pacific region from the Red Sea and it was recently recorded to have been observed in Tonga, but appears to be absent from areas in the western Indian Ocean. This grouper is found in seagrass beds or on fine sediment bottoms near rocky reefs, dead coral. Juveniles are common at depths to 80 m, eggs. Like other groupers, the grouper is a sex-changing species, young are female. Maturity is reached at a length of 22 cm, and spawning usually occurs during the months of May, June. After hatching, wild grouper larvae eat copepods and other small zooplankton, areolate grouper feed on fish and benthic invertebrates, primarily prawns and crabs. The areolate grouper is one of about 16 species of groupers commonly raised using aquaculture, floating net cages, the primary culture method, are supported by a floating frame of plastic pipe, wood, or other material, and usually are anchored to the sea floor. This method is simple, has low investment, and uses existing bodies of water. Disadvantages compared to pond culture include vulnerability to water quality problems. Also, no control over temperature, which is known to strongly affect growth rates, is possible. Grouper consistently demands a high price, so fishing pressure is intense
36.
Achille Valenciennes
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Achille Valenciennes was a French zoologist. Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier, Valenciennes study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology. Valenciennes also carried out diverse systematic classifications, linking fossil and current species and he worked with Cuvier on the 22-volume Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, carrying on alone after Cuvier died in 1832. In 1832 he succeeded Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville as chair of Histoire naturelle des mollusques, des vers et des zoophytes at the Muséum national dhistoire naturelle. Early in his career, he was tasked of classifying animals described by Alexander von Humboldt during his travels in the American tropics, and he is the binomial authority for many species of fish, such as the bartail jawfish. Working in the field of herpetology, Valenciennes described two new species of reptiles. The organ of Valenciennes, a part of the anatomy of the female Nautilus genus whose purpose remains unknown, is named after him
37.
Francis de Laporte de Castelnau
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François Louis Nompar de Caumont La Force, comte de Castelnau was a French naturalist, known also as François Laporte or Francis de Castelnau. Born in London, Castelnau studied natural history in Paris, from 1837 to 1841 he led a scientific expedition to Canada, where he studied the fauna of the Canadian lakes and the political systems of Upper and Lower Canada and of the United States. He was gone for five years and he served as the French consul in Bahia in 1848, in Siam from 1848 until 1862, and in Melbourne, Australia from 1864 to 1877. Through no fault of his own, Castelnaus name is attached to an Australian hoax, ompax spatuloides, a supposed ganoid fish said to have been discovered in 1872 and named by Castelnau, was a joke originally directed at Karl Staiger, the director of the Brisbane Museum. Staiger forwarded a sketch and description of the fish to Castelnau. Vues et souvenirs de lAmérique du Nord Expédition dans les parties centrales de lAmérique, with Hippolyte Louis Gory Histoire naturelle et iconographie des insectes coléoptères, publiée par monographies séparées, quatre monographies dont la première semble être la seule signée par Laporte. Mémoires sur les poissons de lAfrique australe,1843, Francis L. de Laporte, Comte de Castelnau, in Tom Taylor and Michael Taylor, Aves, A Survey of the Literature of Neotropical Ornithology, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Libraries,2011. Works by or about Francis de Laporte de Castelnau at Internet Archive Francis de Castelnaus expedition Australian National Biography Bright Sparcs Biography
38.
Brown spotted reef cod
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The brown spotted reef cod, known as Souman or Hamour-e Khaldar-e Qahvei in Persian and commonly as brownspotted grouper in English, is a fish belonging to the family Serranidae. E. chlorostigma can reach a length of 12–75 cm and a weight up to 7 kg and it is one of the largest coral dwelling fish. It has large pectoral and caudal fins that enable it to move and it has a pale green gray body covered with small circular brown blotches, except for its belly which is lighter in color. When aroused, the fish is able to change its body shading according to its surroundings, five dark brown vertical bands appear along the body. Its mouth is large and capable of being opened to the width of the body diameter. It feeds on crabs, cuttle fish and almost any small fish. It is shy and lazy in its habits, when feeding, E. chlorostigma hides in its cave opening or in between corals and waits for some unsuspecting prey to pass by close enough to be pounced upon and swallowed whole. Predators are usually warned off by a display of mouth gaping. Cooked hamour in all its forms is a prized dish in Southern parts of the Persian Gulf. It is a fish and prefers coral caves or rock crevices in which to live. This species can be found in the Persian Gulf, in the Indian Ocean and this parasite species was named for the New Caledonian name of the fish, loche pintade. Hamour Cuvier, G. & A. Valenciennes, des poissons de la famille des perches, ou des percoïdes. Tome Sixième. v.2, i-xxi +2 pp. + 1-490, I Randall, J. E.1993, Groupers of the World. An annotated and illustrated catalogue of the grouper, rockcod, hind, coral grouper, collette i D. Facey, The diversity of fishes. Blackwell Science, Malden, Massachusetts, United States,1997, Fishes, An Introduction to Ichthyology, 4a. Edició, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, United States, nelson, J. Fishes of the World, 3rd ed. New York, United States, John Wiley and Sons, the World Encyclopedia of Fishes, 2nd. Fish Base WoRMS ITIS Biolib Arkive Ftp. fao. org
