1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
Bird
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Birds, a subgroup of Reptiles, are the last living examples of Dinosaurs. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. Birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, the fossil record indicates that birds evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, Birds, especially those in the southern continents, survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the species, the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have evolved for swimming. Many species annually migrate great distances, Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or, rarely, Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents, most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilised, songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser, Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry, the first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use, Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda, Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria
5.
Falcon
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Falcons are birds of prey in the genus Falco, which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, adult falcons have thin, tapered wings, which enable them to fly at high speed and change direction rapidly. Fledgling falcons, in their first year of flying, have flight feathers. This makes flying easier while learning the skills required to be effective hunters as adults. The falcons are the largest genus in the Falconinae subfamily of Falconidae, which also includes another subfamily comprising caracaras. All these birds kill with their beaks, using a tooth on the side of their beaks—unlike the hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey in the Accipitridae, the largest falcon is the gyrfalcon at up to 65 cm in length. The smallest falcons are the kestrels, of which the Seychelles kestrel measures just 25 cm, as with hawks and owls, falcons exhibit sexual dimorphism, with the females typically larger than the males, thus allowing a wider range of prey species. Some small falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, as is the case with many birds of prey, falcons have exceptional powers of vision, the visual acuity of one species has been measured at 2.6 times that of a normal human. Peregrine falcons have been recorded diving at speeds of 200 miles per hour, the Late Latin falco is believed to derive from falx as meaning a sickle, referencing the claws of the bird. In Middle English and Old French, the term faucon refers generically to several captive raptor species, the traditional term for a male falcon is tercel or tiercel, from the Latin tertius because of the belief that only one in three eggs hatched a male bird. Some sources give the etymology as deriving from the fact that a falcon is about one-third smaller than a female. A falcon chick, especially one reared for falconry, still in its stage, is known as an eyas. The word arose by mistaken division of Old French un niais, the technique of hunting with trained captive birds of prey is known as falconry. Compared to other birds of prey, the record of the falcons is not well distributed in time. The oldest fossils tentatively assigned to this genus are from the Late Miocene and this coincides with a period in which many modern genera of birds became recognizable in the fossil record. Falcons are roughly divisible into three or four groups, kestrels feed chiefly on terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates of appropriate size, such as rodents, reptiles, or insects. The second group contains slightly larger species, the hobbies and relatives and these birds are characterized by considerable amounts of dark slate-grey in their plumage, their malar areas are nearly always black. They feed mainly on smaller birds, third are the peregrine falcon and its relatives, variably sized powerful birds that also have a black malar area, and often a black cap, as well
6.
Carl Linnaeus
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Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the father of modern taxonomy. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus, Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his education at Uppsala University. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands and he then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, at the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message, Tell him I know no man on earth. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, Swedish author August Strindberg wrote, Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist. Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum, The Pliny of the North and he is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany, the abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species names is L. In older publications, sometimes the abbreviation Linn. is found, Linnæus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. He was the first child of Nicolaus Ingemarsson and Christina Brodersonia and his siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, and Emerentia Linnæa. One of a line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Stenbrohult, Samuel Brodersonius, a year after Linnæus birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, and his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult. The family moved into the rectory from the curates house, even in his early years, Linnæus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and often showed flowers to Linnaeus, soon Linnæus was given his own patch of earth where he could grow plants
7.
South Island
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The South Island or Te Waipounamu is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, the South Island covers 150,437 square kilometres and has a temperate climate. In the early stages of European settlement of the country, the South Island had the majority of the European population, in prose, the two main islands of New Zealand are called the North Island and the South Island, with the definite article. Charcoal drawings can be found on rock shelters in the centre of the South Island. The drawings are estimated to be between 500 and 800 years old, and portray animals, people and fantastic creatures, possibly stylised reptiles, some of the birds pictured are long extinct, including moa and Haasts eagles. They were drawn by early Māori, but by the time Europeans arrived, early inhabitants of the South Island were the Waitaha. They were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest by the Kāti Mamoe in the 16th century, Kāti Mamoe were in turn largely absorbed via marriage and conquest by the Kāi Tahu who migrated south in the 17th century. While today there is no distinct Kāti Mamoe organisation, many Kāi Tahu have Kāti Mamoe links in their whakapapa and, a notable feature of the Moriori culture, an emphasis on pacifism, proved disadvantageous when Māori warriors arrived in the 1830s aboard a chartered European ship. In the early 18th century, Kāi Tahu, a Māori tribe who originated on the east coast of the North Island, There they and Kāti Mamoe fought Ngāi Tara and Rangitāne in the Wairau Valley. Ngāti Māmoe then ceded the east coast regions north of the Clarence River to Kāi Tahu, Kāi Tahu continued to push south, conquering Kaikoura. By the 1730s, Kāi Tahu had settled in Canterbury, including Banks Peninsula, from there they spread further south and into the West Coast. In 1827-1828 Ngāti Toa under the leadership of Te Rauparaha successfully attacked Kāi Tahu at Kaikoura, Ngāti Toa then visited Kaiapoi, ostensibly to trade. When they attacked their hosts, the well-prepared Kāi Tahu killed all the leading Ngāti Toa chiefs except Te Rauparaha, Te Rauparaha returned to his Kapiti Island stronghold. After destroying Te Maiharanuis village they took their captives to Kapiti, John Stewart, though arrested and sent to trial in Sydney as an accomplice to murder, nevertheless escaped conviction. In the summer of 1831–32 Te Rauparaha attacked the Kaiapoi pā, Kaiapoi was engaged in a three-month siege by Te Rauparaha, during which his men successfully sapped the pā. They then attacked Kāi Tahu on Banks Peninsula and took the pā at Onawe, in 1832-33 Kāi Tahu retaliated under the leadership of Tūhawaiki and others, attacking Ngāti Toa at Lake Grassmere. Kāi Tahu prevailed, and killed many Ngāti Toa, although Te Rauparaha again escaped, fighting continued for a year or so, with Kāi Tahu maintaining the upper hand. Ngāti Toa never again made an incursion into Kāi Tahu territory
8.
Auckland Islands
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The Auckland Islands are an archipelago of New Zealand, lying 465 kilometres south of the South Island. It includes Auckland Island, Adams Island, Enderby Island, Disappointment Island, Ewing Island, Rose Island, Dundas Island and Green Island, the islands have no permanent human inhabitants. Ecologically, the Auckland Islands form part of the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra ecoregion, along with other New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands, they were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. They include Auckland Island, Adams Island, Enderby Island, Disappointment Island, Ewing Island, Rose Island, Dundas Island and Green Island, the islands are close to each other, separated by narrow channels, and the coastline is rugged, with numerous deep inlets. Auckland Island, the island, has an approximate land area of 510 km2. It is notable for its cliffs and rugged terrain, which rises to over 600 m. Prominent peaks include Cavern Peak, Mount Raynal, Mount DUrville, Mount Easton, the southern end of the island broadens to a width of 26 km. Here, the channel of Carnley Harbour separates the main island from the roughly triangular Adams Island. The channel is the remains of the crater of a volcano, and Adams Island. The main island features many sharply incised inlets, notably Port Ross at the northern end, the group includes numerous other smaller islands, notably Disappointment Island and Enderby Island, each covering less than 5 km2. Most of the islands originated volcanically, with the archipelago dominated by two 12 million year old Miocene volcanoes, subsequently eroded and dissected and these rest on older volcanic rocks 15-25 million years old with some older granites and fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks from around 100 million years ago. The archipelago features an oceanic climate. The Auckland Islands have a constant cool & mild weather year-round. Evidence exists that Polynesian voyagers first discovered the Auckland Islands, traces of Polynesian settlement, possibly dating to the 13th century, have been found by archaeologists on Enderby Island. This is the most southerly settlement by Polynesians yet known, a whaling vessel, Ocean, discovered the islands in 1806, finding them uninhabited. Captain Abraham Bristow named them Lord Aucklands on 18 August 1806 in honour of his fathers friend William Eden, Bristow worked for the businessman Samuel Enderby, the namesake of Enderby Island. The following year Bristow returned on the Sarah in order to claim the archipelago for Britain, the explorers Dumont DUrville in 1839, and James Clark Ross visited in 1839 and in 1840 respectively. Whalers and sealers set up bases, the islands becoming one of the principal sealing stations in the Pacific in the years immediately after their discovery
9.
Chatham Islands
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The Chatham Islands form an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 650 kilometres east of mainland New Zealand. It consists of ten islands within a 40-kilometre radius, the largest of which are Chatham Island. The archipelago is called Rēkohu in the indigenous Moriori language, Moriori are the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands, and members of the Māori Ngāti Mutunga tribe have also settled on the island. It has officially been part of New Zealand since 1842 and includes the countrys easternmost point, the islands are at about 43°53′S 176°31′W, roughly 840 kilometres east of Christchurch, New Zealand. The nearest mainland New Zealand point to the Chatham Islands is Cape Turnagain, in the North Island at a distance of 650 kilometres, the nearest mainland city to the islands is Hastings, New Zealand, located 697 kilometres to the North-West. The two largest islands, Chatham Island and Pitt Island, constitute most of the area of 966 square kilometres. The islands sit on the Chatham Rise, a large, relatively shallowly submerged part of the Zealandia continent that stretches east from near the South Island. The Chatham Islands, which emerged only within the last four years, are the only part of the Chatham Rise showing above sea level. The islands are hilly with coasts being a mixture including cliffs and dunes, beaches. Chatham has a number of streams, including Te Awainanga and Tuku, Chatham and Pitt are the only inhabited islands, with the remaining smaller islands being conservation reserves with restricted or prohibited access. The livelihoods of the inhabitants depend on agriculture, with the island being an exporter of coldwater crayfish, the names of the main islands, in the order of occupation are, Chatham Islands have a maritime climate characterised by a narrow temperature range and relatively frequent rainfall. Its isolated position far from any sizeable landmass renders the record temperature for main settlement Waitangi to be just 23.8 °C. The climate is cool, wet and windy, with high temperatures between 15 and 20 °C in summer, and between 5 and 10 °C in July, the Southern Hemisphere winter. Snow is extremely rare, having being recorded near sea level in July 2015 after several decades, the International Date Line lies to the east of the Chathams, even though the islands lie east of 180° longitude. Of interest are the trees, with branches trailing almost horizontally in the lee of the wind. The ferns in the forest understory include Blechnum discolor, the islands are a breeding ground for huge flocks of seabirds and are home to a number of endemic birds, some of which are seabirds and others which live on the islands. The best known species are the magenta petrel and the black robin, Other endemic species are the Chatham oystercatcher, the Chatham gerygone, Chatham pigeon, Forbes parakeet, the Chatham snipe and the shore plover. The endemic Chatham shag, Pitt shag and the Chatham albatross are at risk of capture by a variety of fishing gear, including fishing lines, trawls, gillnets, for accounts and notes on seabird species seen in the Chathams between 1960 and 1993 online
10.
Fossil
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Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record. The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, such a preserved specimen is called a fossil if it is older than some minimum age, most often the arbitrary date of 10,000 years. The observation that fossils were associated with certain rock strata led early geologists to recognize a geological timescale in the 19th century. The development of dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed geologists to determine the numerical or absolute age of the various strata. Like extant organisms, fossils vary in size from microscopic, even single bacterial cells one micrometer in diameter, to gigantic, such as dinosaurs, Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces. These types of fossil are called trace fossils, as opposed to body fossils, finally, past life leaves some markers that cannot be seen but can be detected in the form of biochemical signals, these are known as chemofossils or biosignatures. The process of fossilization varies according to type and external conditions. Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried, the empty spaces within an organism become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces and this process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils, for permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death or soon after the initial decay process. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil, some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth, other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis, in some cases the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an external mold, if this hole is later filled with other minerals, it is a cast. An endocast or internal mold is formed when sediments or minerals fill the cavity of an organism. This is a form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, if this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented examples of such mineralization, replacement occurs when the shell, bone or other tissue is replaced with another mineral
11.
Auckland War Memorial Museum
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The Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira is one of New Zealands most important museums and war memorials. Its collections concentrate on New Zealand history, natural history, as well as military history, the Auckland Museum traces its lineage back to 1852 when it was established in a farm workers cottage where the University of Auckland is now located. With an initial call for the donation of specimens of wool for display it attracted 708 visitors in its first year, an Italianate-style building was constructed for the museum in Princes Street, near Government House and across the road from the Northern Club. These new premises included a large gallery top-lit by a metal framed skylight and this room proved problematic as it was impossible to heat during the winter but overheated during the summer. Canvas awnings used to shield the roof from harsh sunlight made the difficult to view in the resulting gloom. One of the visitors during the 1890s was the French artist Gauguin, the site was a hill in the Government Domain commanding an impressive view of the Waitemata Harbour. Permission was granted by the Auckland City Council in 1918, the Council in its liberality being given three seats on the Museum Council and it was opened by the Governor-General General Sir Charles Fergusson. The museum architects commissioned Kohns Jewellers of Queen Street to create a finely detailed model of the museum. This was presented to Sir James Gunson on completion of the museum, the building is considered one of the finest Greco-Roman buildings in the Southern Hemisphere. It has an A classification from the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, of particular interest is the interior plasterwork which incorporates Maori details in an amalgamation of Neo-Greek and art-deco styles. Likewise the exterior bas-reliefs depicting 20th-century armed forces and personnel are in a style which mixes Neo-Greek with Art-Deco, the bulk of the building is English Portland Stone with detailing in New Zealand granite from the Coromandel. This extension is of concrete block construction rendered in cement stucco to harmonise with the Portland Stone of the earlier building, in 2006 the inner courtyard was enclosed by the grand atrium at the southern entrance. The quotation The Whole Earth is the Sepulchre of Famous Men over the front porch is attributed to the Greek general Pericles, renovation In the last two decades, the museum was renovated and extended in two stages. The first stage saw the building restored and the exhibits partly replaced during the 1990s for $NZ43 million. The second stage of restoration has seen a great dome – atrium constructed within the central courtyard. $NZ27 million of that was provided by the government, with the ASB Trust, the second stage finished in 2007. It has also received the ACENZ Innovate NZ Gold Award for the redevelopment, the bowl, which is the internal centre-piece of the expansion, weighs 700 tonnes and is suspended free-hanging from trusses spanning over it from the elevator four shafts located around it. A new 204-space underground parking garage at the rear has also constructed to help cover the high demand for parking in the Auckland Domain
12.
Marlborough Region
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The Marlborough Region, commonly known simply as Marlborough, is one of the regions of New Zealand, located in the northeast of the South Island. Marlborough is an authority, both a region and a district, and its council is located at Blenheim. It has a population of 45,500, Marlborough is known for its dry climate, the picturesque Marlborough Sounds, and Sauvignon blanc wine. It takes its name from the earlier Marlborough Province, which was named after John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Marlboroughs geography can be roughly divided into four sections. Two of these sections, in the south and the west, are mountainous and this is particularly true of the southern section, which rises to the peaks of the Kaikoura Ranges. These two mountainous regions are the final vestiges of the ranges that make up the Southern Alps. Between these two areas is the long valley of the Wairau River. This broadens to wide plains at its end, in the centre of which stands the town of Blenheim. This region has fertile soil and temperate weather, enabling it to become the centre of the New Zealand wine industry, the fourth geographic zone lies along its north coast. Here the drowned valleys of the Marlborough Sounds make for a convoluted, the town of Picton is located at the southern end of one of the larger sounds, Queen Charlotte Sound. The town of Havelock is located at the end of the Pelorus Sound. Blenheim is the capital and largest town, with 30,500 residents. The major towns are, Wairau Valley Marlborough is administered by a unitary authority, between 1859 and 1876 Marlborough had its own provincial government, and was known as the Marlborough Province, which ended when the Abolition of the Provinces Act came into force on 1 Nov 1876. Much of the population is found around the coastal plains around and to the south of the mouth of the Wairau. Apart from the urban areas of Blenheim and Picton, Marlboroughs towns include Havelock, Renwick, Ward. Marlboroughs world-famous former residents include rocket scientist William Pickering and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Rutherford, the sub-national GDP of the Marlborough region was estimated at US$1.193 billion in 2003, 1% of New Zealands national GDP. Marlborough can lay claim to starting the modern New Zealand wine industry, here in the late 1970s, Marlborough produced Sauvignon blanc, among other varietals, which led to confidence that New Zealand could produce interesting wine. Today, the Marlborough wine region represents 77% of total area in the country
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