Archaeodontosaurus
Archaeodontosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. Its fossils were found in the Isalo III Formation of Madagascar; the type species, Archaeodontosaurus descouensi, was described in September 2005. The specific name honours Didier Descouens, it is a probable sauropod, with prosauropod-like teeth. Dml.cmnh.org Media related to Archaeodontosaurus at Wikimedia Commons
Cambrian
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. Its subdivisions, its base, are somewhat in flux; the period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name of Wales, where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstätte sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells; as a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some periods. The Cambrian marked a profound change in life on Earth. Complex, multicellular organisms became more common in the millions of years preceding the Cambrian, but it was not until this period that mineralized—hence fossilized—organisms became common; the rapid diversification of life forms in the Cambrian, known as the Cambrian explosion, produced the first representatives of all modern animal phyla.
Phylogenetic analysis has supported the view that during the Cambrian radiation, metazoa evolved monophyletically from a single common ancestor: flagellated colonial protists similar to modern choanoflagellates. Although diverse life forms prospered in the oceans, the land is thought to have been comparatively barren—with nothing more complex than a microbial soil crust and a few molluscs that emerged to browse on the microbial biofilm. Most of the continents were 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 warm, polar ice was absent for much of the period. Despite the long recognition of its distinction from younger Ordovician rocks and older Precambrian rocks, it was not until 1994 that the Cambrian system/period was internationally ratified; the base of the Cambrian lies atop a complex assemblage of trace fossils known as the Treptichnus pedum assemblage. The use of Treptichnus pedum, a reference ichnofossil to mark the lower boundary of the Cambrian, is difficult since the occurrence of similar trace fossils belonging to the Treptichnids group are found well below the T. pedum in Namibia and Newfoundland, in the western USA.
The stratigraphic range of T. pedum overlaps the range of the Ediacaran fossils in Namibia, in Spain. The Cambrian Period was followed by the Ordovician Period; the Cambrian is divided into ten ages. Only three series and six stages are named and have a GSSP; because the international stratigraphic subdivision is not yet complete, many local subdivisions are still used. In some of these subdivisions the Cambrian is divided into three series with locally differing names – the Early Cambrian, Middle Cambrian and Furongian. Rocks of these epochs are referred to as belonging to Upper Cambrian. Trilobite zones allow biostratigraphic correlation in the Cambrian; each of the local series is divided into several stages. The Cambrian is divided into several regional faunal stages of which the Russian-Kazakhian system is most used in international parlance: *Most Russian paleontologists define the lower boundary of the Cambrian at the base of the Tommotian Stage, characterized by diversification and global distribution of organisms with mineral skeletons and the appearance of the first Archaeocyath bioherms.
The International Commission on Stratigraphy list the Cambrian period as beginning at 541 million years ago and ending at 485.4 million years ago. The lower boundary of the Cambrian was held to represent the first appearance of complex life, represented by trilobites; the recognition of small shelly fossils before the first trilobites, Ediacara biota earlier, led to calls for a more defined base to the Cambrian period. After decades of careful consideration, a continuous sedimentary sequence at Fortune Head, Newfoundland was settled upon as a formal base of the Cambrian period, to be correlated worldwide by the earliest appearance of Treptichnus pedum. Discovery of this fossil a few metres below the GSSP led to the refinement of this statement, it is the T. pedum ichnofossil assemblage, now formally used to correlate the base of the Cambrian. 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 gained favour, though the methods used to obtain this number are now considered to be unsuitable and inaccurate.
A more precise date using modern radiometric dating yield a date of 541 ± 0.3 million years ago. The ash horizon in Oman from which this date was recovered corresponds to a marked fall in the abundance of carbon-13 that correlates to equivalent excursions elsewhere in the world, to the disappearance of distinctive Ediacaran fossils. There are arguments that the dated horizon in Oman does not correspond to the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary, but represents a facies change from marine to evaporite-dominated strata — which w
Anatomical terms of location
Standard anatomical terms of location deal unambiguously with the anatomy of animals, including humans. All vertebrates have the same basic body plan – they are bilaterally symmetrical in early embryonic stages and bilaterally symmetrical in adulthood; that is, they have mirror-image left and right halves if divided down the middle. For these reasons, the basic directional terms can be considered to be those used in vertebrates. By extension, the same terms are used for many other organisms as well. While these terms are standardized within specific fields of biology, there are unavoidable, sometimes dramatic, differences between some disciplines. For example, differences in terminology remain a problem that, to some extent, still separates the terminology of human anatomy from that used in the study of various other zoological categories. Standardized anatomical and zoological terms of location have been developed based on Latin and Greek words, to enable all biological and medical scientists to delineate and communicate information about animal bodies and their component organs though the meaning of some of the terms is context-sensitive.
The vertebrates and Craniata share a substantial heritage and common structure, so many of the same terms are used for location. To avoid ambiguities this terminology is based on the anatomy of each animal in a standard way. For humans, one type of vertebrate, anatomical terms may differ from other forms of vertebrates. For one reason, this is because humans have a different neuraxis and, unlike animals that rest on four limbs, humans are considered when describing anatomy as being in the standard anatomical position, thus what is on "top" of a human is the head, whereas the "top" of a dog may be its back, the "top" of a flounder could refer to either its left or its right side. For invertebrates, standard application of locational terminology becomes difficult or debatable at best when the differences in morphology are so radical that common concepts are not homologous and do not refer to common concepts. For example, many species are not bilaterally symmetrical. In these species, terminology depends on their type of symmetry.
Because animals can change orientation with respect to their environment, because appendages like limbs and tentacles can change position with respect to the main body, positional descriptive terms need to refer to the animal as in its standard anatomical position. All descriptions are with respect to the organism in its standard anatomical position when the organism in question has appendages in another position; this helps avoid confusion in terminology. In humans, this refers to the body in a standing position with arms at the side and palms facing forward. While the universal vertebrate terminology used in veterinary medicine would work in human medicine, the human terms are thought to be too well established to be worth changing. Many anatomical terms can be combined, either to indicate a position in two axes or to indicate the direction of a movement relative to the body. For example, "anterolateral" indicates a position, both anterior and lateral to the body axis. In radiology, an X-ray image may be said to be "anteroposterior", indicating that the beam of X-rays pass from their source to patient's anterior body wall through the body to exit through posterior body wall.
There is no definite limit to the contexts in which terms may be modified to qualify each other in such combinations. The modifier term is truncated and an "o" or an "i" is added in prefixing it to the qualified term. For example, a view of an animal from an aspect at once dorsal and lateral might be called a "dorsolateral" view. Again, in describing the morphology of an organ or habitus of an animal such as many of the Platyhelminthes, one might speak of it as "dorsiventrally" flattened as opposed to bilaterally flattened animals such as ocean sunfish. Where desirable three or more terms may be agglutinated or concatenated, as in "anteriodorsolateral"; such terms sometimes used to be hyphenated. There is however little basis for any strict rule to interfere with choice of convenience in such usage. Three basic reference planes are used to describe location; the sagittal plane is a plane parallel to the sagittal suture. All other sagittal planes are parallel to it, it is known as a "longitudinal plane".
The plane is perpendicular to the ground. The median plane or midsagittal plane is in the midline of the body, divides the body into left and right portions; this passes through the head, spinal cord, and, in many animals, the tail. The term "median plane" can refer to the midsagittal plane of other structures, such as a digit; the frontal plane or coronal plane divides the body into ventral portions. For post-embryonic humans a coronal plane is vertical and a transverse plane is horizontal, but for embryos and quadrupeds a coronal plane is horizontal and a transverse plane is vertical. A longitudinal plane is any plane perpendicular to the transverse plane; the coronal plane and the sagittal plane are examples of longitudinal planes. A transverse plane known as a cross-section, divides the body into cranial and caudal portions. In human anatomy: A transverse plane is an X-Z plane, parallel to the ground, which s
Valanginian
In the geologic timescale, the Valanginian is an age or stage of the Early or Lower Cretaceous. It spans between 132.9 ± 2.0 Ma. The Valanginian stage succeeds the Berriasian stage of the Lower Cretaceous and precedes the Hauterivian stage of the Lower Cretaceous; the Valanginian was first described and named by Édouard Desor in 1853. It is named after a small town north of Neuchâtel in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland; the base of the Valanginian is at the first appearance of calpionellid species Calpionellites darderi in the stratigraphic column. A global reference section had in 2009 not yet been appointed; the top of the Valanginian is at the first appearance of the ammonite genus Acanthodiscus. The Valanginian is subdivided in Lower and Upper substages; the Upper substage begins at the first appearance of ammonite species Saynoceras verrucosum and the major marine transgression Va3. In the Tethys domain, the Valanginian stage contains five ammonite biozones: zone of Criosarasinella furcillata zone of Neocomites peregrinus zone of Saynoceras verrucosum zone of Busnardoites campylotoxus zone of Tirnovella pertransiens Gradstein, F.
M.. G. & Smith, A. G.. GeoWhen Database - Valanginian Mid-Cretaceous timescale and ühttp://stratigraphy.science.purdue.edu/charts/Timeslices/5_JurCret.pdf Jurassic-Cretaceous timescale], at the website of the subcommission for stratigraphic information of the ICS Stratigraphic chart of the Lower Cretaceous, at the website of Norges Network of offshore records of geology and stratigraphy
Animal
Animals are multicellular eukaryotic organisms that form the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there are over 7 million animal species in total. Animals range in length from 8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres and have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The category includes humans, but in colloquial use the term animal refers only to non-human animals; the study of non-human animals is known as zoology. Most living animal species are in the Bilateria, a clade whose members have a bilaterally symmetric body plan; the Bilateria include the protostomes—in which many groups of invertebrates are found, such as nematodes and molluscs—and the deuterostomes, containing the echinoderms and chordates.
Life forms interpreted. Many modern animal phyla became established in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion which began around 542 million years ago. 6,331 groups of genes common to all living animals have been identified. Aristotle divided animals into those with those without. Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical biological classification for animals in 1758 with his Systema Naturae, which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck expanded into 14 phyla by 1809. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the multicellular Metazoa and the Protozoa, single-celled organisms no longer considered animals. In modern times, the biological classification of animals relies on advanced techniques, such as molecular phylogenetics, which are effective at demonstrating the evolutionary relationships between animal taxa. Humans make use of many other animal species for food, including meat and eggs. Dogs have been used in hunting, while many aquatic animals are hunted for sport.
Non-human animals have appeared in art from the earliest times and are featured in mythology and religion. The word "animal" comes from the Latin animalis, having soul or living being; the biological definition includes all members of the kingdom Animalia. In colloquial usage, as a consequence of anthropocentrism, the term animal is sometimes used nonscientifically to refer only to non-human animals. Animals have several characteristics. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, unlike bacteria, which are prokaryotic, unlike protists, which are eukaryotic but unicellular. Unlike plants and algae, which produce their own nutrients animals are heterotrophic, feeding on organic material and digesting it internally. With few exceptions, animals breathe oxygen and respire aerobically. All animals are motile during at least part of their life cycle, but some animals, such as sponges, corals and barnacles become sessile; the blastula is a stage in embryonic development, unique to most animals, allowing cells to be differentiated into specialised tissues and organs.
All animals are composed of cells, surrounded by a characteristic extracellular matrix composed of collagen and elastic glycoproteins. During development, the animal extracellular matrix forms a flexible framework upon which cells can move about and be reorganised, making the formation of complex structures possible; this may be calcified, forming structures such as shells and spicules. In contrast, the cells of other multicellular organisms are held in place by cell walls, so develop by progressive growth. Animal cells uniquely possess the cell junctions called tight junctions, gap junctions, desmosomes. With few exceptions—in particular, the sponges and placozoans—animal bodies are differentiated into tissues; these include muscles, which enable locomotion, nerve tissues, which transmit signals and coordinate the body. There is an internal digestive chamber with either one opening or two openings. Nearly all animals make use of some form of sexual reproduction, they produce haploid gametes by meiosis.
These fuse to form zygotes, which develop via mitosis into a hollow sphere, called a blastula. In sponges, blastula larvae swim to a new location, attach to the seabed, develop into a new sponge. In most other groups, the blastula undergoes more complicated rearrangement, it first invaginates to form a gastrula with a digestive chamber and two separate germ layers, an external ectoderm and an internal endoderm. In most cases, a third germ layer, the mesoderm develops between them; these germ layers differentiate to form tissues and organs. Repeated instances of mating with a close relative during sexual reproduction leads to inbreeding depression within a population due to the increased prevalence of harmful recessive traits. Animals have evolved numerous mechanisms for avoiding close inbreeding. In some species, such as the splendid fairywren, females benefit by mating with multiple males, thus producing more offspring of higher genetic quality; some animals are capable of asexual reproduction, which results
Kotasaurus
Kotasaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic period. The only known species is Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis, it was discovered in the Kota Formation of Telangana and shared its habitat with the related Barapasaurus. So far the remains of at least 12 individuals are known; the greater part of the skeleton is known, but the skull is missing, with the exception of two teeth. Like all sauropods, it was a quadrupedal herbivore with long neck and tail. Kotasaurus is one of the most basal sauropods known; the general body plan was that of a typical sauropod, but in several basal features it resembles prosauropods. Like all sauropods, Kotasaurus was an obligate quadruped, while prosauropods were primitively bipedal; the body length is estimated at nine meters, with a weight of 2.5 tonnes, therefore comparable with that of sauropods. The femur was straight and oval in cross section, which means that the limbs were columnar; the teeth were spoon-shaped, like those of sauropods. Basal features, on the other hand, include the short and twisted humerus, as well as the retention of a lesser trochanter on the femur.
The neural spines of the vertebrae were built and their centra are massive, in contrast to those of the related Barapasaurus, which show more hollowing, be it without pneumatisation, of the sides as a weight-saving measure. Autapomorphies include the slender limb bones as well as the low and elongated preacetabular process, it was not clear if Kotasaurus represents a true sauropod or a basal sauropodomorph that has to be classified outside Sauropoda. Some paleontologists placed it inside a basal sauropod family called Vulcanodontidae though, together with Barapasaurus and the fragmentary Ohmdenosaurus and Zizhongosaurus; this grouping is now recognized to be paraphyletic. Today Kotasaurus is recognized as one of the most basal sauropods known; the exact relationships are not clear, however. A recent study by Bandyopadhyay and colleagues renders Kotasaurus to be more basal than Barapasaurus and Vulcanodon but more derived than Jingshanosaurus and Chinshakiangosaurus. All known fossils come from an area of 2,400 m² near the village of Yamanpalli in Telangana forty kilometres north of the Barapasaurus type locality.
These finds, altogether 840 skeletal parts, were found in the late 1970s. In 1988 they were named and described by P. M. Yadagiri as a new genus and species of sauropod, Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis; the generic name refers to the Kota Formation. The specific name reflects the provenance from Yamanpalli; the holotype is an ilium. The Geological Survey of India combined several elements into a skeletal mount and displayed it at the Birla Science Museum, Hyderabad. In 2001, Yadagiri described the osteology in more detail
Diplodocoidea
Diplodocoidea is a superfamily of sauropod dinosaurs, which included some of the longest animals of all time, including slender giants like Supersaurus, Diplodocus and Amphicoelias. Most had long necks and long, whip-like tails; this adaptation was taken to the extreme in the specialized sauropod Brachytrachelopan. A study of snout shape and dental microwear in diplodocoids showed that the square snouts, large proportion of pits, fine subparallel scratches in Apatosaurus, Diplodocus and Rebbachisaurus suggest ground-height nonselective browsing; this taxon is noteworthy because diplodocoid sauropods had the highest tooth replacement rates of any vertebrates, as exemplified by Nigersaurus, which had new teeth erupting every 30 days. The below taxonomy follows the study of Emanuel Tschopp, Octavio Mateus and Roger Benson, 2015: Diplodocoidea Haplocanthosaurus Diplodocimorpha Rebbachisauridae Flagellicaudata Dicraeosauridae Diplodocidae Amphicoelias Apatosaurinae DiplodocinaeThe phylogenetics of Diplodocoidea were reviewed in 2015 with a specimen-level phylogenetic analysis, as well as a species-level analysis.
Their cladistic analysis is shown below
