Crustacean
Crustaceans form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such familiar animals as crabs, crayfish, krill and barnacles. The crustacean group is treated as a subphylum, because of recent molecular studies it is now well accepted that the crustacean group is paraphyletic, comprises all animals in the Pancrustacea clade other than hexapods; some crustaceans are more related to insects and other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. The 67,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at 0.1 mm, to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to 3.8 m and a mass of 20 kg. Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, they are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous limbs, by their larval forms, such as the nauplius stage of branchiopods and copepods. Most crustaceans are free-living aquatic animals, but some are terrestrial, some are parasitic and some are sessile; the group has an extensive fossil record, reaching back to the Cambrian, includes living fossils such as Triops cancriformis, which has existed unchanged since the Triassic period.
More than 10 million tons of crustaceans are produced by fishery or farming for human consumption, the majority of it being shrimp and prawns. Krill and copepods are not as fished, but may be the animals with the greatest biomass on the planet, form a vital part of the food chain; the scientific study of crustaceans is known as carcinology, a scientist who works in carcinology is a carcinologist. The body of a crustacean is composed of segments, which are grouped into three regions: the cephalon or head, the pereon or thorax, the pleon or abdomen; the head and thorax may be fused together to form a cephalothorax, which may be covered by a single large carapace. The crustacean body is protected by the hard exoskeleton, which must be moulted for the animal to grow; the shell around each somite can be divided into a dorsal tergum, ventral sternum and a lateral pleuron. Various parts of the exoskeleton may be fused together; each somite, or body segment can bear a pair of appendages: on the segments of the head, these include two pairs of antennae, the mandibles and maxillae.
The abdomen bears pleopods, ends in a telson, which bears the anus, is flanked by uropods to form a tail fan. The number and variety of appendages in different crustaceans may be responsible for the group's success. Crustacean appendages are biramous, meaning they are divided into two parts, it is unclear whether the biramous condition is a derived state which evolved in crustaceans, or whether the second branch of the limb has been lost in all other groups. Trilobites, for instance possessed biramous appendages; the main body cavity is an open circulatory system, where blood is pumped into the haemocoel by a heart located near the dorsum. Malacostraca have haemocyanin as the oxygen-carrying pigment, while copepods, ostracods and branchiopods have haemoglobins; the alimentary canal consists of a straight tube that has a gizzard-like "gastric mill" for grinding food and a pair of digestive glands that absorb food. Structures that function as kidneys are located near the antennae. A brain exists in the form of ganglia close to the antennae, a collection of major ganglia is found below the gut.
In many decapods, the first pair of pleopods are specialised in the male for sperm transfer. Many terrestrial crustaceans return to the sea to release the eggs. Others, such as woodlice, lay their eggs on land, albeit in damp conditions. In most decapods, the females retain the eggs; the majority of crustaceans are aquatic, living in either marine or freshwater environments, but a few groups have adapted to life on land, such as terrestrial crabs, terrestrial hermit crabs, woodlice. Marine crustaceans are as ubiquitous in the oceans; the majority of crustaceans are motile, moving about independently, although a few taxonomic units are parasitic and live attached to their hosts, adult barnacles live a sessile life – they are attached headfirst to the substrate and cannot move independently. Some branchiurans are able to withstand rapid changes of salinity and will switch hosts from marine to non-marine species. Krill are the bottom layer and the most important part of the food chain in Antarctic animal communities.
Some crustaceans are significant invasive species, such as the Chinese mitten crab, Eriocheir sinensis, the Asian shore crab, Hemigrapsus sanguineus. The majority of crustaceans have separate sexes, reproduce sexually. A small number are hermaphrodites, including barnacles and Cephalocarida; some may change sex during the course of their life. Parthenogenesis is widespread among crustaceans, where viable eggs are produced by a female without needing fertilisation by a male; this occurs in many branchiopods, some os
International Union for Conservation of Nature
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in data gathering and analysis, field projects and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable". Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to sustainable development in its projects. Unlike many other international environmental organisations, IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation, it tries to influence the actions of governments and other stakeholders by providing information and advice, through building partnerships. The organization is best known to the wider public for compiling and publishing the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which assesses the conservation status of species worldwide.
IUCN has a membership of over 1400 non-governmental organizations. Some 16,000 scientists and experts participate in the work of IUCN commissions on a voluntary basis, it employs 1000 full-time staff in more than 50 countries. Its headquarters are in Switzerland. IUCN has observer and consultative status at the United Nations, plays a role in the implementation of several international conventions on nature conservation and biodiversity, it was involved in establishing the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. In the past, IUCN has been criticized for placing the interests of nature over those of indigenous peoples. In recent years, its closer relations with the business sector have caused controversy. IUCN was established in 1948, it was called the International Union for the Protection of Nature and the World Conservation Union. Establishment IUCN was established on 5 October 1948, in Fontainebleau, when representatives of governments and conservation organizations signed a formal act constituting the International Union for the Protection of Nature.
The initiative to set up the new organisation came from UNESCO and from its first Director General, the British biologist Julian Huxley. The objectives of the new Union were to encourage international cooperation in the protection of nature, to promote national and international action and to compile and distribute information. At the time of its founding IUPN was the only international organisation focusing on the entire spectrum of nature conservation Early years: 1948–1956 IUPN started out with 65 members, its secretariat was located in Brussels. Its first work program focused on saving species and habitats and applying knowledge, advancing education, promoting international agreements and promoting conservation. Providing a solid scientific base for conservation action was the heart of all activities. IUPN and UNESCO were associated, they jointly organized the 1949 Conference on Protection of Nature. In preparation for this conference a list of gravely endangered species was drawn up for the first time, a precursor of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
In the early years of its existence IUCN depended entirely on UNESCO funding and was forced to temporarily scale down activities when this ended unexpectedly in 1954. IUPN was successful in engaging prominent scientists and identifying important issues such as the harmful effects of pesticides on wildlife but not many of the ideas it developed were turned into action; this was caused by unwillingness to act on the part of governments, uncertainty about the IUPN mandate and lack of resources. In 1956, IUPN changed its name to International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Increased profile and recognition: 1956–1965 In the 1950s and 1960s Europe entered a period of economic growth and formal colonies became independent. Both developments had impact on the work of IUCN. Through the voluntary involvement of experts in its Commissions IUCN was able to get a lot of work done while still operating on a low budget, it established links with the Council of Europe. In 1961, at the request of United Nations Economic and Social Council, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, IUCN published the first global list of national parks and protected areas which it has updated since.
IUCN's best known publication, the Red Data Book on the conservation status of species, was first published in 1964. IUCN began to play a part in the development of international treaties and conventions, starting with the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Environmental law and policy making became a new area of expertise. Africa was the focus of many of the early IUCN conservation field projects. IUCN supported the ‘Yellowstone model’ of protected area management, which restricted human presence and activity in order to protect nature. IUCN and other conservation organisations were criticized for protecting nature against people rather than with people; this model was also applied in Africa and played a role in the decision to remove the Maasai people from Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. To establish a stable financial basis for its work, IUCN participated in setting up the World Wildlife Fund
Chordate
A chordate is an animal constituting the phylum Chordata. During some period of their life cycle, chordates possess a notochord, a dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, a post-anal tail: these five anatomical features define this phylum. Chordates are bilaterally symmetric; the Chordata and Ambulacraria together form the superphylum Deuterostomia. Chordates are divided into three subphyla: Vertebrata. There are extinct taxa such as the Vetulicolia. Hemichordata has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but now is treated as a separate phylum: hemichordates and Echinodermata form the Ambulacraria, the sister phylum of the Chordates. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, about half are bony fish that are members of the superclass Osteichthyes. Chordate fossils have been found from as early as the Cambrian explosion, 541 million years ago. Cladistically, vertebrates - chordates with the notochord replaced by a vertebral column during development - are considered to be a subgroup of the clade Craniata, which consists of chordates with a skull.
The Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Chordates form a phylum of animals that are defined by having at some stage in their lives all of the following anatomical features: A notochord, a stiff rod of cartilage that extends along the inside of the body. Among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. A dorsal neural tube. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the main communications trunk of the nervous system. Pharyngeal slits; the pharynx is the part of the throat behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, but in some other chordates they are part of a filter-feeding system that extracts particles of food from the water in which the animals live. Post-anal tail. A muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. An endostyle; this is a groove in the ventral wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus.
It stores iodine, may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland. There are soft constraints that separate chordates from certain other biological lineages, but are not part of the formal definition: All chordates are deuterostomes; this means. All chordates are based on a bilateral body plan. All chordates are coelomates, have a fluid filled body cavity called a coelom with a complete lining called peritoneum derived from mesoderm; the following schema is from the third edition of Vertebrate Palaeontology. The invertebrate chordate classes are from Fishes of the World. While it is structured so as to reflect evolutionary relationships, it retains the traditional ranks used in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylum Chordata †Vetulicolia? Subphylum Cephalochordata – Class Leptocardii Clade Olfactores Subphylum Tunicata – Class Ascidiacea Class Thaliacea Class Appendicularia Class Sorberacea Subphylum Vertebrata Infraphylum incertae sedis Cyclostomata Superclass'Agnatha' paraphyletic Class Myxini Class Petromyzontida or Hyperoartia Class †Conodonta Class †Myllokunmingiida Class †Pteraspidomorphi Class †Thelodonti Class †Anaspida Class †Cephalaspidomorphi Infraphylum Gnathostomata Class †Placodermi Class Chondrichthyes Class †Acanthodii Superclass Osteichthyes Class Actinopterygii Class Sarcopterygii Superclass Tetrapoda Class Amphibia Class Sauropsida Class Synapsida Craniates, one of the three subdivisions of chordates, all have distinct skulls.
They include the hagfish. Michael J. Benton commented that "craniates are characterized by their heads, just as chordates, or all deuterostomes, are by their tails". Most craniates are vertebrates; these consist of a series of bony or cartilaginous cylindrical vertebrae with neural arches that protect the spinal cord, with projections that link the vertebrae. However hagfish have incomplete braincases and no vertebrae, are therefore not regarded as vertebrates, but as members of the craniates, the group from which vertebrates are thought to have evolved; however the cladistic exclusion of hagfish from the vertebrates is controversial, as they ma
Savannah River
For the Department of Energy facility, see Savannah River Site The Savannah River is a major river in the southeastern United States, forming most of the border between the states of South Carolina and Georgia. Two tributaries of the Savannah, the Tugaloo River and the Chattooga River, form the northernmost part of the border; the Savannah River drainage basin extends into the southeastern side of the Appalachian Mountains just inside North Carolina, bounded by the Eastern Continental Divide. The river is around 301 miles long, it is formed by the confluence of the Seneca River. Today this confluence is submerged beneath Lake Hartwell; the Tallulah Gorge is located on the Tallulah River, a tributary of the Tugaloo River that forms the northwest branch of the Savannah River. Two major cities are located along the Savannah River: Savannah, Augusta, Georgia, they were nuclei of early English settlements during the Colonial period of American history. The Savannah River is tidal at Savannah proper.
Downstream from there, the river broadens into an estuary before flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. The area where the river's estuary meets the ocean is known as "Tybee Roads"; the Intracoastal Waterway flows through a section of the Savannah River near the city of Savannah. The name "Savannah" comes from a group of Shawnee, they destroyed the Westo and occupied established Westo lands at the Savannah River's head of navigation on the Fall Line, near present-day Augusta. These Shawnee were called by several variant names that all derive from their native name, Ša·wano·ki; the local variants included Shawano, Savano and Savannah. Another theory is that the name was derived from the English term "savanna", a kind of tropical grassland, borrowed by the English from Spanish sabana and used in the colonial southeast; the Spanish word was borrowed from the Taino word zabana. Other theories interpret the name Savannah to come from Atlantic coastal tribes, who spoke Algonquian languages, as there are similar terms meaning not only "southerner" but "salt".
Historical and variant names of the Savannah River, as listed by the U. S. Geological Survey, include May River, Westobou River, Kosalu River, Isundiga River and Girande River, among others; the Westobou River was the former name of the Savannah River, derived from the Westo Native American Indians. The Westo were thought to have come from the northeast, pushed out by the more powerful tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, who had acquired firearms through trade; this migration beginning in the late 16th century resulted in the Westo Indians reaching the present area of Augusta, Georgia, in what was to be the 1660s. The Westo used the river for fishing and water supplies, for transportation, for trade, they were strong enough to hold off the Spanish colonists making incursions from Florida. The Carolina Colony needed the Westo alliance during its early years; when Carolinians desired to expand its trade to Charleston, they viewed the Westo tribe as an obstacle. In order to remove the tribe, they sent a group called the Goose Creek Men to arm the Savanna Indians, a Shawnee tribe, who defeated the Westo in the Westo War of 1680.
Following this, the English colonists renamed the river as the Savannah. They founded two major cities on the river during the colonial era: Savannah was established in 1733 as a seaport on the Atlantic Ocean, Augusta is located where the river crosses the Fall Line of the Piedmont; the two large cities on the Savannah served as Georgia's first two state capitals. In the nineteenth century, the sandy river channel changed causing numerous steamboat accidents. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a blockade around the Confederate states, forcing merchantmen to use specific ports along the coast best suited for this purpose; the harbor at Savannah became one of the busiest ports for blockade runners bringing in supplies for the Confederacy. The Savannah River was significant during the 1950s when construction started on the U. S. government's Savannah River Plant for making tritium for nuclear weapons. In 1956 Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines detected neutrinos with an experiment carried out at the Savannah River Nuclear Plant, after a preliminary experiment at the Hanford Site.
They placed a 10-ton tank of water next to a powerful nuclear reactor engaged in making plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. After shielding the neutrino trap underground and running it for about 100 days over the course of a year, they detected a few synchronized flashes of gamma radiation that signaled the interaction of a few neutrinos with the protons in the water; the neutrinos were not themselves observed, they never have been. Their presence is inferred by an exceedingly rare interaction. One out of every billion billion neutrinos that pass through the water tank hits a proton, producing the telltale burst of radiation. In 1995 Reines was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this accomplishment, but Cowen did not live long enough to share it. Between 1946 and 1985, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers built three major dams on the Savannah for hydroelectricity, flood control, navigation; the J. Strom Thurmond Dam, the Hartwell Dam, the Richard B. Russell Dam and their reservoirs combine in order to form over 120 miles of lakes.
Donnie Thompson named a small subdivision "Westobou Crossing", located in North Augusta, South Carolina. The area of the subdivision is located marks the first natural ford that crosses the Savannah River, thus promoting trade and allowing travel. Many native a
Tennessee
Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, Missouri to the northwest; the Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017; the state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was part of North Carolina, part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
Occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war. Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state besides Virginia, more soldiers for the Union Army than the rest of the Confederacy combined. Beginning during Reconstruction, it had competitive party politics, but a Democratic takeover in the late 1880s resulted in passage of disenfranchisement laws that excluded most blacks and many poor whites from voting; this reduced competition in politics in the state until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-20th century. In the 20th century, Tennessee transitioned from an agrarian economy to a more diversified economy, aided by massive federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority and, in the early 1940s, the city of Oak Ridge; this city was established to house the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities, helping to build the world's first atomic bombs, two of which were dropped on Imperial Japan near the end of World War II.
Tennessee's major industries include agriculture and tourism. Poultry and cattle are the state's primary agricultural products, major manufacturing exports include chemicals, transportation equipment, electrical equipment; the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is headquartered in the eastern part of the state, a section of the Appalachian Trail follows the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Other major tourist attractions include the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga; the earliest variant of the name that became Tennessee was recorded by Captain Juan Pardo, the Spanish explorer, when he and his men passed through an American Indian village named "Tanasqui" in 1567 while traveling inland from South Carolina. In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee; the town was located on a river of the same name, appears on maps as early as 1725. It is not known whether this was the same town as the one encountered by Juan Pardo, although recent research suggests that Pardo's "Tanasqui" was located at the confluence of the Pigeon River and the French Broad River, near modern Newport.
The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain. Some accounts suggest, it has been said to mean "meeting place", "winding river", or "river of the great bend". According to ethnographer James Mooney, the name "can not be analyzed" and its meaning is lost; the modern spelling, Tennessee, is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. The spelling was popularized by the publication of Henry Timberlake's "Draught of the Cherokee Country" in 1765. In 1788, North Carolina created "Tennessee County", the third county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee; when a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new state out of the Southwest Territory, it adopted "Tennessee" as the name of the state. Tennessee is known as The Volunteer State, a nickname some claimed was earned during the War of 1812 because of the prominent role played by volunteer soldiers from Tennessee during the Battle of New Orleans.
Other sources differ on the origin of the state nickname. This explanation is more because President Polk's call for 2,600 nationwide volunteers at the beginning of the Mexican–American War resulted in 30,000 volunteers from Tennessee alone in response to the death of Davy Crockett and appeals by former Tennessee Governor and Texas politician, Sam Houston. Tennessee borders eight other states: Virginia to the north. Tennessee is tied with Missouri as the state bordering the most other states; the state is trisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (
Fish
Fish are gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. They form a sister group to the tunicates. Included in this definition are the living hagfish and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Tetrapods emerged within lobe-finned fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. However, traditionally fish are rendered 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, unless it is used in the cladistic sense, including tetrapods. 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.
Many fish of the Paleozoic developed external armor. The first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods. Most fish are ectothermic, allowing their body temperatures to vary as ambient temperatures change, though some of the large active swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature. Fish can communicate in their underwater environments through the use of acoustic communication. Acoustic communication in fish involves the transmission of acoustic signals from one individual of a species to another; the production of sounds as a means of communication among fish is most used in the context of feeding, aggression or courtship behaviour. The sounds emitted by fish can vary depending on the stimulus involved, they can produce either stridulatory sounds by moving components of the skeletal system, or can produce non-stridulatory sounds by manipulating specialized organs such as the swimbladder.
Fish are abundant in most bodies of water. They can be found in nearly all aquatic environments, from high mountain streams to the abyssal and hadal depths of the deepest oceans, although no species has yet been documented in the deepest 25% of the ocean. With 33,600 described species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any other group of vertebrates. Fish are an important resource for humans worldwide as food. Commercial and subsistence fishers hunt fish in wild fisheries or farm them in ponds or in cages in the ocean, they are caught by recreational fishers, kept as pets, raised by fishkeepers, exhibited in public aquaria. Fish have had a role in culture through the ages, serving as deities, religious symbols, as the subjects of art and movies. Fish do not represent a monophyletic group, therefore the "evolution of fish" is not studied as a single event. Early fish from the fossil record are represented by a group of small, armored fish known as ostracoderms. Jawless fish lineages are 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, or a combination of factors. 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 larval form into adulthood, although the reverse is the case. Fish are a paraphyletic group: that is, any clade containing all fish contains the tetrapods, which are not fish. For this reason, groups such as the "Class Pisces" seen in older reference works are no longer used in formal classifications. Traditional classification divides fish into three extant classes, with extinct forms sometimes classified within the tree, sometimes as their own classes: Class Agnatha Subclass Cyclostomata Subclass Ostracodermi † Class Chondrichthyes Subclass Elasmobranchii Subclass Holocephali Class Placodermi † Class Acanthodii † Class Osteichthyes Subclass Actinopterygii Subclass Sarcopterygii The above scheme is the one most encountered in non-specialist and general works.
Many of the above groups are paraphyletic, in that they have given rise to successive groups: Agnathans are ancestral to Chondrichthyes, who again have given rise to Acanthodiians, the ancestors of Osteichthyes. With the arrival of phylogenetic nomenclature, the fishes has been split up into a more detailed scheme, with the following major groups: Class Myxini Class Pteraspidomorphi † Class Thelodonti † Class Anaspida † Class Petromyzontida or Hyperoartia Petromyzontidae Class Conodonta † Class Cephalaspidomorphi † Galeaspida † Pituriaspida † Osteostraci † Infraphylum Gnathostomata Class Placodermi † Class Chondrichthyes Class Acanthodii † Superclass Osteichthy
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz, as he is known in Europe, was a nineteenth-century polymath born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He traveled as a young man in the United States settling in Ohio in 1815, where he made notable contributions to botany and the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America, he contributed to the study of ancient Mesoamerican linguistics, in addition to work he had completed in Europe. Rafinesque was eccentric, is portrayed as an erratic genius, he was an autodidact who excelled in various fields of knowledge, as a zoologist, botanist and polyglot. He wrote prolifically on such diverse topics as anthropology, biology and linguistics, but was honored in none of these fields during his lifetime. Among his theories were that ancestors of Native Americans had migrated by the Bering Sea from Asia to North America, that the Americas were populated by numerous black indigenous peoples at the time of European contact. Rafinesque was born on October 1783 in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople.
His father F. G. Rafinesque was a French merchant from Marseilles, his father died in Philadelphia about 1793. Rafinesque spent his youth in Marseilles, was self-educated. By the age of twelve, he had begun collecting plants for a herbarium. By fourteen, he taught himself perfect Greek and Latin because he needed to follow footnotes in the books he was reading in his paternal grandmother's libraries. In 1802, at the age of nineteen, Rafinesque sailed to Philadelphia in the United States with his younger brother, they traveled through Pennsylvania and Delaware, where he made the acquaintance of most of the young nation's few botanists. In 1805 Rafinesque returned to Europe with his collection of botanical specimens, settled in Palermo, where he learned Italian, he became so successful in trade that he retired by age twenty-five and devoted his time to natural history. For a time Rafinesque worked as secretary to the American consul. During his stay in Sicily, he studied fishes, naming many new discovered species of each.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1808. Rafinesque had a common-law wife. After their son died in 1815, he returned to the United States; when his ship Union foundered near the coast of Connecticut, he lost all his books and all his specimens. Settling in New York, Rafinesque became a founding member of the newly established "Lyceum of Natural History." In 1817 his book Florula Ludoviciana or A Flora of the State of Louisiana was criticized by fellow botanists, which caused his writings to be ignored. By 1818, he had named more than 250 new species of plants and animals, he was rebuilding his collection of objects from nature. In the summer of 1818, in Henderson, Rafinesque made the acquaintance of fellow naturalist John James Audubon, in fact stayed in Audubon's home for some three weeks. Audubon, although enjoying Rafinesque's company, took advantage of him in practical jokes involving fantastic, made-up species. In 1819 Rafinesque became professor of botany at Transylvania University in Lexington, where he gave private lessons in French and Spanish.
He was loosely associated with John D. Clifford, a merchant, interested in the ancient earthworks which remained throughout the Ohio Valley. Clifford conducted archival research, seeking the origins of these mounds, Rafinesque measured and mapped them; some had been lost to American development. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1820. Rafinesque started recording all the new species of plants and animals he encountered in travels throughout the state, he was considered an erratic student of higher plants. In the spring of 1826, he left the university after quarreling with its president, he traveled and lectured in various places, endeavored to establish a magazine and a botanic garden, but without success. He moved to a center of publishing and research, without employment, he published The Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge, a Cyclopædic Journal and Review, of which only eight issues were printed. He gave public lectures and continued publishing at his own expense.
Rafinesque died of stomach and liver cancer in Philadelphia on September 18, 1840. It has been speculated that the cancer may have been induced by Rafinesque's self-medication years before with a mixture containing maidenhair fern, he was buried in a plot in. In March 1924 what were thought to be his remains were transported to Transylvania University and reinterred in a tomb under a stone inscribed, "Honor to whom honor is overdue." Rafinesque published 6,700 binomial names of plants, many of which have priority over more familiar names. The quantity of new taxa he produced, both plants and animals, has made Rafinesque memorable or notorious among biologists. Rafinesque applied to join the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but was twice turned down by Thomas Jefferson. After studying the specimens collected by the expedition, he assigned scientific names to the black-tailed prairie dog, the white-footed mouse and the mule deer. Rafinesque was one of the first to use the term "evolution" in the context of biological speciation.
Rafinesque proposed a theory of evolution before Charles Darwin. In a letter in 1832, Rafinesque wrote: The truth is that Species and Genera are forming i
