The Tethys Ocean called the Tethys Sea or the Neotethys, was an ocean during much of the Mesozoic Era located between the ancient continents of Gondwana and Laurasia, before the opening of the Indian and Atlantic oceans during the Cretaceous Period. The name stems from the mythological Greek sea goddess Tethys and consort of Oceanus, mother of the great rivers and fountains of the world and of the Oceanid sea nymphs; the eastern part of the Tethys Ocean is sometimes referred to as Eastern Tethys. The western part of the Tethys Ocean is called Tethys Sea, Western Tethys Ocean, or Paratethys or Alpine Tethys Ocean; the Black and Aral seas are thought to be its crustal remains, though the Black Sea may, in fact, be a remnant of the older Paleo-Tethys Ocean. The Western Tethys was not a single open ocean, it covered many small plates, Cretaceous island arcs, microcontinents. Many small oceanic basins were separated from each other by continental terranes on the Alboran and Apulian plates; the high sea level in the Mesozoic flooded most of these continental domains.

As theories have improved, scientists have extended the "Tethys" name to refer to three similar oceans that preceded it, separating the continental terranes: in Asia, the Paleo-Tethys, Meso-Tethys, Ceno-Tethys are recognized. None of the Tethys oceans should be confused with the Rheic Ocean, which existed to the west of them in the Silurian Period. To the north of the Tethys, the then-land mass is called Angaraland and to the south of it, it is called Gondwanaland. From the Ediacaran into the Devonian, the Proto-Tethys Ocean existed and was situated between Baltica and Laurentia to the north and Gondwana to the south. From the Silurian through the Jurassic periods, the Paleo-Tethys Ocean existed between the Hunic terranes and Gondwana. Over a period of 400 million years, continental terranes intermittently separated from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere to migrate northward to form Asia in the Northern Hemisphere. About 250 Mya, during the Triassic, a new ocean began forming in the southern end of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean.

A rift formed along the northern continental shelf of Southern Pangaea. Over the next 60 million years, that piece of shelf, known as Cimmeria, traveled north, pushing the floor of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean under the eastern end of northern Pangaea; the Tethys Ocean formed between Cimmeria and Gondwana, directly over where the Paleo-Tethys used to be. During the Jurassic period about 150 Mya, Cimmeria collided with Laurasia and stalled, so the ocean floor behind it buckled under, forming the Tethyan Trench. Water levels rose, the western Tethys shallowly covered significant portions of Europe, forming the first Tethys Sea. Around the same time and Gondwana began drifting apart, opening an extension of the Tethys Sea between them which today is the part of the Atlantic Ocean between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean; as North and South America were still attached to the rest of Laurasia and Gondwana the Tethys Ocean in its widest extension was part of a continuous oceanic belt running around the Earth between about latitude 30°N and the Equator.

Thus, ocean currents at the time around the Early Cretaceous ran differently from the way they do today. Between the Jurassic and the Late Cretaceous, which started about 100 Mya, Gondwana began breaking up, pushing Africa and India north across the Tethys and opening up the Indian Ocean. Throughout the Cenozoic, a combination of the northern migration of Africa and global sea levels falling led to the connections between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans across the Tethys being closed off in what is now the Middle East during the Miocene; this decoupling occurred in two steps, first around another around 14 Mya. During the Oligocene, large parts of central and eastern Europe were covered by a northern branch of the Tethys Ocean, called the Paratethys; the Paratethys was separated from the Tethys with the formation of the Alps, Dinarides and Elburz mountains during the Alpine orogeny. During the late Miocene, the Paratethys disappeared, became an isolated inland sea. In 1885, the Austrian palaeontologist Melchior Neumayr deduced the existence of the Tethys Ocean from Mesozoic marine sediments and their distribution, calling his concept Zentrales Mittelmeer and described it as a Jurassic seaway, which extended from the Caribbean to the Himalayas.

In 1893, the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess proposed the theory that an ancient and extinct inland sea had once existed between Laurasia and the continents which formed Gondwana II. He named it the Tethys Sea after the Greek sea goddess Tethys, he provided evidence for his theory using fossil records from the Africa. He proposed the concept of Tethys in his four-volume work Das Antlitz der Erde. In the following decades during the 20th century, "mobilist" geologists such as Uhlig and Daque regarded Tethys as a large trough between two supercontinents which lasted from the late Palaeozoic until continental fragments derived from Gondwana obliterated it. After World War II, Tethys was described as a triangular ocean with a wide eastern end. From 1920s to the 1960s, "fixist" geologists, regarded Tethys as a composite trough, which evolved through a series of orogenic cycles, they used the terms'Paleotethys','Mesotethys', and'Neotethys' for the Caledonian and Alpine orogenies, respectively. In the 1970

The Liber Memorialis is an ancient book in Latin featuring an concise summary—a kind of index—of universal history from earliest times to the reign of Trajan. It was written by Lucius Ampelius, a tutor or schoolmaster; the book is dedicated to a Macrinus, who may have been the emperor who reigned 217–218, but that name was not uncommon, it seems more he was a young man with a thirst for universal knowledge, which the book was compiled to satisfy. The book's object and scope are indicated in its dedication: Since you desire to know everything, I have written this'book of notes,' that you may learn of what the universe and its elements consist, what the world contains, what the human race has done; the Liber Memorialis seems to have been intended as a textbook to be learned by heart. This little work, in fifty chapters, gives a sketch of cosmography, geography and history; the historical portion, dealing with the republican period, is untrustworthy and the text in many places corrupt. Chapter VIII contains the following, the only reference by an ancient writer to the famous sculptures of the Pergamon Altar, which were discovered in 1871, excavated in 1878, are now in Berlin: At Pergamum there is a great marble altar, 40 feet high, with colossal sculptures, representing a battle of the giants Nothing is known of the date at which the work was written.

However, in Chapter V De Orbe Terrarum, Ampelius refers to the "Tigris and Euphrates in Parthia," which suggests that Ampelius wrote before the Sassanians overthrew the Parthians in 224. The first edition of the Liber Memorialis was published in 1638 by Claudius Salmasius from the Dijon manuscript, now lost, together with the Epitome of Florus. An 1873 edition by Wölfflin was based on Salmasius's copy of the lost codex; the more recent editions are Erwin Assmann's Teubner edition of 1935 Nicola Terzaghi's edition, published by Chiantore in Turin ca. 1947 Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lidet's 1993 edition for the Collection Budé Glaser, Rheinisches Museum, ii. Wölfflin, De L. Ampelii Libro Memoriali Zink, Eos, ii This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Ampelius, Lucius". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Liber Memorialis at LacusCurtius Liber memoralis at Bibliotheca Augustana

Stephanie Buhmann is an art critic, art historian, curator. Born and raised in Hamburg, she is based in New York City, she attended Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA and received a B. F. A. and Master in the History of Art and Design from Pratt Institute, New York in 2002. She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and the Deutscher Fachjournalisten-Verband, she is a contributing editor at artcritical.com. Her essays, art reviews and interviews have been published by a variety of international newspapers and art magazines, including Sculpture Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Papers, she has a regular art column in The Villager. In addition, she has curated numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, the Macy Art Gallery, Teacher's College, Columbia University and Jason McCoy, Inc. Artists she has helped to exhibit include, Cora Cohen, Lee Krasner, Frederick Kiesler, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart.

Her published interviews include conversations with Polly Apfelbaum, Ernesto Neto, Kiki Smith, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Nancy Spero. Berlin Studio Conversations. Berlin: The Green Box, 2017, ISBN 978-3-941644-93-9 New York Studio Conversations. Berlin: The Green Box, 2016, ISBN 978-3-941644-83-0 Painting For The Experience: Frank Stella at the Whitney Museum, CHELSEA NOW, November 18, 2015 Nicole Schmölzer: The Independence of Abstraction, Kunstverein Reutlingen, Germany: Modo Verlag, 2013 Constantino Nivola, in: Sculpture Magazine, May 2013 Jack Tworkov: Between the Subjective and the Universal, Birmingham, MI: David Klein Gallery, 2013 Wilhelm Lehmbruck, in: Sculpture Magazine, December 2012 Jackson Pollock: Signs & Symbols Allover, catalogue essay, New York: Jason McCoy Gallery, November 2012 Dan Flavin’s Drawings at the Morgan Library, on: Artcritical, June 2012 Roman Opalka: Counting Towards Infinity, on: The Art Section, December 2011 Constantin Brancusi and Richard Serra, in: Sculpture Magazine, December 2011 The Work of Stephen Mueller, in: The Brooklyn Rail, November 2011 Betye Saar, in: Sculpture Magazine, October 2011 Kathleen Kucka's Ultrastructures, New York: Brenda Taylor Gallery, September 2011 Franz Xaver Messerschmidt at Neue Galerie New York, in: Sculpture Magazine, July/August 2011 Eva Hesse and Sol Lewitt at Craig F. Starr Gallery, in: Brooklyn Rail, May 2011 Jackson Pollock Family Letters - Book Review, in: The Brooklyn Rail, April 2011 Malcah Zeldis: A Life Traveled in Painting, in: Chelsea Now, February 10, 2011 On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and His Contemporaries, 1922–1960, in: The Brooklyn Rail, February 2011 Anselm Kiefer: Next Year in Jerusalem, in: The Brooklyn Rail, December/January 2011 Julie Mehretu at The Guggenheim, in: The Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2010 Gerhard Richter at Marian Goodman Gallery, on: Artcritical.com, January 2010 Mark Bradford and Kara Walker at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in: Artcritical.com, October 2009 Alice Neel at David Zwirner and Zwirner & Wirth, in: Artcritical.com, August 2009 Nick Cave: Soundsuits, in: Sculpture Magazine, July/August 2009, Vol. 28, No. 6 Patti Smith: Veil.

18, March 27-April 9, 2009 Alfred Kubin, in: The Brooklyn Rail, December 2008 David Byrne. Lee Bontecou, in: The Brooklyn Rail, April 2007 Charles Pollock: The Chapala Series 1955-1956, New York: Jason McCoy, Inc. 2007 Caspar David Friedrich at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, in: The Brooklyn Rail, February 2007 Louise Bourgeois, in: The Brooklyn Rail, November 2006 Hans Bellmer, in: The Brooklyn Rail, June 2006 Leon Polk Smith: Forms and Functions in the 1950s, in: The Brooklyn Rail, March 2005 Dieter Roth.