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Anancidae
''Anancus'' is an extinct genus of elephantoid proboscideans (" gomphothere" ''sensu lato'') native to Afro-Eurasia, that lived from the Tortonian stage of the late Miocene until the genus' extinction during the early Pleistocene, roughly from 8.5–2 million years ago. Taxonomy The type genus of the family, ''Anancus'', was named by Auguste Aymard in 1855. It was traditionally allocated to Gomphotheriidae, but was later assigned to the family Elephantidae by McKenna and Bell (1997), Lambert and Shoshani (1998), Kalb and Froelich (1995), and Shoshani and Tassy (2005). Hautier et al. (2009) assigned the genus to the subfamily Anancinae within Gomphotheriidae. Recently ''Anancus'' along with other tetralophodont gomphotheres have been removed from Gomphotheridae, and are now regarded as members of Elephantoidea instead. Description ''Anancus'' stood around tall, with a weight up to 5 tons, and closely resembled a modern elephant. Aside from its somewhat shorter legs, ''Anan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proboscidea
The Proboscidea (; , ) are a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family (Elephantidae) and several extinct families. First described by J. Illiger in 1811, it encompasses the elephants and their close relatives. From the mid-Miocene onwards, most proboscideans were very large. The largest land mammal of all time may have been a proboscidean; ''Palaeoloxodon namadicus'' was up to at the shoulder and may have weighed up to , almost double the weight of some sauropods like ''Diplodocus carnegii''. The largest extant proboscidean is the African bush elephant, with a record of size of at the shoulder and . In addition to their enormous size, later proboscideans are distinguished by tusks and long, muscular trunks, which were less developed or absent in early proboscideans. Three species of elephant are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. Elephantidae is the only surviving family of the or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Giovanni Valdarno
San Giovanni Valdarno is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany, central Italy, located in the valley of the Arno River. History According to the Italian medieval historian Giovanni Villani, the town was founded in 1296, by the Republic of Florence. The design of the historic center is based on the organization of Roman cities with a large central piazza from which two main roads run perpendicular to each other. From these two main roads run other secondary streets. The town is the birthplace of the early Renaissance painter Masaccio. Main sights * ''Palazzo Pretorio'' or ''Palazzo d'Arnolfo'' (13th century) * Convent of ''San Francesco a Montecarlo''. It houses an ''Incoronation of the Virgin'' by Neri di Bicci (1472–1475) * Basilica of ''Santa Maria delle Grazie'' (built in 1484, but with a 19th-century Neoclassical façade). Its museum houses Beato Angelico Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro; February 18, 1455) was an Italian painter of the Ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anancus NT Small
''Anancus'' is an extinct genus of elephantoid proboscideans ("gomphothere" ''sensu lato'') native to Afro-Eurasia, that lived from the Tortonian stage of the late Miocene until the genus' extinction during the early Pleistocene, roughly from 8.5–2 million years ago. Taxonomy The type genus of the family, ''Anancus'', was named by Auguste Aymard in 1855. It was traditionally allocated to Gomphotheriidae, but was later assigned to the family Elephantidae by McKenna and Bell (1997), Lambert and Shoshani (1998), Kalb and Froelich (1995), and Shoshani and Tassy (2005). Hautier et al. (2009) assigned the genus to the subfamily Anancinae within Gomphotheriidae. Recently ''Anancus'' along with other tetralophodont gomphotheres have been removed from Gomphotheridae, and are now regarded as members of Elephantoidea instead. Description ''Anancus'' stood around tall, with a weight up to 5 tons, and closely resembled a modern elephant. Aside from its somewhat shorter legs, ''Anancus' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene Proboscideans
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regionally defined boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, the Arabian Peninsula collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and allowing a faunal interchange to occur between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans into Eurasia. During the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Placental Genera
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and to keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached the end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Browsing (herbivory)
Browsing is a type of herbivory in which a herbivore (or, more narrowly defined, a folivore) feeds on leaves, soft shoots, or fruits of high-growing, generally woody plants such as shrubs. This is contrasted with Grazing (behaviour), grazing, usually associated with animals feeding on grass or other lower vegetations. Alternatively, grazers are animals eating mainly grass, and browsers are animals eating mainly non-grasses, which include both woody and herbaceous Dicotyledon, dicots. In either case, an example of this dichotomy are goats (which are primarily browsers) and Domestic sheep, sheep (which are primarily grazers). Browse The plant material eaten is known as ''browse'' and is in nature taken directly from the plant, though owners of livestock such as goats and deer may cut twigs or branches for feeding to their stock. In temperate regions, owners take browse before leaf fall, then dry and store it as a winter feed supplement. In time of drought, herdsmen may cut branche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dental Microwear
Dental microwear analysis is a method to infer diet and behavior in extinct animals, especially in fossil specimens. Typically, the patterns of pits and scratches on the occlusal or buccal surface of the enamel are compared with patterns observed in extant species to infer ecological information. Hard foods in particular can lead to distinctive patterns (although see below). Microwear can also be used for inferring behavior, especially those related to the non-masticatory use of teeth as 'tools'. Other uses include investigating weaning in past populations. Methods used to collect data initially involved a microscope and manually collecting information on individual microwear features, but software to automatically collect data have improved markedly in recent years. Potential issues and on-going debates * The role of phytolith Phytoliths (from Greek, "plant stone") are rigid, microscopic structures made of silica, found in some plant tissues and persisting after the decay of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58See the 2014 version of the ICS geologic time scale million years ago. It is the second and most recent epoch of the Neogene Period in the . The Pliocene follows the Epoch and is followed by the Epoch. Prior to the 2009 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sivalik Hills
The Sivalik Hills, also known as the Shivalik Hills and Churia Hills, are a mountain range of the outer Himalayas that stretches over about from the Indus River eastwards close to the Brahmaputra River, spanning the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. It is wide with an average elevation of . Between the Teesta and Raidāk Rivers in Assam is a gap of about . "Sivalik" literally means 'tresses of Shiva'. Sivalik region is home to the Soanian archaeological culture. Geology Geologically, the Sivalik Hills belong to the Tertiary deposits of the outer Himalayas. They are chiefly composed of sandstone and conglomerate rock formations, which are the solidified detritus of the Himalayas to their north; they are poorly consolidated. The remnant magnetisation of siltstones and sandstones indicates that they were deposited 16–5.2 million years ago. In Nepal, the Karnali River exposes the oldest part of the Shivalik Hills. They are bounded on the south by a fault syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
C4 Carbon Fixation
carbon fixation or the Hatch–Slack pathway is one of three known photosynthetic processes of carbon fixation in plants. It owes the names to the 1960's discovery by Marshall Davidson Hatch and Charles Roger Slack that some plants, when supplied with 14, incorporate the 14C label into four-carbon molecules first. fixation is an addition to the ancestral and more common carbon fixation. The main carboxylating enzyme in photosynthesis is called RuBisCO, which catalyses two distinct reactions using either (carboxylation) or oxygen (oxygenation) as a substrate. The latter process, oxygenation, gives rise to the wasteful process of photorespiration. photosynthesis reduces photorespiration by concentrating around RuBisCO. To ensure that RuBisCO works in an environment where there is a lot of carbon dioxide and very little oxygen, leaves generally differentiate two partially isolated compartments called mesophyll cells and bundle-sheath cells. is initially fixed in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grazing (behaviour)
Grazing is a method of feeding Eating (also known as consuming) is the ingestion of food, typically to provide a heterotrophic organism with energy and to allow for growth. Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive — carnivores eat other animals, herbi ... in which a herbivore feeds on low-growing plants such as grasses or other multicellular organisms, such as algae. Many species of animals can be said to be grazers, from large animals such as hippopotamuses to small aquatic snails. Grazing Ethology, behaviour is a type of List of feeding behaviours, feeding strategy within the ecology of a species. Specific grazing strategies include Graminivore, graminivory (eating grasses); coprophagy (producing part-digested pellets which are reingested); pseudoruminant (having a multi-chambered stomach but not chewing the cud); and grazing on plants other than grass, such as on marine algae. Grazing's ecological effects can include redistributing nutrients, keepin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grassland
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica and are found in most ecoregions of the Earth. Furthermore, grasslands are one of the largest biomes on earth and dominate the landscape worldwide. There are different types of grasslands: natural grasslands, semi-natural grasslands, and agricultural grasslands. They cover 31–69% of the Earth's land area. Definitions Included among the variety of definitions for grasslands are: * "...any plant community, including harvested forages, in which grasses and/or legumes make up the dominant vegetation." * "...terrestrial ecosystems dominated by herbaceous and shrub vegetation, and maintained by fire, grazing, drought and/or freezing temperatures." (Pilot Assessment of Global Ecosystems, 2000) * "A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
