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Andrzej Elżanowski
Andrzej Elżanowski (born 21 January 1950) is a Polish paleontologist and vertebrate zoologist specializing in bird phylogeny. Together with Peter Wellnhofer he described a coelurosaur theropod ''Archaeornithoides'' in 1992. He works also on Mesozoic birds, especially Archaeopterygiformes – he is author of the chapter "Archaeopterygidae" in book edited by Luis Chiappe and Lawrence Witmer entitled ''Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs''. In 2001 he determined that Solnhofen specimen of ''Archaeopteryx'' represents new species and genus and coined new specific name – ''Wellnhoferia grandis ''Wellnhoferia'' (named after Peter Wellnhofer) is a genus of early prehistoric bird-like theropod dinosaur closely related to ''Archaeopteryx''. It lived in what is now Germany, during the Late Jurassic. While ''Wellnhoferia'' was similar to ''A ...'' – for it. He works now in the Faculty of „Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. References Polish paleontolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. In a ''rooted'' phylogenetic tree, each node with descendants represents the inferred most recent common ancestor of those descendants, and the edge lengths in some trees may be interpreted as time estimates. Each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed. Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetics. ''Unrooted'' trees illustrate only the relatedness of the leaf nodes and do not require the ancestral root to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Wellnhofer
Peter Wellnhofer (born Munich, 1936) is a German paleontologist at the Bayerische Staatssammlung fur Paläontologie in Munich. He is best known for his work on the various fossil specimens of ''Archaeopteryx'' or "Urvogel", the first known bird. Wellnhofer's other work includes ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs'' from 1991. ''Wellnhoferia'', a bird closely related to ''Archaeopteryx'', or a species of the Urvogel itself, was named in his honour in 2001. The pterosaur ''Wellnhopterus'' was named in his honour in 2021. In 2007 a special meeting of pterosaur experts in Munich was dedicated to Wellnhofer, describing him as "the foremost authority on pterosaurs for the last four decades." The meeting produced a festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ... in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coelurosauria
Coelurosauria (; from Greek, meaning "hollow tailed lizards") is the clade containing all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds than to carnosaurs. Coelurosauria is a subgroup of theropod dinosaurs that includes compsognathids, tyrannosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, and maniraptorans; Maniraptora includes birds, the only known dinosaur group alive today. Most feathered dinosaurs discovered so far have been coelurosaurs. Philip J. Currie had considered it likely and probable that all coelurosaurs were feathered. However, several skin impressions found for some members of this group show pebbly, scaly skin, indicating that feathers did not completely replace scales in all taxa. In the past, Coelurosauria was used to refer to all small theropods, but this classification has since been abolished. Anatomy Bodyplan The studying of anatomical traits in coelurosaurs indicates that the last common ancestor had evolved the ability to eat and digest plant matter, adapting to an omniv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theropoda
Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally carnivorous, although a number of theropod groups evolved to become herbivores and omnivores. Theropods first appeared during the Carnian age of the late Triassic Period (geology), period 231.4 million years ago (Year#SI prefix multipliers, Ma) and included all the large terrestrial carnivores from the Early Jurassic until at least the close of the Cretaceous, about 66 Ma. In the Jurassic, birds evolved from small specialized coelurosaurian theropods, and are today represented by about 10,500 living species. Biology Diet and teeth Theropods exhibit a wide range of diets, from insectivores to herbivores and carnivores. Strict carnivory has always been considered the ancestral diet for theropods as a group, and a wider variety of di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeornithoides
''Archaeornithoides'' is a genus of maniraptoran theropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. Discovery and naming In 1965, a Polish-Mongolian paleontological expedition found a fossil of a small dinosaur at Bayn Dzak, Mongolia. In 1983, the find was reported by Andrzej Elzanowski. The remains were named as the type species ''Archaeornithoides deinosauriscus'' by Elzanowski and Peter Wellnhofer in 1992. In 1993, they were described in more detail by the same authors. The generic name (''Archaeornithoides'') means “shaped like an ancient bird” in Ancient Greek, from ἀρχαῖος, ''archaios'', "ancient"; ὄρνις, ''ornis'', "bird"; and εἶδος, ''eidos'', "form". The specific descriptor ''deinosauriscus'', "little dinosaur", alludes to the animal's small size for a dinosaur. The holotype, ZPAL MgD-II/29, was discovered in Late Cretaceous river sandstones of the Djadokhta Formation beds, dating from the late Campanian. It consists of an articulated bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2019 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 42.778), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in autumn 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander Macmillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the journal; ''Nature'' redoubled its efforts in exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Period (geology), Periods. It is characterized by the dominance of archosaurian reptiles, like the dinosaurs; an abundance of conifers and ferns; a hot Greenhouse and icehouse earth, greenhouse climate; and the tectonic break-up of Pangaea. The Mesozoic is the middle of the three eras since Cambrian explosion, complex life evolved: the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic. The era began in the wake of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the largest well-documented mass extinction in Earth's history, and ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, another mass extinction whose victims included the non-avian dinosaurs, Pterosaur, pterosaurs, Mosasaur, mosasaurs, and Plesiosaur, plesiosaurs. The Mesozoic was a time of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeopterygiformes
Archaeopterygidae is a group of maniraptoran dinosaurs, known from the latest Jurassic and earliest Cretaceous of Europe. In most current classifications, it contains only the genera ''Archaeopteryx'' and ''Wellnhoferia''. As its name suggests, ''Protarchaeopteryx'' was also once referred to this group, but most paleontologists now consider it an oviraptorosaur. Other referred genera, like ''Jurapteryx'', ''Wellnhoferia'', and " Proornis", are probably synonymous with ''Archaeopteryx'' (the former two) or do not belong into this group (the last). ''Jinfengopteryx'' was originally described as an archaeopterygid, though it was later shown to be a troodontid.Chiappe, L.M. (2007) ''Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds.'' Sydney: UNSW Press. . A few studies have recovered ''Anchiornis'' and ''Xiaotingia'' (usually considered part of a distinct clade, Anchiornithidae) to also be members of the Archaeopterygidae, though most subsequent analyses have failed to arri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luis Chiappe
Luis María Chiappe (born 18 June 1962) is an Argentine paleontologist born in Buenos Aires who is best known for his discovery of the first sauropod nesting sites in the badlands of Patagonia in 1997 and for his work on the origin and early evolution of Mesozoic birds. He is currently the Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and director of the museum's Dinosaur Institute. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, New York after immigrating from Argentina. Chiappe is currently the curator of the award winning Dinosaur Hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, BBC advisor and author of scientific and popular books. Chiappe is a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a laureate of the Alexander Humboldt Foundation, and a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Witmer
Lawrence M. Witmer (born October 10, 1959, at Rochester, New York) is an American paleontologist and paleobiologist. He is a Professor of Anatomy and a Chang Ying-Chien Professor of Paleontology at the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine in Ohio University. Witmer is considered to be one of the world's foremost experts on soft-tissue anatomy of the skull in extinct animals such as dinosaurs and pterosaurs. One of Witmer's largest contributions to vertebrate paleontology was the creation of the Extant Phylogenetic Bracket approach to ancestral character state reconstruction.Witmer, L.M. 1995.The Extant Phylogenetic Bracket and the Importance of Reconstructing Soft Tissues in Fossils. in Thomason, J.J. (ed). Functional Morphology in Vertebrate Paleontology. New York. Cambridge University Press. pp: 19–33. This methodology incorporates extensive comparative anatomy using physical and digital dissections of extant (not extinct) animals. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeopteryx
''Archaeopteryx'' (; ), sometimes referred to by its German name, "" ( ''Primeval Bird''), is a genus of bird-like dinosaurs. The name derives from the ancient Greek (''archaīos''), meaning "ancient", and (''ptéryx''), meaning "feather" or "wing". Between the late 19th century and the early 21st century, ''Archaeopteryx'' was generally accepted by palaeontologists and popular reference books as the oldest known bird (member of the group Avialae). Older potential avialans have since been identified, including ''Anchiornis'', ''Xiaotingia'', and ''Aurornis''. ''Archaeopteryx'' lived in the Late Jurassic around 150 million years ago, in what is now southern Germany, during a time when Europe was an archipelago of islands in a shallow warm tropical sea, much closer to the equator than it is now. Similar in size to a Eurasian magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, the largest species of ''Archaeopteryx'' could grow to about in len ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wellnhoferia
''Wellnhoferia'' (named after Peter Wellnhofer) is a genus of early prehistoric bird-like theropod dinosaur closely related to ''Archaeopteryx''. It lived in what is now Germany, during the Late Jurassic. While ''Wellnhoferia'' was similar to ''Archaeopteryx'', it had a shorter tail and its fourth toe was shorter than in ''Archaeopteryx''. Andrzej Elżanowski (2001) of the Institute of Zoology of the University of Wrocław, Poland, determined the differences resulted from a "phylogenetic reduction rather than individual variation." The type specimen is the Solnhofen Specimen of ''Archaeopteryx'' (BSP 1999). Discovered in the 1960s near Eichstätt, Germany and described in 1988 by Wellnhofer (as a specimen of ''Archaeopteryx''), it is currently located at the Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum in Solnhofen. It was originally classified as a ''Compsognathus ''Compsognathus'' (; Greek ''kompsos''/κομψός; "elegant", "refined" or "dainty", and ''gnathos''/γνάθος; "jaw") i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
