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Apatornis Celer
''Apatornis'' is a genus of prehistoric birds endemic to North America during the late Cretaceous. It currently contains a single species, ''Apatornis celer'', which lived around the Santonian-Campanian boundary, dated to about 83.5 million years ago. The remains of this species were found in the Smoky Hill Chalk of the Niobrara Formation in Kansas, United States. It is known from a single fossil specimen: a ''synsacrum'', the fused series of vertebrae over the hips. While the known fossil remains are very incomplete, enough has been found to reasonably estimate that the body length of this bird was between . The type specimen of ''A. celer'', YPM 1451, was reportedly discovered by Othniel Charles Marsh in October 1872 at Butte Creek in Logan County, Kansas. This location is now recognized as falling between Marker Units 15 and 19 of the Smoky Hill Chalk geological formation. An additional, more complete specimen had also been referred to ''Apatornis celer'' by Marsh.O. C. Marsh. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the Latin word for the white limestone known as chalk. The chalk of northern France and the white cliffs of south-eastern England date from the Cretaceous Period. Climate During the Late Cretaceous, the climate was warmer than present, although throughout the period a cooling trend is evident. The tropics became restricted to equatorial regions and northern latitudes experienced markedly more seasonal climatic conditions. Geography Due to plate tectonics, the Americas were gradually moving westward, causing the Atlantic Ocean to expand. The Western Interior Seaway divided North America into eastern and western halves; Appalachia and Laramidia. India maintained a northward course towards Asia. In the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logan County, Kansas
Logan County (standard abbreviation: LG) is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 2,762. The largest city and county seat is Oakley. The county was named for Gen. John A. Logan. One of the county's distinctive features is a mile-long stretch of Smoky Hill Chalk bluffs that tower high over the Smoky Hill River and are dubbed "Little Jerusalem" for resemblance to the ancient walled city. The formation is mostly on private land. In 2016, The Nature Conservancy purchased the property and the Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park opened to the public in October, 2019. History Early history For many millennia, the Great Plains of North America was inhabited by nomadic Native Americans. From the 16th century to 18th century, the Kingdom of France claimed ownership of large parts of North America. In 1762, after the French and Indian War, France secretly ceded New France to Spain, per the Treaty of Fontainebleau. 19th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Ornithurans
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. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird Genera
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. Bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ornithurae
Ornithurae (meaning "bird tails" in Greek) is a natural group which includes the common ancestor of ''Ichthyornis'', ''Hesperornis'', and all modern birds as well as all other descendants of that common ancestor. Classification Ernst Haeckel coined the name in 1866 and included in the group all "true birds" with the "characteristic tail morphology of all extant birds" (translation by Jacques Gauthier). This distinguishes the group from ''Archaeopteryx'', which Haeckel placed in another new group called Sauriurae. Said simply, modern birds have short, fused pygostyle tails, while ''Archaeopteryx'' retained the long tail characteristic of non-avian theropod dinosaurs.Haeckel, Ernst (1866). ''Generelle Morphologie der Organismen''. Berlin: Georg Reimer. Gauthier converted Ornithurae into a clade, giving it a branch-based definition: "extant birds and all other taxa, such as ''Ichthyornis'' and Hesperornithes, that are closer to extant birds than is ''Archaeopteryx''". Later he and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anseriformes
Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which includes over 170 species of waterfowl, among them the ducks, geese, and swans. Most modern species in the order are highly adapted for an aquatic existence at the water surface. With the exception of screamers, males have penises, a trait that has been lost in the Neoaves. Due to their aquatic nature, most species are web-footed. Evolution Anseriformes are one of only two types of modern bird to be confirmed present during the Mesozoic alongside the other dinosaurs, and in fact were among the very few birds to survive their extinction, along with their cousins the galliformes. These two groups only occupied two ecological niches during the Mesozoic, living in water and on the ground, while the toothed enantiornithes were the dominant bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Birds
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. Birds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ichthyornithiformes
Ichthyornithes is an extinct group of toothed avialans very closely related to the common ancestor of all modern birds. They are known from fossil remains found throughout the late Cretaceous period of North America, though only two genera, ''Ichthyornis'' and '' Janavis'', are represented by complete enough fossils to have been named. Ichthyornitheans became extinct at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, along with enantiornitheans, all other non-avian dinosaurs, and many other animal and plant groups. Origin and evolution The earliest known ichthyornitheans appear in the fossil record about 95 million years ago, during the Cenomanian age of the Late Cretaceous. Based on fragmentary fossil remains, the two known species present in the Ashville Formation have not been given names, but overall were very similar to ''Ichthyornis dispar''. ''I. dispar'' itself had a very long temporal range, and specimens referred to it or very similar species existed relatively unchanged (other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odontotormae
Odontornithes is an obsolete and disused taxonomic term proposed by Othniel Charles Marsh for birds possessing teeth, notably the genera '' Hesperornis'' and '' Ichthyornis'' from the Cretaceous deposits of Kansas. In 1875 Marsh divided this "subclass" into Odontolcae, with the teeth standing in grooves, and Odontotormae, with the teeth in separate alveoles or sockets. In his 1880 work, ''Odontornithes: A monograph on the extinct toothed birds of North America'', he added the Saururae, represented by ''Archaeopteryx'', as a third order. The resulting classification was paraphyletic, not accurately resolving evolutionary relationships, and so it has been abandoned by most modern scientists, though at least one 21st century paper re-used the concept under the older name Odontoholomorphae (first coined by Stejneger, 1885).Livezey, B.C. & Zusi, R.L. (2007): Higher-order phylogeny of modern birds (Theropoda, Aves: Neornithes) based on comparative anatomy. II. Analysis and discussion. '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ichthyornidae
''Ichthyornis'' (meaning "fish bird", after its fish-like vertebrae) is an extinct genus of toothy seabird-like ornithuran from the late Cretaceous period of North America. Its fossil remains are known from the chalks of Alberta, Alabama, Kansas (Greenhorn Limestone), New Mexico, Saskatchewan, and Texas, in strata that were laid down in the Western Interior Seaway during the Turonian through Campanian ages, about 95–83.5 million years ago. ''Ichthyornis'' is a common component of the Niobrara Formation fauna, and numerous specimens have been found. ''Ichthyornis'' has been historically important in shedding light on bird evolution. It was the first known prehistoric bird relative preserved with teeth, and Charles Darwin noted its significance during the early years of the theory of evolution. ''Ichthyornis'' remains important today as it is one of the few Mesozoic era ornithurans known from more than a few specimens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, the equivalent Latin term ''cladus'' (plural ''cladi'') is often used in taxonomical literature. The common ancestor may be an individual, a population, or a species (extinct or extant). Clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently. Clades are termed monophyletic (Greek: "one clan") groups. Over the last few decades, the cladistic approach has revolutionized biological classification and revealed surprising evolutionary relationships among organisms. Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades; that is, taxa that are not monophyletic. Some of the relationships between organisms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iaceornis Marshi
''Iaceornis'' is a prehistoric marine bird genus endemic to North America during the Late Cretaceous living about 83.5 Annum, mya. It is known from a single fossil specimen found in Gove County, Kansas (USA), and consisting of a partial skeleton lacking a skull. Since it was first discovered by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877, the specimen (YPM 1734) was long considered to belong to the contemporary species ''Apatornis celer''. Because it is relatively complete, most discussions of ''Apatornis'' actually focused on the ''Iaceornis'' fossil. In 2004, paleontologist Julia Clarke, Julia A. Clarke showed that the skeleton actually differed in important characteristics of the wing bones from the true, holotype specimen of ''Apatornis''. Therefore, she assigned the more complete remains to a new genus and species, ''Iaceornis marshi'', meaning "Marsh's neglected bird".Clarke, J.A. (2004). "Morphology, phylogenetic taxonomy, and systematics of ''Ichthyornis'' and ''Apatornis'' (Avialae: Or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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