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Betal Rock Shelter
Betal Rock Shelter ( sl, Betalov spodmol), a karst cave located on the south-eastern edge of the Lower Pivka river valley on a slope just above the road from Postojna to Bukovje is a site where rich cultural sediment layers with remains of stone tools, artifacts, and numerous fossilized bones of contemporary animals were found.Osole, Franc. 1987. Betalov spodmol. ''Enciklopedija Slovenije'', vol. 1. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, pp. 253–254. Its entrance was formed by the collapse of the long cave's ceiling, carved out by the waters of the Pivka River. The first excavations were carried out by Franco Anelli from 1933 to 1939. He excavated both in the cave and in front of it and found many Palaeolithic artifacts and numerous faunal remains, although this work remained mainly unpublished. Systematic recording of the archaeological sequence was begun anew by Srečko Brodar from 1947 to 1953. In the more than deep profile of eight cultural horizons, five separate strata revealed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postojna
Postojna (; german: Adelsberg, it, Postumia) is a town in the traditional region of Inner Carniola, from Trieste, in southwestern Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Postojna.Postojna municipal site History The area is known to have been populated since the era due to the discovery of a cave settlement near the town of Postojna called (). The town lies on the Pivka River. Written sources first mention the settlement in the 13th century and in 1432 it bec ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoologists and paleontologists use ''fauna'' to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess Shale fauna". Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of faunal stages, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils. The study of animals of a particular region is called faunistics. Etymology ''Fauna'' comes from the name Fauna, a Roman goddess of earth and fertility, the Roman god Faunus, and the related forest spirits called Fauns. All three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and ''panis'' is the Greek equivalent of fauna. ''Fauna'' is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cave Hyena
The cave hyena (''Crocuta crocuta spelaea''), also known as the Ice Age spotted hyena, was a paleosubspecies of spotted hyena which ranged from the Iberian Peninsula to eastern Siberia. It is one of the best known mammals of the Ice Age and is well represented in many European bone caves. The cave hyena was a highly specialised animal, with its progressive and regressive features being more developed than in its modern African relative. It preyed on large mammals (primarily wild horses, steppe bison and woolly rhinoceros), and was responsible for the accumulation of hundreds of large Pleistocene mammal bones in areas including horizontal caves, sinkholes, mud pits and muddy areas along rivers. The cause of the cave hyena's extinction is not fully understood, though it could have been due to a combination of factors, including climate change and competition with other predators. Description and paleoecology The main difference between the spotted hyena and the cave hyena lies in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephanorhinus
''Stephanorhinus'' is an extinct genus of two-horned rhinoceros native to Eurasia and North Africa that lived during the Pliocene to Late Pleistocene. Species of ''Stephanorhinus'' were the predominant and often only species of rhinoceros in much of temperate Eurasia, especially Europe, for most of the Pleistocene. Two species of ''Stephanorhinus'' – Merck's rhinoceros (''S. kirchbergensis'') and the narrow-nosed rhinoceros (''S. hemitoechus'') – persisted into the last glacial period. Etymology The first part of the name, ''Stephano-'', honours Stephen I, the first king of Hungary. (The genus name was coined by Kretzoi, a Hungarian.) The second part is from (Greek for "nose"), a typical suffix of rhinoceros genus names. Taxonomy The taxonomic history of ''Stephanorhinus'' is long and convoluted, as many species are known by numerous synonyms and different genera – typically ''Rhinoceros'' and ''Dicerorhinus'' – for the 19th and most of the early 20th century. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpine Marmot
The alpine marmot (''Marmota marmota'') is a large ground-dwelling squirrel, from the genus of marmots. It is found in high numbers in mountainous areas of central and southern Europe, at heights between in the Alps, Carpathians, Tatras and Northern Apennines. In 1948 they were reintroduced with success in the Pyrenees, where the alpine marmot had disappeared at end of the Pleistocene epoch. Evolution The alpine marmot originates as an animal of Pleistocene cold steppe, exquisitely adapted to this ice-age climate. As such, alpine marmots are excellent diggers, able to penetrate soil that even a pickaxe would have difficulty with, and spend up to nine months per year in hibernation. Since the disappearance of the Pleistocene cold steppe, the alpine marmot persists in the high altitude alpine meadow. During the colonisation of Alpine habitat, the alpine marmot has lost most of its genetic diversity through a bottleneck effect. It could not rebuild its genetic diversity eve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cave Bear
The cave bear (''Ursus spelaeus'') is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum. Both the word "cave" and the scientific name ''spelaeus'' are used because fossils of this species were mostly found in caves. This reflects the views of experts that cave bears may have spent more time in caves than the brown bear, which uses caves only for hibernation. Taxonomy Cave bear skeletons were first described in 1774 by Johann Friedrich Esper, in his book ''Newly Discovered Zoolites of Unknown Four Footed Animals''. While scientists at the time considered that the skeletons could belong to apes, canids, felids, or even dragons or unicorns, Esper postulated that they actually belonged to polar bears. Twenty years later, Johann Christian Rosenmüller, an anatomist at Leipzig University, gave the species its binomial name. The bones were so numerous that most researcher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ursus Deningeri
''Ursus deningeri'' (Deninger's bear) is an extinct species of bear, endemic to Eurasia during the Pleistocene for approximately 1.7 million years, from . The range of this bear has been found to encompass both Europe and Asia, demonstrating the ability of the species to adapt to many Pleistocene environments. ''U. deningeri'' is a descendant of ''U. savini'' and an ancestor of ''U. spelaeus''. Morphology ''Ursus deningeri'' has a combination of primitive and derived characters that distinguishes it from all other Pleistocene bears. Its mandible is slender like that of living brown bears and '' Ursus etruscus''. It also has derived characters of cave bears (''Ursus spelaeus'') and is considered to be the descendant of ''Ursus savini'' and very close to the common ancestor of brown bears. Fossil distribution Sites and specimen ages: *Nalaikha, Mongolia: ~1.8 Mya to 800,000 years ago *West Runton Freshwater Bed, Cromer Forest Bed Formation, Norfolk, England: ~800,000–100,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stone Tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Age) cultures that have become extinct. Archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of different tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and querns. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a flintknapper. Knapped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert or flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt, and quartzite via a process known as lithic reduction. One simple form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calcareous Sinter
Calcareous sinter is a freshwater calcium carbonate deposit, also known as calc-sinter. Deposits are characterised by low porosity and well-developed lamination, often forming crusts or sedimentary rock layers. Calcareous sinter should not be confused with siliceous sinter, which the term sinter more frequently refers to. It has been suggested that the term "sinter" should be restricted to siliceous spring deposits and be dropped for calcareous deposits entirely. Features Calcareous sinter is characterised by laminations of prismatic crystals growing perpendicular to the substrate; laminations are separated by thin layers of microcrystalline carbonate. Calcareous sinter is porous due to the calcareous crystals enclosing many small cavities. Macrophytes are absent, consequently porosity is very low. Exclusion of species is due either to high temperature (travertine), high pH/ ionic strength (tufa) or absence of light (speleothems). Pedley (1990) suggests the term be abandoned in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riss Glaciation
The Riss glaciation, Riss Glaciation, Riss ice age, Riss Ice Age, Riss glacial or Riss Glacial (german: Riß-Kaltzeit, ', ' or (obsolete) ') is the second youngest glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch in the traditional, quadripartite glacial classification of the Alps. The literature variously dates it to between about 300,000 to 130,000 years ago and 347,000 to 128,000 years ago. It coincides with the glaciation of North Germany. The name goes back to and who named this cold period after the river in Upper Swabia in their three-volume work ' ("The Alps in the Ice Age") published between 1901 and 1909. Boundaries and division The Riss glaciation was defined by Penck and Brückner as the Lower (''Niedere'') or Younger Old Moraines and Old Terminal Moraines High Terraces (''Jüngere Altmoränen und Alt-Endmoränen-Hochterrassen''). The type locality lies near Biberach an der Riß where the end of the northeastern Rhine Glacier stood. Results gained from over a century of resea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stratigraphy
Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock (geology), rock layers (Stratum, strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary rock, sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithostratigraphy (lithologic stratigraphy), biostratigraphy (biologic stratigraphy), and chronostratigraphy (stratigraphy by age). Historical development Catholic priest Nicholas Steno established the theoretical basis for stratigraphy when he introduced the law of superposition, the principle of original horizontality and the principle of lateral continuity in a 1669 work on the fossilization of organic remains in layers of sediment. The first practical large-scale application of stratigraphy was by William Smith (geologist), William Smith in the 1790s and early 19th century. Known as the "Father of English geology", Smith recognized the significance of Stratum, strata or rock layering and the importance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
