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Bradycneme
''Bradycneme'' (meaning "ponderous leg") is a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous Sânpetru Formation of the Hațeg Basin, Transylvania, Romania. The genus contains a single species, ''Bradycneme draculae'', known only from a partial right lower leg (specimen BMNH A1588), which its original describers believed came from a giant owl. History In 1975, Harrison and Walker described two "bradycnemids" from Romania: ''B. draculae'' and ''Heptasteornis andrewsi''. These specimens had initially been assigned to the supposed pelecaniform bird ''Elopteryx nopcsai''. The generic name, ''Bradycneme'', comes from the Ancient Greek (), meaning "slow, ponderous" and (), meaning "leg", as the holotype, BMNH A1588, a wide distal tibiotarsus found by Maud Eleanora Seeley, would be very stout if the animal had been an owl, with a body height of about .Harrison & Walker (1975) The specific name, ''draculae'', is derived from Romanian ', meaning "the drago ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elopteryx Nopcsai
''Elopteryx'' is a genus of, perhaps troodontid, maniraptoran theropod dinosaur based on fragmentary fossils found in late Cretaceous Period rocks of Romania. The single species, ''Elopteryx nopcsai'', is known only from very incomplete material, and therefore is considered a '' nomen dubium'' ("dubious name") by most paleontologists. History of discovery and naming Initial finds In the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, the famous Hungarian paleontologist Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás found near Sînpetru, in what is now the Romanian region of Transylvania, some bone fragments of a small theropod. These were acquired by the British Museum of Natural History. In 1913, curator Charles William Andrews named these as the type species ''Elopteryx nopcsai''. The genus name ''Elopteryx'' is from Ancient Greek ''helos'' (ἕλος), "marsh" + ''pteryx'' (πτέρυξ), "wing". The specific name honors Nopcsa. Initially, ''Elopteryx'' was described from its holotype, a pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heptasteornis Andrewsi
''Heptasteornis'' is the name given to a potentially dubious genus of alvarezsaurid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous. The type (and only known) species is ''Heptasteornis andrewsi'', described as a presumed gigantic prehistoric owl in 1975. It was previously included in ''Elopteryx nopcsai'' and indeed the holotypes of both were believed to be from the same individual as they were discovered, and initially were assigned the same specimen number. This appears to be in error however (see below).Harrison & Walker (1975) The material was discovered in Romania by Franz Nopcsa, in the late Maastrichtian Sânpetru Formation ( Rognacian faunal stage, deposited c. 68 - 66 million years ago) of the Haţeg Basin in Transylvania. The scientific name means "C.W. Andrews' Transylvanian bird", after the namer of ''Elopteryx'', and Ancient Greek ''hepta'' (ἑπτά) "seven" + ''asty'' (άστυ) "city" + ''ornis'' (όρνις) "bird"; the Latin ''septum urbium'' or the German ''Siebenbürgen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maniraptora
Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the non-avian dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to ''Ornithomimus velox''. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Deinonychosauria, Oviraptorosauria and Therizinosauria. '' Ornitholestes'' and the Alvarezsauroidea are also often included. Together with the next closest sister group, the Ornithomimosauria, Maniraptora comprises the more inclusive clade Maniraptoriformes. Maniraptorans first appear in the fossil record during the Jurassic Period (see '' Eshanosaurus''), and survive today as living birds. Description Maniraptorans are characterized by long arms and three-fingered hands (though reduced or fused in some lineages), as well as a "half-moon shaped" (semi-lunate) bone in the wrist (carpus). In 2004, Tom Holtz and Halszka Osmólska pointed out six other maniraptoran characters relating to specific details of the skeleton. Unlike most other saurischian dinosaurs, which h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alvarezsaurid
Alvarezsauridae is a family of small, long-legged dinosaurs. Although originally thought to represent the earliest known flightless birds, they are now thought to be an early diverging branch of maniraptoran theropods. Alvarezsaurids were highly specialized. They had tiny but stout forelimbs, with compact, bird-like hands. Their skeletons suggest that they had massive breast and arm muscles, possibly adapted for digging or tearing. They had long, tube-shaped snouts filled with tiny teeth. They have been interpreted as myrmecophagous, adapted to prey on colonial insects such as termites, with the short arms acting as effective digging instruments to break into nests. '' Alvarezsaurus'', the type genus of the family, was named for the historian Gregorio Álvarez. History of study Bonaparte (1991) described the first alvarezsaurid, ''Alvarezsaurus calvoi'', from an incomplete skeleton found in Patagonia, Argentina. Bonaparte also named a family, Alvarezsauridae, to contain it. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sânpetru Formation
The Sânpetru Formation is an early Maastrichtian geologic formation. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel, et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution." Pp. 517-607. It is located in Romania, near Sânpetru village, part of Sântămăria-Orlea commune. It forms a component of the Hațeg Island fauna. Description The Sânpetru Formation crops out in the central to southern Hațeg Basin along the Bărbat River and comprises sandstones and mudstones deposited in a wet floodplain environment characterized by braided fluvial channels. The formation is correlated with the Densuș-Ciula Formation of the northern section of the same basin, both dating to the Maastrichtian of the Late Cretaceous.Solomon & Codrea, 2015, p.26 Fossil content Amphibians Turtles Squamates Crocodyliformes Ornithischians Sauropods Theropods Pterosaurs Mammals See also * List of dinosaur-bearing rock formations Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierce Brodkorb
William Pierce Brodkorb (September 29, 1908, Chicago – July 18, 1992, Gainesville, Florida) was an American ornithologist and paleontologist. Interested in birds since childhood, he was taught to prepare birds at the age of 16. Later, he received the opportunity to work as a staff technician in the Ornithology Division of the Field Museum. He entered the University of Michigan in 1933 and obtained his PhD degree in 1936. Subsequently, he became an assistant curator of birds at the Museum of Zoology in Michigan until 1946. In 1946, he accepted a professorate in the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. His doctoral students include Glen E. Woolfenden. From the 1950s, Brodkorb built up a huge collection of bird fossils from the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene of Florida, which included 12,500 skeletons from 129 families, and is on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History, part of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Specific Name (zoology)
In zoological nomenclature, the specific name (also specific epithet or species epithet) is the second part (the second name) within the scientific name of a species (a binomen). The first part of the name of a species is the name of the genus or the generic name. The rules and regulations governing the giving of a new species name are explained in the article species description. For example, the scientific name for humans is ''Homo sapiens'', which is the species name, consisting of two names: ''Homo'' is the " generic name" (the name of the genus) and ''sapiens'' is the "specific name". Historically, ''specific name'' referred to the combination of what are now called the generic and specific names. Carl Linnaeus, who formalized binomial nomenclature, made explicit distinctions between specific, generic, and trivial names. The generic name was that of the genus, the first in the binomial, the trivial name was the second name in the binomial, and the specific the proper term fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romanian (language)
Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește'', ) is the official and main language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, and Ukraine), and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 28–29 million people as an L1+ L2, of whom 23–24 millions are native speakers. In Europe, Romanian is rated as a medium level language, occupying the tenth position among thirty-seven official languages. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called ''Daco-Romanian'' as opposed to its closest rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dracula
''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him. ''Dracula'' was mostly written in the 1890s. Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes for the novel, drawing extensively from Transylvanian folklore and history. Some scholars have suggested that the character of Dracula was inspired by historical figures like the Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler or the countess Elizabeth Báthory, but there is widespread disagreement. Stoker's notes mention neither figure. He found the nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anatomical Terms Of Location
Standard anatomical terms of location are used to unambiguously describe the anatomy of animals, including humans. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position provides a definition of what is at the front ("anterior"), behind ("posterior") and so on. As part of defining and describing terms, the body is described through the use of anatomical planes and anatomical axes. The meaning of terms that are used can change depending on whether an organism is bipedal or quadrupedal. Additionally, for some animals such as invertebrates, some terms may not have any meaning at all; for example, an animal that is radially symmetrical will have no anterior surface, but can still have a description that a part is close to the middle ("proximal") or further from the middle ("distal"). International organisations have determined vocabularies that are often used as standard vocabularies for subdisciplines of ana ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synonym (taxonomy)
The Botanical and Zoological Codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that (now) goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name (under the currently used system of scientific nomenclature) to the Norway spruce, which he called ''Pinus abies''. This name is no longer in use, so it is now a synonym of the current scientific name, '' Picea abies''. * In zoology, moving a species from one genus to another results in a different binomen, but the name is considered an alternative combination rather than a synonym. The concept of synonymy in zoology is reserved for two names at the same rank that refers to a taxon at that rank - for example, the name ''Papilio prorsa'' Linnaeus, 1758 is a junior synonym of ''Papilio levana'' Linnaeus, 1758, being names for different seasonal forms of the species now referred to as ''Araschnia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibiotarsus
The tibiotarsus is the large bone between the femur and the tarsometatarsus in the leg of a bird. It is the fusion of the proximal part of the tarsus with the tibia. A similar structure also occurred in the Mesozoic Heterodontosauridae. These small ornithischian dinosaurs were unrelated to birds and the similarity of their foot bones is best explained by convergent evolution. See also *Bird anatomy References * Proctor, Nobel S. ''Manual of Ornithology: Avian Structure and Function''. Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi .... (1993) Bird anatomy {{ornithology-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
