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Paleontology In Florida
The location of the state of Florida Paleontology in Florida refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Florida. Florida has a very rich fossil record spanning from the Eocene to recent times. Florida fossils are often very well preserved. The oldest known fossils in Florida date back to the Eocene. At this time Florida was covered in a sea home to a variety of marine invertebrates and the primitive whales, such as ''Basilosaurus''. During the later Miocene Florida was exposed as dry land again due to geologic uplift and mountain building. In the Florida Keys, however, coral reefs were forming. The marine environments of Pliocene Florida were home to creatures like dugongs, porpoises, sharks, and whales. On land, camels, dogs, horses, relatives of modern elephants, saber toothed cats, and tapirs inhabited the state. The period of time best documented in the fossil record of Florida is the Pleistocene epoch. In fact, Florida ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Map Of USA FL
A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may represent any space, real or fictional, without regard to context or scale, such as in brain mapping, DNA mapping, or computer network topology mapping. The space being mapped may be two dimensional, such as the surface of the earth, three dimensional, such as the interior of the earth, or even more abstract spaces of any dimension, such as arise in modeling phenomena having many independent variables. Although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word "map" comes from the , wherein ''mappa'' meant 'napkin' or 'cloth' and ''mundi'' 'the world'. Thus, "map" became a shortened term referring to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, ''Eohippus'', into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies ''caballus'' are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior. Horses are adapted to run, allowing them to quickly escape predators, and po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gondwana
Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages of break-up, involving the separation of Antarctica from South America (forming the Drake Passage) and Australia, occurred during the Paleogene. Gondwana was not considered a supercontinent by the earliest definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia, and Siberia were separated from it. To differentiate it from the Indian region of the same name (see ), it is also commonly called Gondwanaland. Gondwana was formed by the accretion of several cratons. Eventually, Gondwana became the largest piece of continental crust of the Palaeozoic Era, covering an area of about , about one-fifth of the Earth's surface. During the Carboniferous Period, it merged with Laurasia to form a larger supercontinent called Pangaea. Gondwana (and Pan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolves
The wolf (''Canis lupus''; plural, : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large Canis, canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus, subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly understood, comprise wild subspecies. The wolf is the largest Neontology, extant member of the family Canidae. It is also distinguished from other ''Canis'' species by its less pointed ears and muzzle, as well as a shorter torso and a longer tail. The wolf is nonetheless related closely enough to smaller ''Canis'' species, such as the coyote and the golden jackal, to produce fertile Canid hybrid, hybrids with them. The Agouti (coloration), banded fur of a wolf is usually mottled white, brown, gray, and black, although subspecies in the arctic region may be nearly all white. Of all members of the genus ''Canis'', the wolf is most Generalist and specialist species, specialized for Pack hunter, cooperativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giant Ground Sloths
''Megatherium'' ( ; from Greek () 'great' + () 'beast') is an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. It is best known for the elephant-sized type species ''M. americanum'', sometimes called the giant ground sloth, or the megathere, native to the Pampas through southern Bolivia during the Pleistocene. Various other smaller species belonging to the subgenus ''Pseudomegatherium'' are known from the Andes. ''Megatherium'' is part of the sloth family Megatheriidae, which also includes the similarly giant ''Eremotherium'', comparable in size to ''M. americanum,'' which was native to tropical South America, Central America and North America as far north as the southern United States. Only a few other land mammals equaled or exceeded ''M. americanum'' in size, such as large proboscideans (e.g., elephants) and the giant rhinoceros ''Paraceratherium''. ''Megatherium'' was first discovered in 1788 on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mastodons
A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. They lived in herds and were predominantly forest-dwelling animals. They generally had a browsing diet, distinct from that of the contemporary Columbian mammoth, which tended towards grazing. ''M. americanum'', the American mastodon, and ''M. pacificus'', the Pacific mastodon, are the youngest and best-known species of the genus. Mastodons disappeared from North America as part of a mass extinction of most of the Pleistocene megafauna, widely believed to have been caused by a combination of climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene and overexploitation by Paleo-Indians. History A Dutch tenant farmer found the first recorded remnant of ''Mammut'', a tooth some in weight, in the village of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mammoths
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,000 years ago, and various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors. Mammoths are more closely related to living Asian elephants than African elephants. The oldest representative of ''Mammuthus'', the South African mammoth (''M. subplanifrons''), appeared around 5 million years ago during the early Pliocene in what is now southern and eastern Africa. Descendant species of these mammoths moved north and continued to propagate into numerous subsequent spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glyptodonts
Glyptodonts are an extinct subfamily of large, heavily armoured armadillos. They arose in South America around 48 million years ago and spread to southern North America after the continents became connected several million years ago. The best-known genus within the group is ''Glyptodon''. While they were formerly considered to constitute the distinct family Glyptodontidae, in 2016, an analysis of ''Doedicurus'' Mitochondrial DNA (also known as mtDNA / mDNA) found that it was, in fact, nested within the modern armadillos as the sister group of a clade consisting of Chlamyphorinae and Tolypeutinae. For this reason, glyptodonts and all armadillos but '' Dasypus'' were relocated to a new family, Chlamyphoridae, and glyptodonts were demoted from the former family Glyptodontidae to a subfamily. Evolution Glyptodonts first evolved during the Eocene in South America, which remained their center of species diversity. For example, an Early Miocene glyptodont with many primitive features ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saber-toothed Cat
Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae (true cats). They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe from the Miocene to the Pleistocene, living from about 16 million until about 11,000 years ago. The Machairodontinae contain many of the extinct predators commonly known as "saber-toothed cats", including the famed genus ''Smilodon'', as well as other cats with only minor increases in the size and length of their maxillary canines. The name means "dagger-tooth", from Greek μάχαιρα (''machaira''), sword. Sometimes, other carnivorous mammals with elongated teeth are also called saber-toothed cats, although they do not belong to the felids. Besides the machairodonts, other saber-toothed predators also arose in the nimravids, barbourofelids, machaeroidines, hyaenodonts and even in two groups of metatherians (the thylacosmilid sparassodonts and the deltatheroideans). Evolution Family Felidae The Mach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arctodus
''Arctodus'' is an extinct genus of short-faced bear that inhabited North America during the Pleistocene (~2.5 Mya until 12,000 years ago). There are two recognized species: the lesser short-faced bear (''Arctodus pristinus'') and the giant short-faced bear (''Arctodus simus''). Both species are relatively rare in the fossil record- ''A. pristinus'' was largely restricted to the Early Pleistocene of the eastern United States, whereas ''A. simus'' had a cosmopolitan range, with most finds being from the Late Pleistocene of the US, Mexico and Canada. ''A. simus'' evolved from ''A. pristinus'', but both species likely overlapped in the Middle Pleistocene. Of these species, ''A. simus'' was larger, is known from more complete remains, and is considered one of the most charismatic of North America's megafauna. Today considered to be an enormous omnivore, ''Arctodus simus'' is believed to be one of the largest known terrestrial mammalian carnivorans that has ever existed. However, ''Arct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mammals
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or hair, and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles (including birds) from which they diverged in the Carboniferous, over 300 million years ago. Around 6,400 extant species of mammals have been described divided into 29 orders. The largest orders, in terms of number of species, are the rodents, bats, and Eulipotyphla (hedgehogs, moles, shrews, and others). The next three are the Primates (including humans, apes, monkeys, and others), the Artiodactyla ( cetaceans and even-toed ungulates), and the Carnivora (cats, dogs, seals, and others). In terms of cladistics, which reflects evolutionary history, mammals are the only living members of the Synapsida (synapsids); this clade, together with Saur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pleistocene Epoch
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology. The name is a combination of Ancient Greek grc, label=none, πλεῖστος, pleīstos, most and grc, label=none, καινός, kainós (latinized as ), 'new'. At the end of the preceding Pliocene, the previously isolated North and South American continents were joined by the Isthmus of Panama, causing a faunal interchange between the two r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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