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Deinogalerix
''Deinogalerix'' (from Ancient Greek, "terrible/terror" + ''Galerix'') is an extinct genus of gymnure which lived in Italy in the Late Miocene, 7-10 million years ago. The genus was apparently endemic to what was then the island of Gargano, which is now a peninsula. The first specimens of ''Deinogalerix'' were first described in 1972. The genus is in the hedgehog subfamily of gymnures or moon-rats, which are not rats at all, but rather hairy, superficially rat-like relatives of the hedgehog lacking quills. ''Deinogalerix'' had a long, thin, conical face, small pointed ears, a lengthy, tapering tail and long hairs. ''Deinogalerix koenigswaldi''s skull was long and the entire body measured . It occupied the same ecological niche as dogs and cats today, except that it had more predators itself - such as the enormous barn owl '' Tyto gigantea''. It is believed that the species of ''Deinogalerix'' were insectivores, mostly feeding off invertebrates like beetles, dragonflies and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deinogalerix Koenigswaldi Head
''Deinogalerix'' (from Ancient Greek, "terrible/terror" + ''Galerix'') is an extinct genus of gymnure which lived in Italy in the Late Miocene, 7-10 million years ago. The genus was apparently endemic to what was then the island of Gargano, which is now a peninsula. The first specimens of ''Deinogalerix'' were first described in 1972. The genus is in the hedgehog subfamily of gymnures or moon-rats, which are not rats at all, but rather hairy, superficially rat-like relatives of the hedgehog lacking quills. ''Deinogalerix'' had a long, thin, conical face, small pointed ears, a lengthy, tapering tail and long hairs. ''Deinogalerix koenigswaldi''s skull was long and the entire body measured . It occupied the same ecological niche as dogs and cats today, except that it had more predators itself - such as the enormous barn owl ''Tyto gigantea''. It is believed that the species of ''Deinogalerix'' were insectivores, mostly feeding off invertebrates like beetles, dragonflies and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deinogalerix Gargano Fauna
''Deinogalerix'' (from Ancient Greek, "terrible/terror" + ''Galerix'') is an extinct genus of gymnure which lived in Italy in the Late Miocene, 7-10 million years ago. The genus was apparently endemic to what was then the island of Gargano, which is now a peninsula. The first specimens of ''Deinogalerix'' were first described in 1972. The genus is in the hedgehog subfamily of gymnures or moon-rats, which are not rats at all, but rather hairy, superficially rat-like relatives of the hedgehog lacking quills. ''Deinogalerix'' had a long, thin, conical face, small pointed ears, a lengthy, tapering tail and long hairs. ''Deinogalerix koenigswaldi''s skull was long and the entire body measured . It occupied the same ecological niche as dogs and cats today, except that it had more predators itself - such as the enormous barn owl ''Tyto gigantea''. It is believed that the species of ''Deinogalerix'' were insectivores, mostly feeding off invertebrates like beetles, dragonflies and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erinaceidae
Erinaceidae is a family in the order Eulipotyphla, consisting of the hedgehogs and moonrats. Until recently, it was assigned to the order Erinaceomorpha, which has been subsumed with the paraphyletic Soricomorpha into Eulipotyphla. Eulipotyphla has been shown to be monophyletic; Soricomorpha is paraphyletic because Soricidae shared a more recent common ancestor with Erinaceidae than with other soricomorphs. Erinaceidae contains the well-known hedgehogs (subfamily Erinaceinae) of Eurasia and Africa and the gymnures or moonrats (subfamily Galericinae) of South-east Asia. This family was once considered part of the order Insectivora, but that polyphyletic order is now considered defunct. Characteristics Erinaceids are generally shrew-like in form, with long snouts and short tails. They are, however, much larger than shrews, ranging from in body length and in weight, in the case of the short-tailed gymnure, up to and in the moonrat. All but one species have five toes in eac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gargano
Gargano (, Gargano Apulian Italo-Romance arˈgæːnə is a historical and geographical sub-region in the province of Foggia, Apulia, southeast Italy, consisting of a wide isolated mountain massif made of highland and several peaks and forming the backbone of the Gargano Promontory projecting into the Adriatic Sea, the "spur" on the Italian "boot". The high point is Monte Calvo at . Most of the upland area, about , is part of the Gargano National Park, founded in 1991. In this region since 1978 a feud has been fought between the clans of the Società foggiana. The Gargano peninsula is partly covered by the remains of an ancient forest, ''Foresta Umbra'', the only remaining part in Italy of the ancient oak and beech forest that once covered much of Central Europe as well as the Apennine deciduous montane forests ecoregion. The Latin poet Horace spoke of the oaks of ''Garganus'' in ''Ode'' II, ix. Tourism The coast of Gargano houses numerous beaches and tourist facilities, inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gymnure
Gymnures, also called hairy hedgehogs or moonrats, are mammals belonging to the subfamily Galericinae, in the family Erinaceidae and the order Eulipotyphla. Gymnures resemble rats but are not closely related as they are not rodents; they are instead closely related to hedgehogs, which also belong to Erinaceidae. They are thought to have appeared in Eastern Asia before their closest relatives, and changed little from the original ancestor, which is thought to have been also the ancestor of the shrews. Description Although the gymnures are more closely related to the hedgehogs, full-grown gymnures superficially resemble large rats, shrews or opossums. The gymnure's body plan is believed to resemble that of the earliest mammals, with a large, toothy head about 1/3 the length of the total body, a naked furless tail for balance and thermoregulatory purposes, and a plantigrade stance. In direct contrast to the closely related hedgehogs, gymnures are not spiny. They also have an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tyto Gigantea
''Tyto gigantea'' is an extinct barn owl from what is now Gargano Gargano (, Gargano Apulian Italo-Romance arˈgæːnə is a historical and geographical sub-region in the province of Foggia, Apulia, southeast Italy, consisting of a wide isolated mountain massif made of highland and several peaks and forming ..., Italy, dating back to the late Miocene. From its remains, ''T. gigantea'' is suggested to have been as large as or larger than the Eurasian eagle-owl (''Bubo bubo''). This species seems to have lived at the same time as the closely related owl, ''Tyto robusta''. That would represent a single lineage of owls adapting to the largest size of their prey on the island, such as the great Erinaceidae, erinaceomorph of Gargano, ''Deinogalerix'', and rodents.Mlíkovský, J. (1998)A new barn owl (Aves: Strigidae) from the early Miocene of Germany, with comments on the fossil history of the Tytoninae ''Journal für Ornithologie'', 139(3), 247-261. References Tyto M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene Mammals Of Europe
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regionally defined boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, the Arabian Peninsula collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and allowing a faunal interchange to occur between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans into Eurasia. During the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Eulipotyphla
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. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolved
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. The theory of evolution by na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invertebrate
Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include arthropods, mollusks, annelids, echinoderms and cnidarians. The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxa have a greater number and variety of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 50 μm (0.002 in) rotifers to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid. Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the invertebrates paraphyletic, so the term has little meaning in taxonomy. Etymology The word "invertebrate" comes from the Latin word ''vertebra'', whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insectivore
A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were amphibians. When they evolved 400 million years ago, the first amphibians were piscivores, with numerous sharp conical teeth, much like a modern crocodile. The same tooth arrangement is however also suited for eating animals with exoskeletons, thus the ability to eat insects is an extension of piscivory. At one time, insectivorous mammals were scientifically classified in an order called Insectivora. This order is now abandoned, as not all insectivorous mammals are closely related. Most of the Insectivora taxa have been reclassified; those that have not yet been reclassified and found to be truly related to each other remain in the order Eulipotyphla. Although individually small, insects exist in enormous numbers. Insects make u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
