|
Eobalaenoptera
''Eobalaenoptera'' is an extinct genus of baleen whale belonging to Balaenopteroidea. Discovery and significance ''Eobalaenoptera'' was first described in June 2004 by researchers at the Virginia Museum of Natural History from a partial skeleton found in 1990 in Caroline County, Virginia, the site of a prehistoric ocean, in the middle Miocene Calvert Formation. The 11 m (35 ft) skeleton proved to have similar morphological characteristics to a clade of whales consisting of two modern taxonomic families – Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), and Eschrichtiidae (a family with one surviving species, the gray whale). The age of the Calvert Formation (14 million years) makes ''Eobalaenoptera'' the oldest known member of Balaenopteroidea by three to five million years. It also considerably narrowed the gap between the earliest known fossil record and estimated time of divergence of this clade from other baleen whales. Molecular clocks have put this divergence for balaenopteroi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Museum Of Natural History
The Virginia Museum of Natural History is the state's natural history museum located in Martinsville, Virginia founded in 1984. The museum has several different award-winning publications, is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, and has more than 22 million items. This includes the first intact stromatolite head ever found in Virginia, which is one of the largest complete 'heads' in the world, at over 5 feet in diameter and weighing over 2 tons. History The Virginia Museum of Natural History was founded in 1984 as The Boaz Foundation, named after Dr. Noel T. Boaz, Founding Director, along with co-founder Dr. Dorothy Dechant Boaz. The museum was founded as a private institution, but on June 2, 1985, the museum opened to the public with the new and current name. Three years later in 1988, local and statewide leaders such as Speaker of the Virginia General Assembly, A. L. Philpott, helped the museum become an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The first meeting of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caroline County, Virginia
Caroline County is a United States county located in the eastern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The northern boundary of the county borders on the Rappahannock River, notably at the historic town of Port Royal. The Caroline county seat is Bowling Green. Caroline County was established in 1728 and was named in honor of the British queen Caroline of Ansbach. Developed in the colonial and antebellum years for tobacco and later mixed crops, worked by generations of enslaved African Americans, such agriculture gradually became less important. In the 20th century it was known for thoroughbred horse farms. It is the birthplace of the renowned racehorse Secretariat, winner of the 1973 Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 30,887. It has doubled in the last fifty years. Caroline is now considered part of the Greater Richmond Region and benefited by suburban and related development. History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calvert Formation
The Calvert Formation is a geologic formation in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. It preserves fossils dating back to the early to middle Miocene epoch of the Neogene period. The formation is a destination for amateur fossil hunters as well as professional paleontologists. It is one of the three formations which make up the Calvert Cliffs, all of which are part of the Chesapeake Group. Fossils The Calvert Formation is extremely fossiliferous. Some of the fossil species represented include the following: Sharks * ''Otodus megalodon'' * ''Otodus chubutensis'' * ''Carcharodon hastalis'' * '' Isurus oxyrhincus'' * '' Physogaleus contortus'' * '' Physogaleus hemmooriensis'' * ''Galeocerdo aduncus'' * '' Carcharhinus'' * ''Hemipristis serra'' * '' Squatina sp.'' * ''Squalus sp.'' * '' Echinorhinus blakei'' * '' Notorhyncus cepedianus'' * '' Hexanchus gigas'' * '' Carcharias'' * ''Carcharoides catticus'' * '' Isurus retroflexus'' * '' Parotodus benedeni'' * ''Alopias vulpinus'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baleen Whales
Baleen whales (systematic name Mysticeti), also known as whalebone whales, are a parvorder of carnivorous marine mammals of the infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises) which use keratinaceous baleen plates (or "whalebone") in their mouths to sieve planktonic creatures from the water. Mysticeti comprises the families Balaenidae (right and bowhead whales), Balaenopteridae (rorquals and the gray whale), and Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale). There are currently 16 species of baleen whales. While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids, molecular evidence instead supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla). Baleen whales split from toothed whales (Odontoceti) around 34 million years ago. Baleen whales range in size from the and pygmy right whale to the and blue whale, the largest known animal to have ever existed. They are sexually dimorphic. Baleen whales can have streamlined or large bodies, depending on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baleen Whale
Baleen whales (systematic name Mysticeti), also known as whalebone whales, are a parvorder of carnivorous marine mammals of the infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises) which use keratinaceous baleen plates (or "whalebone") in their mouths to sieve planktonic creatures from the water. Mysticeti comprises the families Balaenidae (right and bowhead whales), Balaenopteridae (rorquals and the gray whale), and Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale). There are currently 16 species of baleen whales. While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids, molecular evidence instead supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla). Baleen whales split from toothed whales (Odontoceti) around 34 million years ago. Baleen whales range in size from the and pygmy right whale to the and blue whale, the largest known animal to have ever existed. They are sexually dimorphic. Baleen whales can have streamlined or large bodies, depending on th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eschrichtiidae
Eschrichtiidae or the gray whales is a family of baleen whale (Parvorder Mysticeti) with a single extant species, the gray whale (''Eschrichtius robustus''), as well as three described fossil genera: '' Archaeschrichtius'' and ''Eschrichtioides'' from the Miocene and Pliocene of Italy respectively, and '' Gricetoides'' from the Pliocene of North Carolina. More recent phylogenetic studies have found this family to be invalid, with its members nesting inside the Balaenopteridae. The names of the extant genus and the family honours Danish zoologist Daniel Eschricht. Taxonomy In his morphological analysis, found that eschrichtiids and Cetotheriidae (''Cetotherium'', '' Mixocetus'' and '' Metopocetus'') form a monophyletic sister group of Balaenopteridae. A specimen from the Late Pliocene of northern Italy, named ''"Cetotherium" gastaldii'' by and renamed ''"Balaenoptera" gastaldii'' by , was identified as a basal eschrichtiid by who recombined it to '' Eschrichtioides gastal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Cetacean Genera
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] |
Miocene Cetaceans
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] |
Minke Whale
The minke whale (), or lesser rorqual, is a species complex of baleen whale. The two species of minke whale are the common (or northern) minke whale and the Antarctic (or southern) minke whale. The minke whale was first described by the Danish naturalist Otto Fabricius in 1780, who assumed it must be an already known species and assigned his specimen to ''Balaena rostrata'', a name given to the northern bottlenose whale by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1776. In 1804, Bernard Germain de Lacépède described a juvenile specimen of ''Balaenoptera acuto-rostrata''. The name is a partial translation of Norwegian ''minkehval'', possibly after a Norwegian whaler named Meincke, who mistook a northern minke whale for a blue whale. Taxonomy Most modern classifications split the minke whale into two species; * Common minke whale or northern minke whale (''Balaenoptera acutorostrata'') :and *Antarctic minke whale or southern minke whale (''Balaenoptera bonaerensis''). Taxonomists further categ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gray Whale
The gray whale (''Eschrichtius robustus''), also known as the grey whale,Britannica Micro.: v. IV, p. 693. gray back whale, Pacific gray whale, Korean gray whale, or California gray whale, is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and breeding grounds yearly. It reaches a length of , a weight of up to and lives between 55 and 70 years, although one female was estimated to be 75–80 years of age. The common name of the whale comes from the gray patches and white mottling on its dark skin. Gray whales were once called devil fish because of their fighting behavior when hunted. The gray whale is the sole living species in the genus ''Eschrichtius''. It was formerly thought to be the sole living genus in the family (biology), family Eschrichtiidae, but more recent evidence classifies members of that family in the family Rorqual, Balaenopteridae. This mammal is descended from filter-feeding whales that appeared during the Neogene. The gray whale is distributed in an eastern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Family (biology)
Family ( la, familia, plural ') is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the "walnut family". What belongs to a family—or if a described family should be recognized at all—are proposed and determined by practicing taxonomists. There are no hard rules for describing or recognizing a family, but in plants, they can be characterized on the basis of both vegetative and reproductive features of plant species. Taxonomists often take different positions about descriptions, and there may be no broad consensus across the scientific community for some time. The publishing of new data and opini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
