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Extinct Birds
Out of the approximately 11,154 known bird species, 159 (1.4%) have become extinct, 226 (2%) are critically endangered, 461 (4.1%) are endangered, 800 (7.2%) are vulnerable and 1,018 (9.1%) are near threatened. There is a general consensus among scientists who study these trends that if human impact on the environment continues as it has, one-third of all bird species and an even greater proportion of bird populations will be gone by the end of this century. Since 1500, 150 species of birds have become extinct. Historically, the majority of bird extinctions have occurred on islands, particularly those in the Pacific. These include countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. Some species are not extinct and seem numerous, but exist in highly reduced numbers from previous years. For example, the Wood Thrush population in North America has declined 50% in the last 50 years. According to the American Bird Conservatory, in the Western Hemisphere 12% of bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dodo
The dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest genetic relative was the also-extinct Rodrigues solitaire. The two formed the subfamily Raphinae, a clade of extinct flightless birds that were a part of the family which includes pigeons and doves. The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but it is now believed that this assumption was merely confusion based on the also-extinct Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos. Subfossil remains show the dodo was about tall and may have weighed in the wild. The dodo's appearance in life is evidenced only by drawings, paintings, and written accounts from the 17th century. Since these portraits vary considerably, and since only some of the illustrations are known to have been drawn from live specim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drought
A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, and O. Zolina, 2021Water Cycle Changes In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1055–1210, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.010. This means that a drought is "a moisture deficit relative to the average water availability at a given location and season". A drought can last for days, months or years. Drought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and second smallest state by population. It has a total of 1.8 million people. Its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second-largest centre, has a population of 33,233. South Australia shares borders with all of the other mainland states, as well as the Northern Territory; it is bordered to the west by Western Australia, to the north by the Northern Territory, to the north-east by Queensland, to the east by New South Wales, to the south-east by Victoria (Australia), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Frome
Lake Frome / Munda is a large endorheic lake in the Australian state of South Australia to the east of the Northern Flinders Ranges. It is a large, shallow, unvegetated salt pan, long and wide, lying mostly below sea level and having a total surface area of . It only rarely fills with brackish water flowing down usually dry creeks in the Northern Flinders Ranges from the west, or exceptional flows down the Strzelecki Creek from the north. The Adnyamathanha name for the lake is ''Munda''. Europeans named the lake ''Frome'' after Edward Charles Frome, after he mapped the area in 1843. The lake was officially dual named Lake Frome / Munda in 2004. Description The lake adjoins Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park to its west and lies adjacent to Lake Callabonna linked by Salt Creek to its north, the southern Strzelecki Desert to its east, and the Frome Downs pastoral lease to its south. The ancient Lake Mega-Frome (Lakes Frome, Blanche, Callabonna and Gregory) was last conn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre
Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in east-central Far North South Australia, some north of Adelaide. The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains the lowest natural point in Australia at approximately below sea level ( AHD), and on the rare occasions that it fills completely, is the largest lake in Australia covering an area up to . When the lake is full, it has the same salinity level as seawater, but becomes hypersaline as the lake dries up and the water evaporates. The lake was named in honour of Edward John Eyre, the first European to see it in 1840. The lake's official name was changed in December 2012 to combine the name "Lake Eyre" with the Aboriginal name, Kati Thanda. The native title over the lake and surrounding region is held by the Arabana people. Geography Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre is in the deserts of central Australia, in northern South Australia. The Lake Eyre Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flamingo
Flamingos or flamingoes are a type of wading bird in the family Phoenicopteridae, which is the only extant family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. There are four flamingo species distributed throughout the Americas (including the Caribbean), and two species native to Afro-Eurasia. A group of flamingoes is called a "flamboyance." Etymology The name ''flamingo'' comes from Portuguese or Spanish ("flame-colored"), which in turn comes from Provençal – a combination of ("flame") and a Germanic-like suffix '' -ing''. The word may also have been influenced by the Spanish ethnonym ("Fleming" or "Flemish"). The name of the genus, ''Phoenicopterus'', is from the Greek , ); other genera names include '' Phoeniconaias,'' which means "crimson/red water nymph (or naiad)", and '' Phoenicoparrus,'' which means "crimson/red bird (though, an unknown bird of omen)". Taxonomy and systematics The family Phoenicopteridae was introduced by the French zoologist Charles Lucien Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the ''fossil record''. Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. Early edition, published online before print. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Society Of South Australia
The Royal Society of South Australia (RSSA) is a learned society whose interest is in science, particularly, but not only, of South Australia. The major aim of the society is the promotion and diffusion of scientific knowledge, particularly in relation to natural sciences. The society was originally the Adelaide Philosophical Society, founded on 10 January 1853. The title "Royal" was granted by Queen Victoria in October 1880 and the society changed its name to its present name at this time. It was incorporated in 1883. It also operates under the banner Science South Australia. History The origins of the Royal Society are related to the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association, founded in August 1834, before the colonisation of South Australia, and whose book collection eventually formed the kernel of the State Library of South Australia. The Society had its origins in a meeting at the Stephens Place home of J. L. Young (founder of the Adelaide Educational Institut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De-extinction
De-extinction (also known as resurrection biology, or species revivalism) is the process of generating an organism that either resembles or ''is'' an extinct species This page features lists of extinct species, organisms that have become Extinction, extinct, either in the wild or completely disappeared from Earth. In actual theoretical practice, a species not definitely located in the wild in the last fifty .... There are several ways to carry out the process of de-extinction. Cloning is the most widely proposed method, although genome editing and selective breeding have also been considered. Similar techniques have been applied to certain endangered species, in hopes to boost their genetic diversity. The only method of the three that would provide an animal with the same genetic identity is cloning. There are benefits and malefits to the process of de-extinction ranging from technological advancements to ethical issues. Methods Cloning Cloning is a commonly suggested metho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chestnut Blight
The pathogenic fungus ''Cryphonectria parasitica'' (formerly ''Endothia parasitica'') is a member of the Ascomycota (sac fungi). This necrotrophic fungus is native to East Asia and South East Asia and was introduced into Europe and North America in the early 1900s. The fungus spread rapidly and caused significant tree loss in both regions. Overview ''Cryphonectria parasitica'' is a parasitic fungus of chestnut trees. This disease came to be known as chestnut blight. Naturally found in South East Asia, accidental introductions led to invasive populations of ''C. parasitica'' in North America and Europe. The fungal disease has had a devastating economic and social impact on communities in the eastern United States. In the first half of the 20th century it killed an estimated four billion trees; or, by another count, 3.5 billion trees through 2013. Less severe impacts have occurred in Europe due to widespread CHV1-induced ''hypovirulence''. CHV1 is one of at least two viral pathog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martha (passenger Pigeon)
Martha ( – September 1, 1914) was the last known living passenger pigeon (''Ectopistes migratorius''); she was named "Martha" in honor of the first First Lady Martha Washington. Early life The history of the Cincinnati Zoo's passenger pigeons has been described by Arlie William Schorger in his monograph on the species as "hopelessly confused," and he also said that it is "difficult to find a more garbled history" than that of Martha. The generally accepted version is that, by the turn of the 20th century, the last known group of passenger pigeons was kept by Professor Charles Otis Whitman at the University of Chicago. Whitman originally acquired his passenger pigeons from David Whittaker of Wisconsin, who sent him six birds, two of which later bred and hatched Martha in about 1885. Martha was named in honor of Martha Washington. Whitman kept these pigeons to study their behavior, along with rock doves and Eurasian collared-doves. Whitman and the Cincinnati Zoo, recognizing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
-_Breeding_plumage_W2_IMG_8770.jpg "Click for more on -> Flamingo")
