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Gondwanascorpio
''Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis'' is an extinct Gondwanan scorpion that lived 360 million years ago in the Devonian. Its fossil remains, clearly showing pincer and sting, were discovered in rocks of the Witteberg Group near Grahamstown in South Africa. At present, this scorpion is the oldest known land-dwelling animal from Gondwana, which in Devonian times was separated from Laurasia by a deep ocean. At the time, the fossil site was only 15° from the South Pole, but rather than arctic-like tundra, the region was probably wooded, providing ample insect life for food. Previously, only two scorpion species were known from the late Devonian – '' Hubeiscorpio gracilitarsus'' from China and '' Petaloscorpio bureaui'' from Canada. The species was described by Robert Gess of Wits University in the journal ''African Invertebrates''. The specific epithet derives from ', the isiXhosa word for "south", sometimes used for South Africa. The shale containing the fossil was discovered as far b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waterloo Farm Lagerstätte
The Waterloo Farm lagerstätte is a Famennian lagerstätte in South Africa that constitutes the only known record of a near-polar Devonian coastal ecosystem. History and discovery The Waterloo Farm Lagerstätte is an approximately 360 million year old Famennian (latest Devonian) fossil-rich locality of the Witpoort Formation (Witteberg Group, Cape Supergroup) in Makhanda (former Grahamstown) within the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Before it’s discovery very little was known of life during the Famennian (see Late Devonian extinction) in what is now southern Africa . This is largely due to the fact that fossils in the Witpoort Formation generally occur in black anaerobically deposited metashale that rapidly degrades near surface and is therefore rarely seen in natural outcrop. As is the case with many other scientific discoveries, the discovery of Waterloo Farm was accidental. Uprisings against the apartheid system in South Africa had by the mid-1980s escalated to vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serenichthys Kowiensis
''Serenichthys kowiensis'' is a fossil species of coelacanth described in 2015 from near Grahamstown in South Africa. Some 30 complete specimens of this new species were found in the black shale lagerstätte on Waterloo Farm, preserved by the mud of an ancient estuary dating back to the Famennian stage of the Late Devonian some 360 million years ago. In an article published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society and jointly authored by paleontologists Michael Coates of the University of Chicago and Robert Gess from the University of the Witwatersrand, the find is described as the earliest coelacanth to be discovered from Africa. Gess first identified coelacanth remains from this locality in the 1990s, but these were poorly preserved and unsuitable for formal description. Subsequent work produced many more specimens, some preserved in fine detail. According to the authors it is the Devonian coelacanth most similar to the hypothetical ancestor of modern coelacanths - it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always ending with a stinger. The evolutionary history of scorpions goes back 435 million years. They mainly live in deserts but have adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions, and can be found on all continents except Antarctica. There are over 2,500 described species, with 22 extant (living) families recognized to date. Their taxonomy is being revised to account for 21st-century genomic studies. Scorpions primarily prey on insects and other invertebrates, but some species hunt vertebrates. They use their pincers to restrain and kill prey, or to prevent their own predation. The venomous sting is used for offense and defense. During courtship, the male and female grasp each other's pincers and dance while he tries to move her onto his s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Priscomyzon Riniensis
''Priscomyzon riniensis'' is an extinct lamprey that lived some 360 million years ago during the Famennian ( Late Devonian) in a marine or estuarine environment in South Africa. This small agnathan is anatomically similar to the Mazon Creek lampreys, but is some 35 million years older. Its key developments included the first known large oral disc, circumoral teeth and a branchial basket. Context Though common and diverse during the Silurian and Devonian, jawless fish are today represented only by lampreys and hagfish, both groups being quite specialized. Lampreys have seven gill pouches (whereas jawed fish have only five), no paired fins, and a rudimentary skeleton of cartilage. They also have a sucker disc of cartilage surrounded by a soft lip and a central small mouth set about with simple hooked teeth. They attach to the bodies of other vertebrates by suction, securing their grip with the hooked teeth, after which a rasped tongue scrapes a hole providing access to the h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telson
The telson () is the posterior-most division of the body of an arthropod. Depending on the definition, the telson is either considered to be the final segment of the arthropod body, or an additional division that is not a true segment on account of not arising in the embryo from teloblast areas as other segments. It never carries any appendages, but a forked "tail" called the caudal furca may be present. The shape and composition of the telson differs between arthropod groups. Crustaceans In lobsters, shrimp and other decapods, the telson, along with the uropods, forms the tail fan. This is used as a paddle in the caridoid escape reaction ("lobstering"), whereby an alarmed animal rapidly flexes its tail, causing it to dart backwards. Krill can reach speeds of over 60 cm per second by this means. The trigger time to optical stimulus is, in spite of the low temperatures, only 55 milliseconds. In the Isopoda and Tanaidacea (superorder Peracarida), the last abdominal b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems.Adobe Systems IncorporatedPDF Reference, Sixth edition, version 1.23 (53 MB) Nov 2006, p. 33. Archiv/ref> Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it. PDF has its roots in "The Camelot Project" initiated by Adobe co-founder John Warnock in 1991. PDF was standardized as ISO 32000 in 2008. The last edition as ISO 32000-2:2020 was published in December 2020. PDF files may contain a variety of content besides flat text and graphics including logical structuring elements, interactive elements such as annotations and form-fields, layers, rich media (including video con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Scorpions
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] |
