Gerontoformica
   HOME
*



picture info

Gerontoformica
''Gerontoformica'' is an extinct genus of stem-group ants. The genus contains thirteen described species known from Late Cretaceous fossils found in Asia and Europe. The species were described between 2004 and 2016, with a number of the species formerly being placed into the junior synonym genus ''Sphecomyrmodes''. History and classification ''Gerontoformica'' is known from over thirty adult fossil specimens which are composed of complete adult female workers and queens. The first fossil was discovered preserved as an inclusion in a transparent chunk of Charentese amber. The amber is thought to have been formed from resins of the extinct Pinales tree family Cheirolepidiaceae and possibly from the living family Araucariaceae. Paleoecology of the ambers indicates the shore to mangrove type forests were of a subtropical to warm temperate climate, with occasional dry periods The ambers are recovered from deposits exposed in quarries, road constructions, and beach exposures in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Sphecomyrminae
Sphecomyrminae is an extinct subfamily of ants in family Formicidae known from a series of Cretaceous fossils found in North America, Europe, and Asia. Sphecomyrminae contains eight genera, divided into two tribes Sphecomyrmini and Zigrasimeciini. The tribe Sphecomyrmini contains the six genera '' Armania'', '' Cretomyrma'', ''Gerontoformica'', '' Orapia'', '' Pseudarmania'' and ''Sphecomyrma''; while Zigrasimeciini contains ''Boltonimecia'' and ''Zigrasimecia''. A number of taxa have been removed from the subfamily and placed either in other subfamilies or are now treated as ''incertae sedis'' in Formicidae. Sphecomyrminae is the most basal of the Formicidae subfamilies, but has not been included in several phylogenetic studies of the family. Symplesiomorphies of the subfamily include the structure of the antenna, which has a short basal segment and a flexible group of segments below the antenna tip. The petiole is low and rounded, with an unrestricted gaster and the presence of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Burmese Amber
Burmese amber, also known as Burmite or Kachin amber, is amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar. The amber is dated to around 100 million years ago, during the latest Albian to earliest Cenomanian ages of the mid-Cretaceous period. The amber is of significant palaeontological interest due to the diversity of flora and fauna contained as inclusions, particularly arthropods including insects and arachnids but also birds, lizards, snakes, frogs and fragmentary dinosaur remains. The amber has been known and commercially exploited since the first century AD, and has been known to science since the mid-nineteenth century. Research on the deposit has attracted controversy due to its alleged role in funding internal conflict in Myanmar and hazardous working conditions in the mines where it is collected. Geological context, depositional environment and age The amber is found within the Hukawng Basin, a large Cretaceous-Cenozoic sedimentary basin within northern Myanmar. The s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hukawng Valley
The Hukawng Valley ( my, ဟူးကောင်းချိုင့်ဝှမ်း; also spelt Hukaung Valley) is an isolated valley in Myanmar, roughly in area. It is located in Tanaing Township in the Myitkyina District of Kachin State in the northernmost part of the country. It has the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary. Rivers The rivers draining into the Hukawng Valley, the Tanai Kha, the Tabye, the Tawan, and the Turong, form the headwaters of the Chindwin River. Protected area Ringed by steep mountain ranges to the north, east and west, the valley is known as a habitat of Indochinese tiger, tigers, but encroachment by man has greatly decreased their numbers, to perhaps as few as 100 animals. In 2004, the government established the world's largest tiger preserve in the Hukawng Valley, the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, with an area of approximately ; later, the Sanctuary was extended to 21,800 km2, making it the largest protected area in mainland Southeast ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Antenna (biology)
Antennae ( antenna), sometimes referred to as "feelers", are paired appendages used for sensing in arthropods. Antennae are connected to the first one or two segments of the arthropod head. They vary widely in form but are always made of one or more jointed segments. While they are typically sensory organs, the exact nature of what they sense and how they sense it is not the same in all groups. Functions may variously include sensing touch, air motion, heat, vibration (sound), and especially smell or taste. Antennae are sometimes modified for other purposes, such as mating, brooding, swimming, and even anchoring the arthropod to a substrate. Larval arthropods have antennae that differ from those of the adult. Many crustaceans, for example, have free-swimming larvae that use their antennae for swimming. Antennae can also locate other group members if the insect lives in a group, like the ant. The common ancestor of all arthropods likely had one pair of uniramous (unbranched ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sphecomyrma
''Sphecomyrma'' is an extinct genus of ants which existed in the Cretaceous approximately 79 to 92 million years ago. The first specimens were collected in 1966, found embedded in amber which had been exposed in the cliffs of Cliffwood, New Jersey, by Edmund Frey and his wife. In 1967, zoologists E. O. Wilson, Frank Carpenter and William L. Brown, Jr. published a paper describing and naming ''Sphecomyrma freyi''. They described an ant with a mosaic of features—a mix of characteristics from modern ants and aculeate wasps. It possessed a metapleural gland, a feature unique to ants. Furthermore, it was wingless and had a petiole which was ant-like in form. The mandibles were short and wasp-like with only two teeth, the gaster was constricted, and the middle and hind legs had double tibial spurs. The antennae were, in form, midway between the wasps and ants, having a short first segment but a long flexible funiculus. Two additional species, ''S. canadensis'' and ''S. mesaki' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Formica
''Formica'' is a genus of ants of the family Formicidae, commonly known as wood ants, mound ants, thatching ants, and field ants. ''Formica'' is the type genus of the Formicidae, and of the subfamily Formicinae. The type species of genus ''Formica'' is the European red wood ant ''Formica rufa''. Ants of this genus tend to be between 4 and 8 mm long. Habitat As the name wood ant implies, many ''Formica'' species live in wooded areas where no shortage of material exists with which they can thatch their mounds (often called anthills). One shade-tolerant species is '' F. lugubris''. However, sunlight is important to most ''Formica'' species, and colonies rarely survive for any considerable period in deeply shaded, dense woodland. The majority of species, especially outside the ''F. rufa'' species group, are inhabitants of more open woodlands or treeless grassland or shrubland. In North America, at least, these habitats had a long history of frequent landscape-scale fires t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Greek Language
Greek ( el, label=Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting impo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Geologica Acta
''Geologica Acta'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal that covers research in the Earth sciences. It was established in 2003 as a successor to ''Acta Geológica Hispánica'' (1966-2002), a locally oriented journal published in Spanish. The journal is published by the University of Barcelona, the Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra Jaume Almera ( CSIC), the Institut de Diagnosi Ambiental i Estudis de l'Aigua (CSIC), and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in: According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal has a 2017 impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ... of 0.692. References External links * Publications established in 2003 English-language journals Geology ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Type (biology)
In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes the defining features of that particular taxon. In older usage (pre-1900 in botany), a type was a taxon rather than a specimen. A taxon is a scientifically named grouping of organisms with other like organisms, a set that includes some organisms and excludes others, based on a detailed published description (for example a species description) and on the provision of type material, which is usually available to scientists for examination in a major museum research collection, or similar institution. Type specimen According to a precise set of rules laid down in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), the scientific name of every taxon is almost al ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cupressaceae
Cupressaceae is a conifer family, the cypress family, with worldwide distribution. The family includes 27–30 genera (17 monotypic), which include the junipers and redwoods, with about 130–140 species in total. They are monoecious, subdioecious or (rarely) dioecious trees and shrubs up to tall. The bark of mature trees is commonly orange- to red- brown and of stringy texture, often flaking or peeling in vertical strips, but smooth, scaly or hard and square-cracked in some species. Description The leaves are arranged either spirally, in decussate pairs (opposite pairs, each pair at 90° to the previous pair) or in decussate whorls of three or four, depending on the genus. On young plants, the leaves are needle-like, becoming small and scale-like on mature plants of many genera; some genera and species retain needle-like leaves throughout their lives. Old leaves are mostly not shed individually, but in small sprays of foliage (cladoptosis); exceptions are leaves on the s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Aptian
The Aptian is an age in the geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early or Lower Cretaceous Epoch or Series and encompasses the time from 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma to 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma (million years ago), approximately. The Aptian succeeds the Barremian and precedes the Albian, all part of the Lower/Early Cretaceous. The Aptian partly overlaps the upper part of the Western European Urgonian Stage. The Selli Event, also known as OAE1a, was one of two oceanic anoxic events in the Cretaceous Period, which occurred around 120 Ma and lasted approximately 1 to 1.3 million years. The Aptian extinction was a minor extinction event hypothesized to have occurred around 116 to 117 Ma.Archangelsky, Sergio.The Ticó Flora (Patagonia) and the Aptian Extinction Event" ''Acta Paleobotanica'' 41(2), 2001, pp. 115-22. Stratigraphic definitions The Aptian was named after the small city of Apt in the Provence region of France, which is also known for its cry ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lead
Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, lead is a shiny gray with a hint of blue. It tarnishes to a dull gray color when exposed to air. Lead has the highest atomic number of any stable element and three of its isotopes are endpoints of major nuclear decay chains of heavier elements. Lead is toxic, even in small amounts, especially to children. Lead is a relatively unreactive post-transition metal. Its weak metallic character is illustrated by its amphoteric nature; lead and lead oxides react with acids and bases, and it tends to form covalent bonds. Compounds of lead are usually found in the +2 oxidation state rather than the +4 state common with lighter members of the carbon group. Exceptions are mostly limited to organolead compounds. Like the lighter members of the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]