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Great Apes
The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the eastern and western gorilla); '' Pan'' (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and ''Homo'', of which only modern humans remain. Several revisions in classifying the great apes have caused the use of the term ''"hominid"'' to vary over time. The original meaning of "hominid" referred only to humans (''Homo'') and their closest extinct relatives. However, by the 1990s humans, apes, and their ancestors were considered to be "hominids". The earlier restrictive meaning has now been largely assumed by the term ''"hominin"'', which comprises all members of the human clade after the split from the chimpanzees (''Pan''). The current meaning of "hominid" includes all the great apes including humans. Usage still varies, however, and some scientists and layper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bornean Orangutan
The Bornean orangutan (''Pongo pygmaeus'') is a species of orangutan endemic to the island of Borneo. Together with the Sumatran orangutan (''Pongo abelii'') and Tapanuli orangutan (''Pongo tapanuliensis''), it belongs to the only genus of great apes native to Asia. Like the other great apes, orangutans are highly intelligent, displaying tool use and distinct cultural patterns in the wild. Orangutans share approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. Also called mias by the local population, the Bornean orangutan is a critically endangered species, with deforestation, palm oil plantations, and hunting posing a serious threat to its continued existence. Taxonomy The Bornean orangutan and the Sumatran orangutan diverged about 400,000 years ago, with a continued low level of gene flow between them since then. The two orangutan species were considered merely subspecies until 1996; they were elevated to species following sequencing of their mitochondrial DNA. The Bornean orangutan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bonobo
The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus '' Pan,'' the other being the common chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''). While bonobos are now recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes)'' due to the physical similarities between the two species. Taxonomically, the members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina (composed entirely by the genus '' Pan'') are collectively termed ''panins''. The bonobo is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face, tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. The bonobo is found in a area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Africa. The species is frugivorous and inhabits primary and secondary forests, including seasonally inundated sw ... [...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] |
Western Gorilla
The western gorilla (''Gorilla gorilla'') is a great ape found in Africa, one of two species of the hominid genus ''Gorilla''. Large and robust with males weighing around , the hair is significantly lighter in color than the eastern gorilla, ''Gorilla beringei'', and geographically isolated from them in a region at the midwest of the African continent. Two subspecies are recognised, ''Gorilla gorilla diehli'' (Cross River gorilla) is limited to a smaller range in the north at the border of Cameroon and Nigeria, both are listed Critically Endangered. Taxonomy A formal description of the species was provided by Thomas Savage in 1847, allying the new species to an earlier description of the chimpanzee as ''Troglodytes gorilla'' in a group of eastern simians he referred to as " orangs". The author selected the specific epithet for the name given by Hanno to "wild men" he had noted on the east coast of Africa, presumed by Savage to be a species of orang. The population is recognised ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal Rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. Broadly speaking, and particularly in popular discourse, the term "animal rights" is often used synonymously with "animal protection" or "animal liberation". More narrowly, "animal rights" refers to the idea that many animals have fundamental rights to be treated with respect as individuals—rights to life, liberty, and freedom from torture that may not be overridden by considerations of aggregate welfare. Many advocates for animal rights oppose the assignment of moral value and fundamental protections on the basis of species membership alone. This idea, known as speciesism, is considered by them to be a prejudice as irrational as any other. They maintain that animals should no long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TimeTree
TimeTree is a free public database developed by S. Blair Hedges and Sudhir Kumar, now at Temple University, for presenting times of divergence in the tree of life. The basic concept has been to produce and present a community consensus of the timetree of life from published studies, now numbering 3,998, and allow easy access to that information, on the web or mobile device. The database permits searching for average node times between two species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ... or higher taxa and building of a timetree of life for a higher taxa. TimeTree has been used in public education to conceptualize the evolution of life, such as in high school settings. The original development of TimeTree dates to the late 1990s, with initial support froNASA Astrobiology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temple University
Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Baptist Temple. On May 12, 1888, it was renamed the Temple College of Philadelphia. By 1907, the institution revised its institutional status and was incorporated as a research university. As of 2020, about 37,289 undergraduate, graduate and professional students were enrolled at the university. Temple is among the world's largest providers of professional education (law, medicine, podiatry, pharmacy, dentistry, engineering and architecture), preparing the largest body of professional practitioners in Pennsylvania. History Temple University was founded in 1884 by Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia and its pastor Russell Conwell, a Yale-educated Boston lawyer, orator, and ordained Baptist minister, who had served in the Union Army d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gibbon
Gibbons () are apes in the family Hylobatidae (). The family historically contained one genus, but now is split into four extant genera and 20 species. Gibbons live in subtropical and tropical rainforest from eastern Bangladesh to Northeast India to southern China and Indonesia (including the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java). Also called the lesser apes, gibbons differ from great apes ( bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans) in being smaller, exhibiting low sexual dimorphism, and not making nests. Like all apes, gibbons are tailless. Unlike most of the great apes, gibbons frequently form long-term pair bonds. Their primary mode of locomotion, brachiation, involves swinging from branch to branch for distances up to , at speeds as fast as . They can also make leaps up to , and walk bipedally with their arms raised for balance. They are the fastest of all tree-dwelling, nonflying mammals. Depending on the species and sex, gibbons' fur coloration varies from dar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hylobatidae
Gibbons () are apes in the family Hylobatidae (). The family historically contained one genus, but now is split into four extant genera and 20 species. Gibbons live in subtropical and tropical rainforest from eastern Bangladesh to Northeast India to southern China and Indonesia (including the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java). Also called the lesser apes, gibbons differ from great apes ( bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans) in being smaller, exhibiting low sexual dimorphism, and not making nests. Like all apes, gibbons are tailless. Unlike most of the great apes, gibbons frequently form long-term pair bonds. Their primary mode of locomotion, brachiation, involves swinging from branch to branch for distances up to , at speeds as fast as . They can also make leaps up to , and walk bipedally with their arms raised for balance. They are the fastest of all tree-dwelling, nonflying mammals. Depending on the species and sex, gibbons' fur coloration varies from dar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ancestor's Tale
''The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life'' is a science book by Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong on the subject of evolution, which follows the path of humans backwards through evolutionary history, describing some of humanity's cousins as they converge on their common ancestors. The book was first published in 2004 and substantially updated in 2016. It was nominated for the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Synopsis The book takes a different path backwards through evolution and meets different groupings of organisms. The authors use backward chronology instead of a forward chronology as a way of celebrating the unity of life. In a backward chronology, the ancestors of any set of species must eventually meet at a particular moment. The last common ancestor is the one that they all share which the authors call a "concestor". The oldest concestor is the ancestor of all surviving life forms on this planet. The evidence for this is that all organisms share the sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Most Recent Common Ancestor
In biology and genetic genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as the last common ancestor (LCA) or concestor, of a set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms of the set are descended. The term is also used in reference to the ancestry of groups of genes (haplotypes) rather than organisms. The MRCA of a set of individuals can sometimes be determined by referring to an established pedigree. However, in general, it is impossible to identify the exact MRCA of a large set of individuals, but an estimate of the time at which the MRCA lived can often be given. Such ''time to most recent common ancestor'' (''TMRCA'') estimates can be given based on DNA test results and established mutation rates as practiced in genetic genealogy, or by reference to a non-genetic, mathematical model or computer simulation. In organisms using sexual reproduction, the ''matrilineal MRCA'' and ''patrilineal MRCA'' are the MRCAs of a given population ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
