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Harrison Institute
Founded in 1930, the Harrison Institute is a UK charity that specialises in mammal taxonomy and biodiversity studies in the Old World tropics and subtropics, especially southern and southeast Asia, Arabia and eastern Africa. Mission The Harrison Institute seeks to promote and facilitate biodiversity conservation through: * Collaborative scientific research * Training staff and students from UK and foreign institutions * Promoting international scientific networks The Harrison Institute provides training for counterparts from a range of Eurasian and African countries. Capacity building and skills development are offered in a series of subjects including project design, field survey techniques, analysing data, preparing scientific reports and publications and the conservation and management of zoological collections. Zoological collections The Harrison Institute is home to over 50,000 scientific specimens. Its collection includes 33,000 recent and fossil mammals and 19,000 birds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or hair, and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles (including birds) from which they diverged in the Carboniferous, over 300 million years ago. Around 6,400 extant species of mammals have been described divided into 29 orders. The largest orders, in terms of number of species, are the rodents, bats, and Eulipotyphla (hedgehogs, moles, shrews, and others). The next three are the Primates (including humans, apes, monkeys, and others), the Artiodactyla ( cetaceans and even-toed ungulates), and the Carnivora (cats, dogs, seals, and others). In terms of cladistics, which reflects evolutionary history, mammals are the only living members of the Synapsida (synapsids); this clade, together with Saur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Maurice Harrison
James Maurice Harrison (13 February 1892 – 4 December 1971) was a British physician and amateur ornithologist. He studied the birds of the Kent region where he lived and took an interest in plumage aberrations and topics with close links to medicine. He also wrote a defence of George Bristow in the Hastings Rarities case. His son Jeffery also took an interest in birds. Harrison was born to Kathleen Elizabeth Lakin and Frederick Angier Harrison who was a director at St Thomas Hospital. He studied at Malvern and Felsted before going to study medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital. In World War I he served as a navy surgeon and rose to the position of Surgeon Lieutenant. He was the sole officer to survive the sinking of '' Monitor 28'' and received a Distinguished Service Cross for saving a marine. He moved to Sevenoaks in 1920 as a general practitioner until 1969. He also served as a resident surgeon at Sevenoaks Hospital. Harrison married Rita Graham Sorley in 1918 and they had a son ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Bristow (ornithologist)
George Bristow (1863 – 14 April 1947) was an English taxidermist and gunsmith of St Leonards-on-Sea in the borough of Hastings, East Sussex, in the southeast of England. He is chiefly remembered as the perpetrator of the long-running " Hastings Rarities" hoax, in which he succeeded in adding 29 species or subspecies of birds to the British List, and defrauded his clients of some £7000 for specimens on the basis that they were British. Life Bristow served an apprenticeship in taxidermy before working in the family business, established in 1845, at an unpretentious shop at 15 Silchester Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. From the 1890s until the 1930s much of his business involved the procurement of wild birds by himself and others to be made into display specimens or study skins for sale to ornithologists and collectors. The Hastings Rarities fraud Among the specimens sold by Bristow were surprising numbers of birds which, though purported to have been shot locally, were consid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Harrison (zoologist)
David Lakin Harrison (1 October 1926 – 19 March 2015) was an English zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ... who established, with his family, the Harrison Zoological Museum, later known as the Harrison Institute. References People from Sevenoaks English zoologists 1926 births 2015 deaths {{UK-zoologist-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CITES
CITES (shorter name for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of international trade. It was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The convention was opened for signature in 1973 and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade (import/export) in specimens of animals and plants included under CITES, does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild. This is achieved via a system of permits and certificates. CITES affords varying degrees of protection to more than 38,000 species. , Secretary-General of CITES is Ivonne Higuero. Background CITES is one of the largest and oldest conservation and sustainable use agreements in existence. There are three working langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sevenoaks
Sevenoaks is a town in Kent with a population of 29,506 situated south-east of London, England. Also classified as a civil parishes in England, civil parish, Sevenoaks is served by a commuter South Eastern Main Line, main line railway into London. Sevenoaks is from Charing Cross, the traditional centre of London. It is the principal town of the Sevenoaks (district), Sevenoaks district, followed by Swanley and Edenbridge, Kent, Edenbridge. A settlement was recorded in the 13th century, when a market was established. Construction of Knole House in the 15th century helped develop the village. Sevenoaks became part of the modern communications network when one of the early toll road, turnpikes was opened in the 18th century; the railway was relatively late in reaching it. In the 21st century, it has a large Commuter town, commuting population. The nearby Fort Halstead defence installation was formerly a major local employer. Located to the south-east of the town is Knole Park, wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vienna Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum Vienna (german: Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) is a large natural history museum located in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the most important natural history museums worldwide. The NHM Vienna is one of the largest museums and non-university research institutions in Austria and an important center of excellence for all matters relating to natural sciences. The museum's 39 exhibition rooms cover 8,460 square meters and present more than 100,000 objects. It is home to 30 million objects available to more than 60 scientists and numerous guest researchers who carry out basic research in a wide range of topics related to human sciences, earth sciences, and life sciences. The '' Index Herbariorum'' code assigned to this museum is W and it is used when citing housed herbarium specimens. History The history of the Natural History Museum Vienna is shaped by the passion for collecting of renowned monarchs, the endless thirst for knowledge of famous scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hastings Rarities
The Hastings Rarities affair is a case of statistically demonstrated ornithological fraud that misled the bird world for decades in the 20th century. The discovery of the long-running hoax shocked ornithologists. The Hastings Rarities were a series of records of rare birds added to the British list on the basis of hundreds of reports, supported by preserved specimens, from George Bristow (1863–1947), a taxidermist and gunsmith of St Leonards-on-Sea, a town on the south coast of England. His reports were made between 1892 and 1930. In August 1962, the statistician John Nelder published an analysis in the journal '' British Birds'', demonstrating that the records were unlikely to be genuine. This was supported by an editorial in the same issue. 29 bird species or subspecies were dropped from the British List. On the basis of later records from elsewhere in Britain, most have subsequently been readmitted. History Two articles in the August 1962 issue of the journal '' British ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tertiary
Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start of the Cenozoic Era, and extended to the beginning of the Quaternary glaciation at the end of the Pliocene Epoch. The time span covered by the Tertiary has no exact equivalent in the current geologic time system, but it is essentially the merged Paleogene and Neogene periods, which are informally called the Early Tertiary and the Late Tertiary, respectively. The Tertiary established the Antarctic as an icy island continent. Historical use of the term The term Tertiary was first used by Giovanni Arduino during the mid-18th century. He classified geologic time into primitive (or primary), secondary, and tertiary periods based on observations of geology in Northern Italy. Later a fourth period, the Quaternary, was applied. In the early d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxonomy (biology)
In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a more inclusive group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy. The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum (''division'' is sometimes used in botany in place of ''phylum''), class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, as he developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms and binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. With advances in the theory, data and analytical technology of biological systematics, the Linnaean system has transformed into a system of modern biological classification intended to reflect the evolu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quaternary
The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ago to the present. The Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene (2.58 million years ago to 11.7 thousand years ago) and the Holocene (11.7 thousand years ago to today, although a third epoch, the Anthropocene, has been proposed but is not yet officially recognised by the ICS). The Quaternary Period is typically defined by the cyclic growth and decay of continental ice sheets related to the Milankovitch cycles and the associated climate and environmental changes that they caused. Research history In 1759 Giovanni Arduino proposed that the geological strata of northern Italy could be divided into four successive formations or "orders" ( it, quattro ordini). The term "quaternary" was introduced by Jules Desnoye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
