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Kittlitz's Rail
The Kosrae crake or Kusaie Island crake (''Zapornia monasa''), sometimes also stated as Kittlitz's rail, is an extinct bird from the family Rallidae. It occurred on the island of Kosrae and perhaps on Pohnpei, Ponape in the south-western Pacific which belong both to the Caroline Islands. Its preferred habitat were coastal swamps and marshland covered with taro plants (''Colocasia esculenta''). Description It was discovered in 1827 by Heinrich von Kittlitz. Von Kittlitz described its plumage as general black with bluish gloss. The quills were more brownish. The chin and the middle of the throat were brown. The surface of its tail were brownish-black. The undertail coverts exhibit white spots. The inner wing coverts were brownish and were spotted with white. The outer edged of the first primary was dull brown. Eyes, legs and feet had a reddish hue. The bill was black. Its size was about 18 cm. Controversial data exists as to its ability to fly. X-ray measurements o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Von Kittlitz
Friedrich Heinrich, Freiherr von Kittlitz (16 February 1799 – 10 April 1874) was a Prussian artist, naval officer, explorer and naturalist. He was a descendant of a family of old Prussian nobility ("Freiherr" meaning "independent lord" - ranking with a baron). He collected specimens and made illustrations on major expeditions and wrote a few books on his travels. Several species were described on the basis of specimens collected by him and a few are named after him including Kittlitz's plover. Life and work Kittlitz was born in Breslau to Prussian Captain Friedrich (1769-1825) and Henriette Ehrenfried von Diebitsch (1771-1835). He went to grammar school in Oels and joined his father's battalion as a volunteer in 1813. He became a second lieutenant in the 16th Silesian Infantry Regiment and saw action at Glogau. He went to Paris in 1815 and was garrisoned in Mainz when the Landwehr regiments were dissolved. It was here that he became interested in nature after meeting Eduard R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Finsch
Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (8 August 1839, Warmbrunn – 31 January 1917, Braunschweig) was a German ethnographer, natural history, naturalist and colonial explorer. He is known for a two-volume monograph on the parrots of the world which earned him a doctorate. He also wrote on the people of New Guinea and was involved in plans for German colonization in Southeast Asia. Several species of bird (such as ''Oenanthe finschii'', ''Alophoixus finschii'', ''Psittacula finschii'') are named after him as also the town of Finschhafen in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea and a crater on the moon. Biography Finsch was born at Cieplice Śląskie-Zdrój, Bad Warmbrunn in Silesia to Mortiz Finsch and Mathilde née Leder. His father was in the glass trade and he too trained as a glass painter. An interest in birds led him to use his artistic skills for the purpose. Finsch went to Budapest in 1857 and studied at the Eötvös Loránd University, Royal Hungarian University, earning money by prep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird Extinctions Since 1500
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. Bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extinct Flightless Birds
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birds Of Micronesia
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zapornia
''Zapornia'' is a genus of birds in the rail family Rallidae. Taxonomy The genus ''Zapornia'' was introduced in 1816 by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a catalogue of animals in the British Museum. He included a single species, the little crake which is therefore the type species. The genus name is an anagram of the genus ''Porzana'' that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis-Pierre Vieillot. The species now placed in this genus were formerly assigned to ''Porzana'' and ''Amaurornis''. The genus contains the following species: * Black crake, ''Zapornia flavirostra'' (formerly placed in ''Amaurornis'') * Sakalava rail, ''Zapornia olivieri'' (formerly placed in ''Amaurornis'') * Ruddy-breasted crake, ''Zapornia fusca'' (formerly placed in ''Porzana'') * Band-bellied crake, ''Zapornia paykullii'' (formerly placed in ''Porzana'') * Black-tailed crake, ''Zapornia bicolor'' (formerly placed in ''Porzana'') * Brown crake, ''Zapornia akool'' (formerly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Museum Of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 34 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than . AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually. The AMNH is a private 501(c)(3) organization. Its mission statement is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whitney South Seas Expedition
The Whitney South Sea Expedition (1920 - 1941) to collect bird specimens for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), under the initial leadership of Rollo Beck, was instigated by Dr Leonard C. Sanford and financed by Harry Payne Whitney, a thoroughbred horse-breeder and philanthropist. Beck, an expert bird collector himself, hired Ernest H. Quayle and Charles Curtis to assist with collecting, including the botanical specimens collected by the expedition. The expedition visited islands in the south Pacific region and eventually returned with over 40,000 bird specimens, many plant specimens and an extensive collection of anthropological items and photographs. Using the 75-ton schooner ''France'', with many different scientists and collectors participating over more than a dozen years, the expedition visited thousands of islands throughout Oceania, Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. The expedition collected many specimens from Bougainville Island. It was administered by a co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kosrae Starling
The Kosrae starling, also known as Kosrae Island starling, and formerly as Kusaie Mountain starling, (''Aplonis corvina'') is an extinct bird from the family of starlings (Sturnidae). It was endemic to the montane forests on the island of Kosrae which belong to the Caroline Islands in the south-western Pacific. Description It reached a length between 20 and 25.4 centimetres. It was crow-like, glossy black and had a long curved bill as well as a long tail. Extinction The Kosrae starling is only known by five specimens which were obtained between December 1827 and January 1828 by the Kittlitz Expedition. Kittlitz described the bird in 1833. Three skins can be seen in the Museum of Saint Petersburg in Russia and two further in the Museum Naturalis in Leiden. In 1880 an expedition led by Otto Finsch was unable to find this bird. Another survey by the Whitney South Seas Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History in 1931 proved that this species was extinct. Its extinction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rallidae
The rails, or Rallidae, are a large cosmopolitan family of small- to medium-sized, ground-living birds. The family exhibits considerable diversity and includes the crakes, coots, and gallinules. Many species are associated with wetlands, although the family is found in every terrestrial habitat except dry deserts, polar regions, and alpine areas above the snow line. Members of the Rallidae occur on every continent except Antarctica. Numerous island species are known. The most common rail habitats are marshland and dense forest. They are especially fond of dense vegetation.Horsfall & Robinson (2003): pp. 206–207 Name "Rail" is the anglicized respelling of the French ''râle'', from Old French ''rasle''. It is named from its harsh cry, in Vulgar Latin *''rascula'', from Latin ''rādere'' ("to scrape"). Morphology The rails are a family of small to medium-sized, ground-living birds. They vary in length from and in weight from . Some species have long necks and in many ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe after Istanbul, Moscow and London, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Academy Of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such as libraries, publishing units, and hospitals. Peter the Great established the Academy (then the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences) in 1724 with guidance from Gottfried Leibniz. From its establishment, the Academy benefitted from a slate of foreign scholars as professors; the Academy then gained its first clear set of goals from the 1747 Charter. The Academy functioned as a university and research center throughout the mid-18th century until the university was dissolved, leaving research as the main pillar of the institution. The rest of the 18th century continuing on through the 19th century consisted of many published academic works from Academy scholars and a few Ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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