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Megalomys Desmarestii
''Megalomys desmarestii'', also known as the Martinique muskrat,Watts, 1990, p. 528 Desmarest's pilorie,Musser and Carleton, 2005 or the Martinique giant rice rat, is an extinct rice rat from Martinique in the Caribbean. Description It was among the largest species of West Indian rice rat, as big as a cat, and was one of the first Caribbean mammals to become extinct during the 20th century. It may have been aquatic, as it was known to escape into the sea when pursued by predators, but it never swam away from the island. Extinction It was common on Martinique until the end of the 19th century, when attempts were made to exterminate it because it was considered to be a pest in the island's coconut plantations. It was also hunted for food; however, due to a strong musky odor, cooking required people to singe off its hair, air out the body overnight and boil it in two batches of water. On 8 May 1902, the volcano Mount Pelée erupted, completely destroying the island's principal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Baptist Fischer
Johann Baptist Fischer, born 1803 in Munich (Germany), died 30 May 1832 in Leiden (the Netherlands) was a German naturalist, zoologist and botanist, doctor and surgeon. Biography Fischer was the son of a Munich schoolmaster, also named Johann Baptist, and his wife Cäcilie Haimerl. His younger brother was Sebastian Fischer, who also became a physician and naturalist spending part of his career in Russia and then Egypt. J. B. Fisher was the assistant of the botanist Carl Ludwig Blume in the former national herbarium of Brussels. In 1826, he joined an expedition to Java, then a possession of the Dutch East Indies, and participated with Blume in writing the description of the species collected.Blume, C. L., Fischer, J. B. 1828. Flora Javae nec non insularum adjacentium. J. Frank, BrüsselBiodiversity Heritage Library/ref> During the Belgian revolution of September 1830, he helped Philipp Franz von Siebold transferring herbarium specimens from Brussels to Leiden in the Netherl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint-Pierre, Martinique
Saint-Pierre (, ; ; Martinican Creole: ) is a town and commune of France's Caribbean overseas department of Martinique, founded in 1635 by Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc. Before the total destruction of Saint-Pierre by a volcanic eruption in 1902, it was the most important city of Martinique culturally and economically, being known as "the Paris of the Caribbean". While Fort-de-France was the official administrative capital, Saint-Pierre was the cultural capital of Martinique. After the disaster, Fort-de-France grew in economic importance. History Saint-Pierre was founded in 1635 by Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc, a French trader and adventurer, as the first permanent French colony on the island of Martinique. The Great Hurricane of 1780 produced a storm-surge of which "inundated the city, destroying all houses" and killed 9,000 people. Eruption of Mount Pelée The town was again destroyed in 1902, when the volcano Mount Pelée erupted, killing 28,000 people. The entire populatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mammals Described In 1829
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 w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megalomys
''Megalomys'' is a genus of rodent in the family Cricetidae, part of the tribe Oryzomyini. The genus contains five large rodents from various Caribbean islands, of which two are known to have survived into modern times, but all of which are now extinct. The last species to survive was ''M. desmarestii'' from Martinique, which became extinct after the Mount Pelée eruption in 1902. Ancient DNA analysis places ''Megalomys'' forming a clade with '' Pennatomys,'' sister to the clade containing ''Aegialomys'', '' Nesoryzomys, Melanomys'' and ''Sigmodontomys,'' having diverged from the mainland clade around 7 million years ago. It contains the following species: Recently extinct species: * ''Megalomys desmarestii'' (Martinique giant rice rat) * ''Megalomys luciae'' (Saint Lucia giant rice rat) Fossil species: *''Megalomys audreyae'' (Barbuda giant rice rat) *'' Megalomys curazensis'' (Curaçao giant rice rat) *'' Megalomys georginae'' (Barbados Barbados is an island country i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Fauna Of Martinique
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodent Extinctions Since 1500
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are native to all major land masses except for New Zealand, Antarctica, and several oceanic islands, though they have subsequently been introduced to most of these land masses by human activity. Rodents are extremely diverse in their ecology and lifestyles and can be found in almost every terrestrial habitat, including human-made environments. Species can be arboreal, fossorial (burrowing), saltatorial/richochetal (leaping on their hind legs), or semiaquatic. However, all rodents share several morphological features, including having only a single upper and lower pair of ever-growing incisors. Well-known rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, prairie dogs, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, and hamsters. Rabbits, hares, and pikas, whose incisors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extinct Rodents
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, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mongoose
A mongoose is a small terrestrial carnivorous mammal belonging to the family Herpestidae. This family is currently split into two subfamilies, the Herpestinae and the Mungotinae. The Herpestinae comprises 23 living species that are native to southern Europe, Africa and Asia, whereas the Mungotinae comprises 11 species native to Africa. The Herpestidae originated about in the Early Miocene and genetically diverged into two main genetic lineages between 19.1 and . Etymology The English word "mongoose" used to be spelled "mungoose" in the 18th and 19th centuries. The name is derived from names used in India for ''Herpestes'' species: or in classical Hindi; in Marathi; in Telugu; , and in Kannada. The form of the English name (since 1698) was altered to its "-goose" ending by folk etymology. The plural form is "mongooses". Characteristics Mongooses have long faces and bodies, small, rounded ears, short legs, and long, tapering tails. Most are brindled or grizzly; a few h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Introduced Species
An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and either deliberately or accidentally. Non-native species can have various effects on the local ecosystem. Introduced species that become established and spread beyond the place of introduction are considered naturalized. The process of human-caused introduction is distinguished from biological colonization, in which species spread to new areas through "natural" (non-human) means such as storms and rafting. The Latin expression neobiota captures the characteristic that these species are ''new'' biota to their environment in terms of established biological network (e.g. food web) relationships. Neobiota can further be divided into neozoa (also: neozoons, sing. neozoon, i.e. animals) and neophyt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Pelée
Mount Pelée or Mont Pelée ( ; french: Montagne Pelée, ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Montann Pèlé, meaning "bald mountain" or "peeled mountain") is an active volcano at the northern end of Martinique, an island and French overseas department in the Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc of the Caribbean. Its volcanic cone is composed of stratified layers of hardened ash and solidified lava. Its most recent eruption was in 1932. The stratovolcano's 1902 eruption destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre, killing 29,000 to 30,000 people in the space of a few minutes, in the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century. The main eruption, on 8 May 1902, left only two survivors in the direct path of the blast flow: Ludger Sylbaris survived because he was in a poorly ventilated, dungeon-like jail cell, and Léon Compère-Léandre, living on the edge of the city, escaped with severe burns. Geographical setting and description Mount Pelée is the result of a typical subduction zone. The subd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rice Rat
Oryzomyini is a tribe of rodents in the subfamily Sigmodontinae of the family Cricetidae. It includes about 120 species in about thirty genera,Weksler et al., 2006, table 1 distributed from the eastern United States to the southernmost parts of South America, including many offshore islands. It is part of the clade Oryzomyalia, which includes most of the South American Sigmodontinae. The name ''Oryzomyini'' derives from that of its type genus, '' Oryzomys'', which means "rice rat" or "rice mouse". Many species are also known as rice rats. Taxonomy Contents of Oryzomyini An oryzomyine group was first envisaged by Oldfield Thomas in the early 20th century. He defined it to include pentalophodont species, which have a mesoloph(id) on the upper and lower molars, with a long palate (extending past the third molars). Thomas included '' Oligoryzomys'', ''Oecomys'', and '' Oryzomys'' (which included many species now in other genera), as well as '' Rhagomys'', which is currently class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, and most are found underwater. For example, a mid-ocean ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, such as in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande rift in North America. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has been postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs from the core–mantle boundary, deep in the Earth. This results in hotspot volcanism, of which the Hawaiian hotspot is an example. Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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