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Palaeophasianus
''Palaeophasianus'' is an extinct genus of flightless Geranoididae birds that lived in North America during the Eocene period. Robert Wilson Shufeldt classified ''Palaeophasianus'' as a galliform when he described it in 1913. However it was transferred to Cracidae in 1964 by Pierce Brodkorb, while Joel Cracraft in 1968 placed it in Gruiformes. The only species in this genus is ''P. meleagroides'', and it is described as a "ground-dwelling carnivore". The fossil remains were found by the American Museum expedition of 1910 in Big Horn County, Wyoming, in the Willwood formation The Willwood Formation is a sedimentary sequence deposited during the late Paleocene to early Eocene, or Clarkforkian, Wasatchian and Bridgerian in the NALMA classification. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willwood Formation
The Willwood Formation is a sedimentary sequence deposited during the late Paleocene to early Eocene, or Clarkforkian, Wasatchian and Bridgerian in the North American land mammal age, NALMA classification.Willwood Formation at Fossilworks.orgNeasham & Vondra, 1972 Description It consists of fine grained clastic rocks (mudstone and shale) interbedded with medium grained clastic rocks (sandstone) and sporadic Conglomerate (geology), conglomerates. The formation underlies portions of the Bighorn Basin of Big Horn County, Wyoming, Big Horn, Hot Springs County, Wyoming, Hot Springs, Park County, Wyoming, Park and Washakie County, Wyoming, Washakie counties of Wyoming. Dating ...
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Geranoidid
Geranoididae is a clade of extinct birds from the early to late Eocene and possibly early Oligocene of North America and Europe. These were mid-sized, long-legged flightless birds.Gerald Mayr (2009). Paleogene Fossil Birds Recent research shows that these birds may actually be palaeognaths related to ostriches. Classification It is rather unambiguous that geranoidids are either part of or stem representatives of Gruoidea, the clade that includes modern cranes, limpkins and trumpeters, though their precise relationship varies among studies, some recovering them as sister taxa to another clade of flightless ratite-like birds, the eogruiids. The most recent consensus appears to be that geranoidids are outside of Gruoidea, with eogruiids being more closely related to modern cranes. However, Mayr (2019) argued that close affinities between Geranoididae and the palaeognathous family Palaeotididae are at least as well supported as the classification of geranoidids into the Gruiforme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galliform
Galliformes is an order of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds that includes turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl. Gallinaceous birds, as they are called, are important in their ecosystems as seed dispersers and predators, and are often reared by humans for their meat and eggs, or hunted as game birds. The order contains about 290 species, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica, and divided into five families: Phasianidae (including chicken, quail, partridges, pheasants, turkeys, peafowl (peacocks) and grouse), Odontophoridae (New World quail), Numididae (guinea fowl), Cracidae (including chachalacas and curassows), and Megapodiidae (incubator birds like malleefowl and brush-turkeys). They adapt to most environments except for innermost deserts and perpetual ice. Many gallinaceous species are skilled runners and escape predators by running rather than flying. Males of most species are more colorful than the females, with often elaborate courtship behaviors t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cracidae
The chachalacas, guans and curassows are birds in the family Cracidae. These are species of tropical and subtropical Central and South America. The range of one species, the plain chachalaca, just reaches southernmost parts of Texas in the United States. Two species, the Trinidad piping guan and the rufous-vented chachalaca occur on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago respectively. Systematics and evolution The family Cracidae was introduced (as Craxia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. The Cracidae are an ancient group related to the Australasian mound-builders. They are sometimes united with these in a distinct order, "Craciformes", but this is not supported by more recent research which suggests that either is a well-marked, basal lineage of Galliformes. Phylogeny Cladogram based on the study by De Chen and collaborators published in 2021. The numbers of species are from the list maintained by Frank Gill, Pamela Rasmussen and David Donsker on beh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Wilson Shufeldt
Robert Wilson Shufeldt Jr. (December 1, 1850January 21, 1934) was an American osteologist, myologist, museologist and ethnographer who contributed to comparative studies of bird anatomy and forensic science. He held strong views on race and was a proponent of white supremacy. A scandal and subsequent divorce from his second wife, the granddaughter of the famous ornithologist John James Audubon, led to a landmark judgment by the Supreme Court of the United States of America on the subject of alimony and bankruptcy. Life and career Son of Admiral Robert Wilson Shufeldt and Sarah Shufeldt, he was born in New York in 1850. After a school education in the United States and Havana, he joined as a Captain's clerk on the US Gunboat which was under the command of his father. In 1872 he joined Cornell University to study medicine and obtained a degree in 1876 from Columbian, Washington DC. He joined the Medical Department of the Army as a Lieutenant and was posted to Fort McHenry. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', "dawn") and (''kainós'', "new") and refers to the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna that appeared during the epoch. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope Carbon-13, 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope Carbon-12, 12C. The end is set at a major extinction event called the ''Grande Coupure'' (the "Great Break" in continuity) or the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event, which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Popigai impact structure, Siberia and in what is now ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierce Brodkorb
William Pierce Brodkorb (September 29, 1908, Chicago – July 18, 1992, Gainesville, Florida) was an American ornithologist and paleontologist. Interested in birds since childhood, he was taught to prepare birds at the age of 16. Later, he received the opportunity to work as a staff technician in the Ornithology Division of the Field Museum. He entered the University of Michigan in 1933 and obtained his PhD degree in 1936. Subsequently, he became an assistant curator of birds at the Museum of Zoology in Michigan until 1946. In 1946, he accepted a professorate in the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. His doctoral students include Glen E. Woolfenden. From the 1950s, Brodkorb built up a huge collection of bird fossils from the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene of Florida, which included 12,500 skeletons from 129 families, and is on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History, part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joel Cracraft
Joel Lester Cracraft (born July 31, 1942), is an American paleontologist and ornithologist. He received a PhD in 1969 from Columbia University (''Functional Morphology of Locomotion in Birds''). His research interests include: theory and methods of comparative biology, evolutionary theory, biological diversification, systematics, the evolution of morphological systems, historical biogeography, molecular systematics and evolution. From 1970 he has been a research associate at the Field Museum, Chicago; from 1970 to 1992, full professor at the University of Illinois; from 1993 to 1994, acting director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History; from 1992, adjunct professor at the City University of New York; from 1997 adjunct professor at Columbia University; from 1992 curator at AMNH; and from 2002 Lamont Curator of Birds at AMNH. Taxa authored *'' Certhiasomus'' (2015) *'' Hirundineinae'' (2009)* *'' Microrhopiini'' (2009) Public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruiformes
The Gruiformes are an order (biology), order containing a considerable number of living and extinct bird family (biology), families, with a widespread geographical diversity. Gruiform means "crane-like". Traditionally, a number of wading and terrestrial bird families that did not seem to belong to any other order were classified together as Gruiformes. These include 14 species of large crane (bird), cranes, about 145 species of smaller Rallidae, crakes and rails, as well as a variety of families comprising one to three species, such as the Heliornithidae, the limpkin, or the Psophiidae. Other birds have been placed in this order more out of necessity to place them ''somewhere''; this has caused the expanded Gruiformes to lack distinctive apomorphies. Recent studies indicate that these "odd Gruiformes" are if at all only loosely related to the cranes, rails, and relatives ("core Gruiformes"). Systematics There are only two suprafamilial clades (natural groups) among the birds t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Horn County, Wyoming
Big Horn County is a county in the U.S. state of Wyoming. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 11,521. The county seat is Basin. Its north boundary abuts the south boundary of Montana. History Big Horn County was created by the legislature of Wyoming Territory in March 1890, and was organized in 1897; its area was annexed from Fremont, Johnson, and Sheridan counties. Big Horn County was named for the Big Horn Mountains which form its eastern boundary. Originally, the county included the entire Big Horn Basin, but in 1909 Park County, WY was created from a portion of Big Horn County, and in 1911 Hot Springs and Washakie counties were created from portions of Big Horn, leaving the county with its present borders. There were large amounts of first generation immigrants from England and Germany living in Big Horn County when World War I broke out in Europe. The two groups went out of their way to maintain cordial relations with one another, and the county d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Struthioniformes
Struthioniformes is an order of birds with only a single extant family, Struthionidae, containing the ostriches. Several other extinct families are known, spanning across the Northern Hemisphere, from the Early Eocene to the early Pliocene, including a variety of flightless forms like the Paleotididae, Geranoididae, Eogruidae and Ergilornithidae, the latter two thought to be closely related to Struthionidae. Evolutionary history According to Mayr and Zelenkov (2021), all Struthioniformes are united by the following characters: "a very long and narrow tarsometatarsus with short trochleae for the second and fourth toes, a tubercle next to the pons supratendineus on the distal end of the tibiotarsus, as well as a shortening of all non-ungual phalanges of the fourth toe except for the proximal one" All known members of the group are thought to have been flightless. Struthioniformes were widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere during the Eocene, including Paleotididae from Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_(6436435841)_(cropped).jpg "Click for more on -> Cracidae")
