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Stan Wood (fossil Hunter)
Stan Wood was a self-taught fossil hunter who dazzled the academic world with his ability to make significant palaeontological discoveries at scale and is arguably most celebrated for refocusing attention on early Carboniferous palaeobiology as the means to closing Romer's gap. Life and works Born Stanley Wood in Edinburgh, 1939, Wood left school aged 14 to work as a dockyard apprentice at Leith Harbour during a period of severe economic hardship, when Leith had acquired the reputation as one of the roughest neighbourhoods in post-war Britain. Wood could put his hand to many things and served in the Merchant Navy as an engineering officer for a time, before being assigned to work for Brown Brothers, an engineering company. He was encouraged to consider white-collar work and changed career to sell insurance with the Prudential. From fossil hunter to palaeontologist As a boy, Wood had been fascinated by Roman Britain, and was convinced that he could calculate the existence of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. Edinburgh is Scotland's List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, second-most populous city, after Glasgow, and the List of cities in the United Kingdom, seventh-most populous city in the United Kingdom. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the Courts of Scotland, highest courts in Scotland. The city's Holyrood Palace, Palace of Holyroodhouse is the official residence of the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarchy in Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scots law, Scottish law, literature, philosophy, the sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rock Strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum ( : strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as either '' bedding surfaces'' or ''bedding planes''.Salvador, A. ed., 1994. ''International stratigraphic guide: a guide to stratigraphic classification, terminology, and procedure. 2nd ed.'' Boulder, Colorado, The Geological Society of America, Inc., 215 pp. . Prior to the publication of the International Stratigraphic Guide, older publications have defined a stratum as either being either equivalent to a single bed or composed of a number of beds; as a layer greater than 1 cm in thickness and constituting a part of a bed; or a general term that includes both ''bed'' and ''lamina''.Neuendorf, K.K.E., Mehl, Jr., J.P., and Jackson, J.A. , eds., 2005. ''Glossary of Geology'' 5th ed. Alexandria, Virginia, American Geological Institute. 779 pp. . ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newcastle University
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a member of the Russell Group, an association of research-intensive UK universities. The university finds its roots in the School of Medicine and Surgery (later the College of Medicine), established in 1834, and the Edward Fenwick Boyd#College of Physical Science, College of Physical Science (later renamed Armstrong College), founded in 1871. These two colleges came to form the larger division of the federal University of Durham, with the Durham Colleges forming the other. The Newcastle colleges merged to form King's College in 1937. In 1963, following an Act of Parliament, King's College became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The university subdivides into three faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tantallognathus
''Tantallognathus'' is an extinct genus of four-limbed vertebrate ("tetrapod") from the Mississippian of Scotland. It is based on a small jaw fragment which shows similarities to ''Crassigyrinus'', baphetids, and crown group tetrapods. This fossil was found near Tantallon Castle (namesake of the genus), and the species name honors famed Scottish fossil collector Stan Wood. ''Tantallognathus'' is one of the most advanced tetrapods found in the Ballagan Formation, a geological unit known for a diverse fauna of stegocephalians. Like other Ballagan Formation vertebrates, it helps to clarify a pulse of tetrapod evolution during Romer's gap Romer's gap is an example of an apparent gap in the tetrapod fossil record used in the study of evolutionary biology. Such gaps represent periods from which excavators have not yet found relevant fossils. Romer's gap is named after paleontologist ..., a time interval when fossils of tetrapods and their relatives are otherwise very rare. Referen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Square Metre
The square metre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or square meter (American spelling) is the unit of area in the International System of Units (SI) with symbol m2. It is the area of a square with sides one metre in length. Adding and subtracting SI prefixes creates multiples and submultiples; however, as the unit is exponentiated, the quantities grow exponentially by the corresponding power of 10. For example, 1 kilometre is 103 (one thousand) times the length of 1 metre, but 1 square kilometre is (103)2 (106, one million) times the area of 1 square metre, and 1 cubic kilometre is (103)3 (109, one billion) cubic metres. SI prefixes applied The square metre may be used with all SI prefixes used with the metre. Unicode characters Unicode has several characters used to represent metric area units, but these are for compatibility with East Asian character encodings and are meant to be used in new documents. * * * * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tetrapod
Tetrapods (; ) are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids ( reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (pelycosaurs, extinct therapsids and all extant mammals). Tetrapods evolved from a clade of primitive semiaquatic animals known as the Tetrapodomorpha which, in turn, evolved from ancient lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) around 390 million years ago in the Middle Devonian period; their forms were transitional between lobe-finned fishes and true four-limbed tetrapods. Limbed vertebrates (tetrapods in the broad sense of the word) are first known from Middle Devonian trackways, and body fossils became common near the end of the Late Devonian but these were all aquatic. The first crown-tetrapods (last common ancestors of extant tetrapods capable of terrestrial locomotion) appeared by the very early Carboniferous, 350 million years ago. The specific aquatic ancestors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bone Bed
A bone bed is any geological stratum or deposit that contains bones of whatever kind. Inevitably, such deposits are sedimentary in nature. Not a formal term, it tends to be used more to describe especially dense collections such as Lagerstätte. It is also applied to brecciated and stalagmitic deposits on the floor of caves, which frequently contain osseous remains. In a more restricted sense, the term is used to describe certain thin layers of bony fragments, which occur in well-defined geological strata. One of the best-known of these is the Ludlow Bone Bed, which is found at the base of the Downton Sandstone in the Upper Ludlow series. At Ludlow (England) itself, two such beds are actually known, separated by about . of strata. Although quite thin, the Ludlow Bone Bed can be followed from that town into Gloucestershire, for a distance of . It is almost completely made up of fragments of spines, teeth and scales of ganoid fish. Another well-known bed, formerly known as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "vesting day", 1 January 1947. In 1987, the NCB was renamed the British Coal Corporation, and its assets were subsequently privatised. Background Collieries were taken under government control during the First and Second World Wars. The Sankey Commission in 1919 gave R. H. Tawney, Sidney Webb and Sir Leo Chiozza Money the opportunity to advocate nationalisation, but it was rejected. Coal reserves were nationalised during the war in 1942 and placed under the control of the Coal Commission, but the mining industry remained in private hands. At the time, many coal companies were small, although some consolidation had taken place in the years before the war. Formation and organisation The NCB was one of a number of public corporations cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fife
Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i.e. the historic counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire) and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as ''Fib'', and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. A person from Fife is known as a ''Fifer''. In older documents the county was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire. Fife is Scotland's third largest local authority area by population. It has a resident population of just under 367,000, over a third of whom live in the three principal towns, Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. The historic town of St Andrews is located on the northeast coast of Fife. It is well known for the University of St Andrews, the most ancient univers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coal Mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a 'pit', and the above-ground structures are a 'pit head'. In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine. Coal mining has had many developments in recent years, from the early days of men tunneling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts to large open-cut and longwall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks and shearers. The coal mining industry has a long history of significant negative environmental impacts on local ecosystems, health impacts on local communities and workers, and contributes heavily to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outcrop
An outcrop or rocky outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth. Features Outcrops do not cover the majority of the Earth's land surface because in most places the bedrock or superficial deposits are covered by soil and vegetation and cannot be seen or examined closely. However, in places where the overlying cover is removed through erosion or tectonic uplift, the rock may be exposed, or ''crop out''. Such exposure will happen most frequently in areas where erosion is rapid and exceeds the weathering rate such as on steep hillsides, mountain ridges and tops, river banks, and tectonically active areas. In Finland, glacial erosion during the last glacial maximum (ca. 11000 BC), followed by scouring by sea waves, followed by isostatic uplift has produced many smooth coastal and littoral outcrops. Bedrock and superficial deposits may also be exposed at the Earth's surface due to human excavations such as quarrying and build ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil Fish
The evolution of fish began about 530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion. It was during this time that the early chordates developed the skull and the vertebral column, leading to the first craniates and vertebrates. The first fish lineages belong to the Agnatha, or jawless fish. Early examples include ''Haikouichthys''. During the late Cambrian, eel-like jawless fish called the conodonts, and small mostly armoured fish known as ostracoderms, first appeared. Most jawless fish are now extinct; but the extant lampreys may approximate ancient pre-jawed fish. Lampreys belong to the Cyclostomata, which includes the extant hagfish, and this group may have split early on from other agnathans. The earliest jawed vertebrates probably developed during the late Ordovician period. They are first represented in the fossil record from the Silurian by two groups of fish: the armoured fish known as placoderms, which evolved from the ostracoderms; and the Acanthodii (or spiny shark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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