|
Vulcan Hotel (Saint Bathans)
St Bathans, formerly named Dunstan Creek, is a former gold and coal mining town in Central Otago, New Zealand. The settlement was a centre of the Otago Gold Rush, but mining has since long ceased. It is now largely a holiday retreat due to the preservation of many of its historic buildings. St Bathans is well known for Blue Lake, a small man-made lake created by gold-sluicing that transformed the 120-metre high Kildare Hill into a 168-metre deep pit. After mining stopped in 1934, the hole accumulated water, which turned a distinctive blue hue due to minerals from the surrounding rocks. It is currently a camping spot, and swimming is allowed in the lake. The town was named for the Scottish Borders village of Abbey St Bathans by early surveyor John Turnbull Thomson; the Scottish village was the birthplace of Thomson's maternal grandfather. It is 40 kilometres northwest of Ranfurly and 60 kilometres northeast of Alexandra, near the Dunstan Creek, beneath the St Bathans Range and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Office, St
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in a pure form. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental ( native state), as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as electrum), naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium, and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides). Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haunted House
A haunted house, spook house or ghost house in ghostlore is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were otherwise connected with the property. Parapsychologists often attribute haunting to the spirits of the dead who have suffered from violent or tragic events in the building's past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide. In a majority of cases, upon scientific investigation, alternative causes to supernatural phenomenon are found to be at fault, such as hoaxes, environmental effects, hallucinations or confirmation biases. Common symptoms of hauntings, like cold spots and creaking or knocking sounds, can be found in most homes regardless of suspected paranormal presences. People are more likely to experience a haunting when they are about to fall asleep, when waking, if they are intoxicated or sleep-deprived. Carbon monoxide poisoning has been cited as a cause of su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monotremes
Monotremes () are prototherian mammals of the order Monotremata. They are one of the three groups of living mammals, along with placentals (Eutheria), and marsupials (Metatheria). Monotremes are typified by structural differences in their brains, jaws, digestive tract, reproductive tract, and other body parts, compared to the more common mammalian types. In addition, they lay eggs rather than bearing live young, but, like all mammals, the female monotremes nurse their young with milk. Monotremes have been considered members of Australosphenida, a clade that contains extinct mammals from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Madagascar, South America, and Australia, though this is disputed. The only surviving examples of monotremes are all indigenous to Australia and New Guinea, although there is evidence that they were once more widespread, as ''Monotrematum'' is known from the Paleocene of South America. The extant monotreme species are the platypus and four species of echidnas. There ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint Bathans Mammal
The Saint Bathans mammal is a currently unnamed extinct primitive mammal from the Early Miocene (Altonian) of New Zealand. A member of the Saint Bathans fauna, it is notable for being a late-surviving "archaic" mammal species, neither a placental nor a marsupial. It also provides evidence that flightless fully terrestrial mammals did in fact once live in Zealandia. This is in contrast to modern New Zealand, where bats, cetaceans and seals are the only non-introduced mammals in the otherwise bird-dominated faunas. Discovery The Saint Bathans mammal is currently represented by three specimens in Te Papa: NMNZ S.40958, NMNZ S.41866, and NMNZ S.42214, composed of two lower jaw fragments and a femur respectively. It was part of an assemblage of fossils recovered in Saint Bathans in 1978, in what would later be understood to be the Bannockburn Formation (Manuherikia Group), and first described in 2006. Description Like most small mammal fossils, the Saint Bathans mammal material is ra ... [...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] |
Theria
Theria (; Greek: , wild beast) is a subclass of mammals amongst the Theriiformes. Theria includes the eutherians (including the placental mammals) and the metatherians (including the marsupials) but excludes the egg-laying monotremes. Characteristics Therian mammals give birth (''see viviparity'') to live young without a shelled egg. This is possible thanks to key proteins called syncytins which allow exchanges between the mother and its offspring through a placenta, even rudimental ones such as in marsupials. Genetic studies have suggested a viral origin of syncytins through the endogenization process. The marsupials and the placental mammals evolved from a common therian ancestor that gave live birth by suppressing the mother's immune system. While the marsupials continued to give birth to an underdeveloped fetus after a short pregnancy, the ancestors of placental mammals gradually evolved a prolonged pregnancy. Therian mammals no longer have the coracoid bone, con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Manuherikia
Lake Manuherikia was a prehistoric lake which once stretched over some in what is now inland Otago in New Zealand's South Island. It stretched from Bannockburn, New Zealand, Bannockburn and the Nevis River, Nevis valley in the west to Naseby, New Zealand, Naseby in the east, and from the Waitaki River, Waitaki valley in the north to Ranfurly, New Zealand, Ranfurly in the south, including much of the area now referred to as the Maniototo.Worthy, T.Deep secrets: Discovering New Zealand's tropical past" ''New Zealand Geographic''. Retrieved 25 November 2017 The lake existed from around 19 to 16 million years ago during the Miocene epoch, at which point New Zealand was significantly warmer than the present. The warmer climate of Miocene New Zealand resulted in the lake being surrounded by rich subtropical vegetation. The edges of the lake were fringed with fen and bogland. After the lake dried up, its bed became a fossil-rich layer of sandstone, now known as the Manuherikia Group.Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manuherikia River
The Manuherikia River is located in Otago in the South Island of New Zealand. It rises in the far north of the Maniototo, with the West Branch draining the eastern side of the St Bathans Range, and the East Branch draining the western flanks of the Hawkdun Range. The river continues southwest through the wide Manuherikia Valley to its confluence with the Clutha River at Alexandra. During the 1860s the Manuherikia was one of the centres of the Central Otago Gold Rush. The river is crossed by two historically significant bridges, the curved Manuherikia Bridge No.1 (number 70 on the Otago Central Railway line), a concrete pier bridge completed in 1903, and a stone pier bridge at Ophir built in 1880. The Māori spelling for the river is Manuherekia, meaning "at long last". See also *List of rivers of New Zealand This is a list of all waterways named as rivers in New Zealand. A * Aan River * Acheron River (Canterbury) * Acheron River (Marlborough) * Ada River * Adams Ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudie, A. S., 2004, ''Encyclopedia of Geomorphology'', vol. 1. Routledge, New York. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods. Because the regular flooding of floodplains can deposit nutrients and water, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility; some important agricultural regions, such as the Mississippi river basin and the Nile, rely heavily on the flood plains. Agricultural regions as well as urban areas have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and fresh water. However, the risk of flooding has led to increasing efforts to control flooding. Formation Most floodplains are formed by deposition on the inside of river meanders and by overbank flow. Whereve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Littoral Zone
The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal areas that are permanently submerged — known as the ''foreshore'' — and the terms are often used interchangeably. However, the geographical meaning of ''littoral zone'' extends well beyond the intertidal zone to include all neritic waters within the bounds of continental shelves. Etymology The word ''littoral'' may be used both as a noun and as an adjective. It derives from the Latin noun ''litus, litoris'', meaning "shore". (The doubled ''t'' is a late-medieval innovation, and the word is sometimes seen in the more classical-looking spelling ''litoral''.) Description The term has no single definition. What is regarded as the full extent of the littoral zone, and the way the littoral zone is divided into subregions, varies in different c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manuherikia Group
The Manuherikia Group is a fluvial-lacustrine sedimentary fill in the Central Otago area of New Zealand, at the site of the prehistoric Lake Manuherikia. The area consists of a valley and ridge topography, with a series of schist-greywacke mountains at roughly ninety degrees to each other. The Manuherika Group occurs in the current basins, and occasionally on the mountains themselves. History One of the earliest geologists to work in the area, McKay, understood that the Manuherikia Group was probably originally continuous. Although some workers came to believe the sediments were deposited in a series of small, interconnected basins between the mountain ranges, e.g. Park, later workers, like Cotton argued that the sediments had been isolated by later mountain growth. DouglasDouglas, B. J. 1986: Lignite resources of Central Otago. New Zealand Energy Research and Development Committee Publication P104: 367. placed the Manuherikia Group sediments into a coherent genetic context. He dr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formation (stratigraphy)
A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics (lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock exposed in a geographical region (the stratigraphic column). It is the fundamental unit of lithostratigraphy, the study of strata or rock layers. A formation must be large enough that it can be mapped at the surface or traced in the subsurface. Formations are otherwise not defined by the thickness (geology), thickness of their rock strata, which can vary widely. They are usually, but not universally, tabular in form. They may consist of a single lithology (rock type), or of alternating beds of two or more lithologies, or even a heterogeneous mixture of lithologies, so long as this distinguishes them from adjacent bodies of rock. The concept of a geologic formation goes back to the beginnings of modern scientific geology. The term was used by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
