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William K. Gregory
William King Gregory (May 19, 1876 – December 29, 1970) was an American zoologist, renowned as a primatologist, paleontologist, and functional and comparative anatomist. He was an expert on mammalian dentition, and a leading contributor to theories of evolution. In addition he was active in presenting his ideas to students and the general public through books and museum exhibits. Early life He was born in Greenwich Village, New York, on May 19, 1876 to George Gregory and Jane King Gregory. He attended Trinity School and then moved onto Columbia University in 1895, initially at the School of Mines but then transferring to Columbia College. He majored in zoology and vertebrate paleontology under Henry Fairfield Osborn. While still an undergraduate he became Osborn's research assistant and soon after married Laura Grace Foote. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia in 1900, followed by a masters in 1905, and a doctorate in 1910. Academic career He developed an ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenwich (village), New York
Formerly known as Whipple City, Greenwich () is a village in Washington County, New York, United States. It is part of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The village population was 1,777 at the 2010 census. The Village of Greenwich is located at the southern town line of the Town of Greenwich; a small part of the village is in the Town of Easton. The village developed on both sides of the Battenkill River and is served by Route NY-29. History This area was settled by European Americans after the American Revolutionary War, as migrants moved into New York from New England. The community was originally named Whipple City after Job Whipple, the owner of a successful cotton mill (1804). In 1809, the community set itself off from the town by incorporating as Union Village. Cotton and textile manufacturing, based on cotton from the Deep South, continued to be a profitable industry in the village for some time through the 19th century. It connected the villagers to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with currently about 69,963 species described. Vertebrates comprise such groups as the following: * jawless fish, which include hagfish and lampreys * jawed vertebrates, which include: ** cartilaginous fish (sharks, rays, and ratfish) ** bony vertebrates, which include: *** ray-fins (the majority of living bony fish) *** lobe-fins, which include: **** coelacanths and lungfish **** tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) Extant vertebrates range in size from the frog species ''Paedophryne amauensis'', at as little as , to the blue whale, at up to . Vertebrates make up less than five percent of all described animal species; the rest are invertebrates, which lack vertebral columns. The vertebrates traditionally include the hagfish, which do no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marsupial
Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a pouch. Marsupials include opossums, Tasmanian devils, kangaroos, koalas, wombats, wallabies, bandicoots, and the extinct thylacine. Marsupials represent the clade originating from the last common ancestor of extant metatherians, the group containing all mammals more closely related to marsupials than to placentals. They give birth to relatively undeveloped young that often reside in a pouch located on their mothers' abdomen for a certain amount of time. Close to 70% of the 334 extant species occur on the Australian continent (the mainland, Tasmania, New Guinea and nearby islands). The remaining 30% are found in the Americas—primarily in South America, thirteen in Central America, and one species, the Virginia opossum, in North America, n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lemurs
Lemurs ( ) (from Latin ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) are wet-nosed primates of the superfamily Lemuroidea (), divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are endemic to the island of Madagascar. Most existing lemurs are small, have a pointed snout, large eyes, and a long tail. They chiefly live in trees and are active at night. Lemurs share resemblance with other primates, but evolved independently from monkeys and apes. Due to Madagascar's highly seasonal climate, lemur evolution has produced a level of species diversity rivaling that of any other primate group. Until shortly after humans arrived on the island around 2,000 years ago, there were lemurs as large as a male gorilla. Most species have been discovered or promoted to full species status since the 1990s; however, lemur taxonomic classification is controversial and depends on which species concept is used. Lemurs range in weight from the mouse lemur to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mosaic Evolution
Mosaic evolution (or modular evolution) is the concept, mainly from palaeontology, that evolutionary change takes place in some body parts or systems without simultaneous changes in other parts. Another definition is the "evolution of characters at various rates both within and between species".Carroll R.L. 1997. ''Patterns and processes of vertebrate evolution''. Cambridge University Press. 408 Its place in evolutionary theory comes under long-term trends or macroevolution. Background In the neodarwinist theory of evolution, as postulated by Stephen Jay Gould, there is room for differing development, when a life form matures earlier or later, in shape and size. This is due to allomorphism. Organs develop at differing rhythms, as a creature grows and matures. Thus a " heterochronic clock" has three variants: 1) time, as a straight line; 2) general size, as a curved line; 3) shape, as another curved line. When a creature is advanced in size, it may develop at a sm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palimpsest
In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin and was expensive and not readily available, so, in the interest of economy, a page was often re-used by scraping off the previous writing. In colloquial usage, the term ''palimpsest'' is also used in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to denote an object made or worked upon for one purpose and later reused for another; for example, a monumental brass the reverse blank side of which has been re-engraved. Etymology The word ''palimpsest'' derives from the Latin '' palimpsestus'', which derives from the Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος (, from + = 'again' + 'scrape'), a compound word that describes the process: "The original writing was scraped and washed off, the surface resmoothed, and the new literary material written o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extant Taxon
Neontology is a part of biology that, in contrast to paleontology, deals with living (or, more generally, '' recent'') organisms. It is the study of extant taxa (singular: extant taxon): taxa (such as species, genera and families) with members still alive, as opposed to (all) being extinct. For example: * The moose (''Alces alces'') is an extant species, and the dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an extinct species. * In the group of molluscs known as the cephalopods, there were approximately 600 extant species and 7,500 extinct species. A taxon can be classified as extinct if it is broadly agreed or certified that no members of the group are still alive. Conversely, an extinct taxon can be reclassified as extant if there are new discoveries of living species ("Lazarus species"), or if previously-known extant species are reclassified as members of the taxon. Most biologists, zoologists, and botanists are in practice neontologists, and the term neontologist is used large ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the ''fossil record''. Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. Early edition, published online before print. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gladwyn Kingsley Noble
Gladwyn Kingsley Noble (September 20, 1894 – December 9, 1940) was an American zoologist who served as the head curator for the Department of Herpetology and the Department of Experimental Biology at the American Museum of Natural History. Noble received bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University in 1917 and 1918, respectively, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1922. He joined the herpetology department in 1922 as a research assistant and assistant curator in 1917, and became the chairman of the department in 1924. He later formed the Department of Experimental Biology in 1928, and served as the chairman of both departments until his death on December 9, 1940, from a streptococcal throat infection. Noble is the taxon author of 20 new species of reptiles. A species of lizard, ''List of Anolis lizards, Anolis noblei'', is named in his honor. Also, a subspecies of lizard, ''Sphaerodactylus darlingtoni, Sphaerodactylus darlingtoni noblei'', is named in his honor. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Chapin
James Paul Chapin (July 9, 1889 – April 5, 1964) was an American ornithologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History. Biography Chapin is one of the highest-regarded ornithologists of the twentieth century. He was joint leader (with Herbert Lang) of the Lang–Chapin expedition, which made a biological survey of the Belgian Congo between 1909 and 1915. For his work ''The Birds of the Belgian Congo, Part I'', he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1932. He received a bachelor's degree in 1916, master's degree in 1917, and a doctorate in 1932, all from Columbia University, and then began a lengthy career at the American Museum of Natural History. Chapin served as the 17th president of The Explorers Club from 1949 to 1950. Legacy Chapin is commemorated in the scientific names of three species of African reptiles: '' Ichnotropis chapini'', '' Pelusios chapini'', and '' Trioceros chapini''. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Micha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eryops
''Eryops'' (; from Greek , , 'drawn-out' + , , 'face', because most of its skull was in front of its eyes) is a genus of extinct, amphibious temnospondyls. It contains the single species , the fossils of which are found mainly in early Permian (about 295 million years ago) rocks of the Texas Red Beds, located in Archer County, Texas. Fossils have also been found in late Carboniferous period rocks from New Mexico. Several complete skeletons of ''Eryops'' have been found in lower Permian rocks, but skull bones and teeth are its most common fossils. Description ''Eryops'' averaged a little over long and could grow up to , making them among the largest land animals of their time. Adults weighed between . The skull was proportionately large, being broad and flat and reaching lengths of . It had an enormous mouth with many curved teeth like the frog. Its teeth had enamel with a folded pattern, leading to its early classification as a "labyrinthodont" ("maze toothed"). The sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Permian
The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozoic Era; the following Triassic Period belongs to the Mesozoic Era. The concept of the Permian was introduced in 1841 by geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, who named it after the region of Perm in Russia. The Permian witnessed the diversification of the two groups of amniotes, the synapsids and the sauropsids ( reptiles). The world at the time was dominated by the supercontinent Pangaea, which had formed due to the collision of Euramerica and Gondwana during the Carboniferous. Pangaea was surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa. The Carboniferous rainforest collapse left behind vast regions of desert within the continental interior. Amniotes, which could better cope with these drier conditions, rose to dominance in place of their am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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