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Limpkin
The limpkin (''Aramus guarauna''), also called carrao, courlan, and crying bird, is a large wading bird related to rails and cranes, and the only extant species in the family Aramidae. It is found mostly in wetlands in warm parts of the Americas, from Florida to northern Argentina. It feeds on molluscs, with the diet dominated by apple snails of the genus ''Pomacea''. Its name derives from its seeming limp when it walks. Taxonomy and systematics The limpkin is placed in the family Aramidae, which is in turn placed within the crane and rail order Gruiformes. The limpkin had been suggested to be close to the ibis and spoonbill family Threskiornithidae, based upon shared bird lice. The Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy of birds, based upon DNA–DNA hybridization, suggested that the limpkin's closest relatives were the Heliornithidae finfoots, and Sibley and Monroe even placed the species in that family in 1990. More recent studies have found little support for this relationship. More r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limpkin (Aramus Guarauna)
The limpkin (''Aramus guarauna''), also called carrao, courlan, and crying bird, is a large wading bird related to rails and cranes, and the only extant species in the family Aramidae. It is found mostly in wetlands in warm parts of the Americas, from Florida to northern Argentina. It feeds on molluscs, with the diet dominated by apple snails of the genus ''Pomacea''. Its name derives from its seeming limp when it walks. Taxonomy and systematics The limpkin is placed in the family Aramidae, which is in turn placed within the crane and rail order Gruiformes. The limpkin had been suggested to be close to the ibis and spoonbill family Threskiornithidae, based upon shared bird lice. The Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy of birds, based upon DNA–DNA hybridization, suggested that the limpkin's closest relatives were the Heliornithidae finfoots, and Sibley and Monroe even placed the species in that family in 1990. More recent studies have found little support for this relationship. More r ... [...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] |
Aramus Paludigrus
''Aramus paludigrus'' is an extinct species of limpkin, semi-aquatic birds related to cranes (order Gruiformes), which are similar. ''Aramus paludigrus'' was found in the famous Konzentrat-Lagerstätte of the Honda Group at La Venta, dating from the mid-Miocene period, in central Colombia.Rasmussen, Tab, 1997. Birds. In: R. F. Kay; R. H. Madden; R. L. Cifelli & J. J. Flynn (eds.) ''Vertebrate paleontology in the neotropics - the Miocene fauna of La Venta, Colombia. Smithsonian Institution Press''. Description This bird was described in 1997 based on a nearly complete tibiotarsus bone, very similar to its modern relative, the limpkin ''Aramus garaudana'', although this element measured about long, which implies a 20% larger size. It also differs from the modern species in which this bone has larger lateral condyles, the axis of the bone is longer and narrower, very similar to that found in modern trumpeters (''Psophia''). The general structure of this animal should not very d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rallidae
The rails, or Rallidae, are a large cosmopolitan family of small- to medium-sized, ground-living birds. The family exhibits considerable diversity and includes the crakes, coots, and gallinules. Many species are associated with wetlands, although the family is found in every terrestrial habitat except dry deserts, polar regions, and alpine areas above the snow line. Members of the Rallidae occur on every continent except Antarctica. Numerous island species are known. The most common rail habitats are marshland and dense forest. They are especially fond of dense vegetation.Horsfall & Robinson (2003): pp. 206–207 Name "Rail" is the anglicized respelling of the French ''râle'', from Old French ''rasle''. It is named from its harsh cry, in Vulgar Latin *''rascula'', from Latin ''rādere'' ("to scrape"). Morphology The rails are a family of small to medium-sized, ground-living birds. They vary in length from and in weight from . Some species have long necks and in many ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crane (bird)
Cranes are a family, the Gruidae, of large, long-legged, and long-necked birds in the group Gruiformes. The 15 species of cranes are placed in three genera, ''Antigone'', ''Balearica'', and '' Grus''. Unlike the similar-looking but unrelated herons, cranes fly with necks outstretched, not pulled back. Cranes live on most continents, with the exception of Antarctica and South America. They are opportunistic feeders that change their diets according to the season and their own nutrient requirements. They eat a range of items from small rodents, eggs of birds, fish, amphibians, and insects to grain and berries. Cranes construct platform nests in shallow water, and typically lay two eggs at a time. Both parents help to rear the young, which remain with them until the next breeding season. Some species and populations of cranes migrate over long distances; others do not migrate at all. Cranes are solitary during the breeding season, occurring in pairs, but during the nonbreeding se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ampullariidae
Ampullariidae, commonly known as the apple snails, is a family of large freshwater snails, aquatic gastropod mollusks with a gill and an operculum. These snails simultaneously have a gill and a lung as functional respiratory structures, which are separated by a division of the mantle cavity. This adaptation allows these animals to be amphibious. Species in this family are considered gonochoristic, meaning that each individual organism is either male or female. Systematics and taxonomy Ampullariidae belongs to the superfamily Ampullarioidea, and is also its type family. It comprised two subfamilies according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005, which followed the classification proposed by Berthold (1991), including Ampullariinae Gray, 1824, and Afropominae Berthold, 1991. The current classification accepted by WoRMS includes Ampullariinae and Pomaceinae Starobogatov, 1983. Genera Ampullariidae are probably of Gondwanan origin, and the divers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was born in Råshult, the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regionally defined boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, the Arabian Peninsula collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and allowing a faunal interchange to occur between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans into Eurasia. During the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parvigrus
''Parvigrus'' is an extinct bird genus, with the single species ''Parvigrus pohli''. It is considered a family (biology), family, the Parvigruidae. The remains of ''Parvigrus pohli'' have been described from fossils found in Vachères in France, from rocks from the Lower Oligocene. The name ''Parvigrus'' is derived from the Latin ''parvus'' for small and ''grus'' for Crane (bird), crane, the specific epithet refers to Burkhard Pohl who obtained the specimen for the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. ''Parvigrus pohli'' was a chicken sized relative of the cranes and the Limpkin. References Gruiformes Prehistoric birds of Europe Oligocene birds Fossil taxa described in 2005 Taxa named by Gerald Mayr {{paleo-bird-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oligocene
The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the exact dates of the start and end of the epoch are slightly uncertain. The name Oligocene was coined in 1854 by the German paleontologist Heinrich Ernst Beyrich from his studies of marine beds in Belgium and Germany. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''olígos'', "few") and (''kainós'', "new"), and refers to the sparsity of extant forms of molluscs. The Oligocene is preceded by the Eocene Epoch and is followed by the Miocene Epoch. The Oligocene is the third and final epoch of the Paleogene Period. The Oligocene is often considered an important time of transition, a link between the archaic world of the tropical Eocene and the more modern ecosystems of the Miocene. Major changes during the Oligocene included a global expansion o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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