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Candiacervus
''Candiacervus'' is an extinct genus of deer native to Pleistocene Crete. Due to a lack of other herbivores, the genus underwent an adaptive radiation, filling niches occupied by other taxa on the mainland. Due to the small size of Crete, the genus underwent insular dwarfism, the smallest species, ''C. ropalophorus'', stood about 40 cm at the shoulders when fully grown, as can be inferred from a mounted skeleton. Some species (''C. ropalophorus'') are noted for their peculiar, spatula-shaped antlers, though other species have normal albeit miniaturized antlers. Other features are the relatively short limbs, the massivity of the bones and the simplified antler. They were traditionally considered to be related to the giant Irish elk, with some experts regarding ''Candiacervus'' as a subgenus of ''Megaloceros''. However, van der Geer (2018) finds them closer to ''Dama''. Taxonomy The Cretan deer is a typical example of taxonomical problems involving endemic insular mammals ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Candiacervus Ropalophorus
''Candiacervus'' is an extinct genus of deer native to Pleistocene Crete. Due to a lack of other herbivores, the genus underwent an adaptive radiation, filling niches occupied by other taxa on the mainland. Due to the small size of Crete, the genus underwent insular dwarfism, the smallest species, ''C. ropalophorus'', stood about 40 cm at the shoulders when fully grown, as can be inferred from a mounted skeleton. Some species (''C. ropalophorus'') are noted for their peculiar, spatula-shaped antlers, though other species have normal albeit miniaturized antlers. Other features are the relatively short limbs, the massivity of the bones and the simplified antler. They were traditionally considered to be related to the giant Irish elk, with some experts regarding ''Candiacervus'' as a subgenus of ''Megaloceros''. However, van der Geer (2018) finds them closer to ''Dama''. Taxonomy The Cretan deer is a typical example of taxonomical problems involving endemic insular mamma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insular Dwarfism
Insular dwarfism, a form of phyletic dwarfism, is the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands. This natural process is distinct from the intentional creation of dwarf breeds, called dwarfing. This process has occurred many times throughout evolutionary history, with examples including dinosaurs, like '' Europasaurus'' and ''Magyarosaurus dacus'', and modern animals such as elephants and their relatives. This process, and other "island genetics" artifacts, can occur not only on islands, but also in other situations where an ecosystem is isolated from external resources and breeding. This can include caves, desert oases, isolated valleys and isolated mountains ("sky islands"). Insular dwarfism is one aspect of the more general "island effect" or "Foster's rule", which posits that when mainland animals colonize islands, small species tend to evolve larger bodies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megaloceros
''Megaloceros'' (from Greek: + , literally "Great Horn"; see also Lister (1987)) is an extinct genus of deer whose members lived throughout Eurasia from the early Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene and were important herbivores during the Ice Ages. The largest species, ''Megaloceros giganteus'', vernacularly known as the "Irish elk" or "giant elk", is also the best known. Fallow deer are thought to be their closest living relatives. ''Megaloceros'' is part of the deer family which includes moose, elk, reindeer, and other cervids. Biology Most members of the genus were extremely large animals that favoured meadows or open woodlands. They are the most cursorial deer known, with most species averaging slightly below at the withers. The various species of the Cretan genus ''Candiacervus'' – the smallest of which, ''C. rhopalophorus'' was just high at the shoulder – are sometimes included in ''Megaloceros'' as a subgenus. Despite its name, the Irish elk was neith ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete rests about south of the Greek mainland, and about southwest of Anatolia. Crete has an area of and a coastline of 1,046 km (650 mi). It bounds the southern border of the Aegean Sea, with the Sea of Crete (or North Cretan Sea) to the north and the Libyan Sea (or South Cretan Sea) to the south. Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete ( el, Περιφέρεια Κρήτης, links=no), which is the southernmost of the 13 top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most populous of Greece's regions. Its capital and largest city is Heraklion, on the north shore of the island. , the region had a population of 636,504. The Dodecanese are located to the no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cervus Astylodon
''Cervus astylodon'', the Ryukyu dwarf deer, is a recently extinct species of cervid that was endemic to the Ryukyu islands (Okinawa, Ishigaki Island, Ishigaki, Kume, Tokunoshima). It lived throughout the Pleistocene, going extinct as recently as 20,000 BP. Taxonomy and evolution It was described by Hikoshichiro Matsumoto in 1926 and originally classified as a species of muntjac. Recently discovered Early Pleistocene remains assigned to ''C. astylodon'' show it to be much larger than the Late Pleistocene forms, showing this species went through a gradual dwarfing process. The ancestral ''C. astylodon'' may have arrived on the Ryukyu islands from northern China. Description The Ryukyu dwarf deer was a very small species, standing only tall. It exhibits morphological characteristics that are considered typical of insular dwarf cervids, such as small body size, shortened limbs, and hypsodont molars. The antlers were generally very small, flattened and strongly grooved, with brow-t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippopotamus Creutzburgi
''Hippopotamus creutzburgi'', the Cretan dwarf hippopotamus, is an extinct species of hippopotamus from the island of Crete. ''Hippopopotamus'' colonized Crete probably 800,000 years ago and lived there during the Middle Pleistocene. Bones of ''H. creutzburgi'' were found by Dorothea Bate on the Katharo plateau, in eastern Crete, in the 1900s.Bate, D.M.A., (1905): I. Four and a half months in Crete in search of Pleistocene mammalian remains. Geol. Mag. 2: 13-204. A similar species, the Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus (''Phanourios minor'') lived on the island of Cyprus until the Holocene. It was at least 20% smaller than either subspecies of Cretan hippo. See also * Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus *Hippopotamus melitensis *Hippopotamus pentlandi ''Hippopotamus pentlandi'' is an extinct hippopotamus from Sicily. It arrived during the Pleistocene. It is the largest of the insular dwarf hippos known from the Pleistocene of the Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pseudodama
''Pseudodama'' is an extinct species of deer found in Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia .... References Cervines Prehistoric deer Prehistoric mammals of Europe Prehistoric even-toed ungulate genera Miocene even-toed ungulates {{paleo-eventoedungulate-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Praemegaceros
''Praemegaceros'' is an extinct genus of deer, known from the Pleistocene and Holocene of Western Eurasia. It contains the subgenera ''Praemegaceros,'' ''Orthogonoceros'' and ''Nesoleipoceros''. It has sometimes been synonymised with ''Megaloceros'' and ''Megaceroides'', however they have been found to be generically distinct. ''P. obscurus'' is the earliest known species from the Early Pleistocene of Europe, and had long, crooked antlers. ''P. verticornis'' is an Early to Mid-Pleistocene species, closely related to ''P. obscurus'', which lived throughout Southern Europe. The genus was widely distributed across Europe, West and Central Asia during the Early-Middle Pleistocene, with fossils having been discovered in France, Georgia, Germany, England, Greece, Israel, Italy, Romania, Russia Spain, Syria, and Tajikistan. The genus was extinct in mainland Europe and Asia by end of the Middle Pleistocene. An insular species, ''P. cazioti'' survived into the Late Pleistocene and Holocen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biozone
In biostratigraphy, biostratigraphic units or biozones are intervals of geological strata that are defined on the basis of their characteristic fossil taxa, as opposed to a lithostratigraphic unit which is defined by the lithological properties of the surrounding rock. A biostratigraphic unit is defined by the zone fossils it contains. These may be a single taxon or combinations of taxa if the taxa are relatively abundant, or variations in features related to the distribution of fossils. The same strata may be zoned differently depending on the diagnostic criteria or fossil group chosen, so there may be several, sometimes overlapping, biostratigraphic units in the same interval. Like lithostratigraphic units, biozones must have a type section designated as a stratotype. These stratotypes are named according to the typical taxon (or taxa) that are found in that particular biozone. The boundary of two distinct biostratigraphic units is called a ''biohorizon''. Biozones can be furthe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology. The name is a combination of Ancient Greek grc, label=none, πλεῖστος, pleīstos, most and grc, label=none, καινός, kainós (latinized as ), 'new'. At the end of the preceding Pliocene, the previously isolated North and South American continents were joined by the Isthmus of Panama, causing Great American Interchang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dwarf Elephant
Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes (around ) in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Dwarf elephants are an example of insular dwarfism, the phenomenon whereby large terrestrial vertebrates (usually mammals) that colonize islands evolve dwarf forms, a phenomenon attributed to adaptation to resource-poor environments and selection for early maturation and reproduction. Some modern populations of Asian elephants have also undergone size reduction on islands to a lesser degree, resulting in populations of pygmy elephants. Fossil remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Malta (at Għar Dalam), Crete (in Chania at Vamos, Stylos and in a now-underwater cave on the coast), Sicily, Sardinia, the Cyclades Islands and the Dodecanese Islands. Other islands where dwarf ''Stegodon'' have been found are Sulawesi, Flores, Ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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