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Feathered Dinosaurs Of China
{{unreferenced, date=March 2010 ''Feathered Dinosaurs of China'' is a documentary book written and illustrated by Paleoartist, Gregory Wenzel. The book has somewhat of a plot, featuring a possible and theoretical day in the life of Chinese Animals from the Aptian stage in Liaoning. Plot The book tells a day in the life of most fauna of Early Cretaceous Liaoning in China, 124 million BC. Animals featured *Unidentified Salamanders (mentioned at the beginning) *'' Callobatrachus'' *Unidentified Dragonflies *'' Jinzhousaurus'' *Unidentified Beetles (seen being kicked up by the ''Jinzhousaurus'' herd members) *'' Eomaia'' *''Sinornithosaurus'' *''Eosipterus'' *'' Dendrorhynchoides'' *Unidentified Striped Fish (seen dead and being squabbled over by the 2 Pterosaurs) *''Confuciusornis'' *''Caudipteryx'' *'' Manchurosuchus'' *''Manchurochelys'' *Unidentified Freshwater Clams (seen on the lake bottom) *Unidentified Snails (mentioned in the lake description) *Unidentified Freshwater Cru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleoartist
Paleoart (also spelled palaeoart, paleo-art, or paleo art) is any original artistic work that attempts to depict prehistoric life according to scientific evidence. Works of paleoart may be representations of fossil remains or imagined depictions of the living creatures and their ecosystems. While paleoart is typically defined as being scientifically informed, it is often the basis of depictions of prehistoric animals in popular culture, which in turn influences public perception of and fuels interest in these animals. The word paleoart is also used in other informal sense, as a name for prehistoric art, most often cave paintings. Alternative concept of this term is the domain of archeological society. The term "paleoart"–which is a portmanteau of ''paleo'', the Ancient Greek word for "old", and "art"–was introduced in the late 1980s by Mark Hallett (artist), Mark Hallett for art that depicts subjects related to paleontology, but is considered to have originated as a visual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the ankles to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger. There were two major types of pterosaurs. Basal pterosaurs (also called 'non-pterodactyloid pterosaurs' or ' rhamphorhynchoids') were smaller animals with fully toothed jaws and, typically, long tails. Their wide wing membranes probably included and connected the hind legs. On the ground, they would have had an awkward sprawling posture, but the anatomy of their joints and strong claws would have made them effective climbers, and some may have even lived in trees. Basal pterosaurs were insecti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beipiaosaurus
''Beipiaosaurus'' is a genus of therizinosauroid theropod dinosaurs that lived in Asia during the Early Cretaceous in the Yixian Formation. The first remains were found in 1996 and formally described in 1999. Before the discovery of ''Yutyrannus'', they were among the heaviest dinosaurs known from direct evidence to be feathered. ''Beipiaosaurus'' is known from three reported specimens preserving numerous impressions of feather structures that allowed to determine the feathering color which turned out to be brownish. They were relatively small-sized therizinosaurs, measuring long and weighing about in contrast to the advanced and giant '' Segnosaurus'' or ''Therizinosaurus''. The necks of ''Beipiaosaurus'' were shorter than in most therizinosaurs, whose are characterized by elongated necks adapted for high-browsing. Also, their feet configuration differs from therizinosaurids, having a generic three-toed pes instead of four as seen in other members. The exact classification o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cicada
The cicadas () are a superfamily, the Cicadoidea, of insects in the order Hemiptera (true bugs). They are in the suborder Auchenorrhyncha, along with smaller jumping bugs such as leafhoppers and froghoppers. The superfamily is divided into two families, the Tettigarctidae, with two species in Australia, and the Cicadidae, with more than 3,000 species described from around the world; many species remain undescribed. Cicadas have prominent eyes set wide apart, short antennae, and membranous front wings. They have an exceptionally loud song, produced in most species by the rapid buckling and unbuckling of drumlike tymbals. The earliest known fossil Cicadomorpha appeared in the Upper Permian period; extant species occur all around the world in temperate to tropical climates. They typically live in trees, feeding on watery sap from xylem tissue, and laying their eggs in a slit in the bark. Most cicadas are cryptic. The vast majority of species are active during the day as adul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyphalosaurus
''Hyphalosaurus'' (meaning "submerged lizard") is a genus of freshwater aquatic reptiles, belonging to the extinct order Choristodera. They lived during the early Cretaceous period (Aptian age), about 122 million years ago. The genus contains two species, ''H. lingyuanensis'' and ''H. baitaigouensis'', both from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China. They are among the best-known animals from the Jehol Biota, with thousands of fossil specimens representing all growth stages in scientific and private collections. Description and biology ''Hyphalosaurus'' fossils are relatively widespread in the Jehol beds, which represent a series of freshwater lakes. Several specimens of ''H. lingyuanensis'' and thousands of ''H. baitaigouensis'' specimens are known from the Yixian Formation, including entire growth series from embryos in eggs to fully grown adults. ''H. baitaigouensis'' was originally reported from the younger Jiufotang Formation, though subsequent study showed tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lycoptera
''Lycoptera'' is an extinct genus of fish that lived from the late Jurassic to Cretaceous periods in present-day China, North Korea, Mongolia and Siberia. It is known from abundant fossils representing sixteen species, which serve as important index fossil used to date geologic formations in China. Along with the genus ''Peipiaosteus'', ''Lycoptera'' has been considered a defining member of the Jehol Biota, a prehistoric ecosystem famous for its feathered dinosaurs, which flourished for 20 million years during the Early Cretaceous, where it occurs abundantly in often monospecific beds, where they are thought to have died in seasonal mass death events.Jin, F., Zhang, F.C., Li, Z.H., Zhang, J.Y., Li, C. and Zhou, Z.H. (2008). "On the horizon of ''Protopteryx'' and the early vertebrate fossil assemblages of the Jehol Biota." ''Chinese Science Bulletin'', 53(18): 2820-2827. ''Lycoptera'' is a crown group teleost belonging to an early diverging lineage of the Osteoglossomorpha, which co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protopsephurus
''Protopsephurus'' is an extinct genus of paddlefish containing the single species ''Protopsephurus liui,'' known from the Yixian Formation in Liaoning, northern China from the Barremian to Aptian ages of the Early Cretaceous period around 125-120 million years ago. It is up to be one meter in length. It is currently the oldest and most basal paddlefish known. Description The species is known from numerous specimens ranging up to about long. The snout is shorter than that in any other known paddlefish, and is more sturgeon-like. The morphology of the skull roof is also more archaic than any other paddlefish. The axial skeleton is poorly ossified. Like other extinct polyodontids, it also has tiny non-interlocking scales approximately 1 mm in diameter called denticles that cover the trunk, which bear a fringe of spikes. Diet ''Protopsephurus'' is thought to have been piscovorous, feeding on smaller fish. One adult specimen of ''Protopsephurus'' was observed with a specimen of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mayfly
Mayflies (also known as shadflies or fishflies in Canada and the upper Midwestern United States, as Canadian soldiers in the American Great Lakes region, and as up-winged flies in the United Kingdom) are aquatic insects belonging to the order Ephemeroptera. This order is part of an ancient group of insects termed the Palaeoptera, which also contains dragonflies and damselflies. Over 3,000 species of mayfly are known worldwide, grouped into over 400 genera in 42 families. Mayflies have ancestral traits that were probably present in the first flying insects, such as long tails and wings that do not fold flat over the abdomen. Their immature stages are aquatic fresh water forms (called "naiads" or " nymphs"), whose presence indicates a clean, unpolluted and highly oxygenated aquatic environment. They are unique among insect orders in having a fully winged terrestrial preadult stage, the subimago, which moults into a sexually mature adult, the imago. Mayflies "hatch" (emer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. Some crustaceans ( Remipedia, Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda) are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. The 67,000 described species range in size from '' Stygotantulus stocki'' at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to and a mass of . Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, which they moult to grow. They are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects, myriapods and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous (two-parted) limbs, and by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snail
A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also numerous species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Gastropods that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called '' slugs'', and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called ''semi-slugs''. Snails have considerable human relevance, including as food items, as pests, and as vectors of disease, and their shells are used as decorative objects and are incorporated into jewelry. The snail has also had some cultural significance, tending to be associated with lethargy. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clam
Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two shells of equal size connected by two adductor muscles and have a powerful burrowing foot. They live in both freshwater and marine environments; in salt water they prefer to burrow down into the mud and the turbidity of the water required varies with species and location; the greatest diversity of these is in North America. Clams in the culinary sense do not live attached to a substrate (whereas oysters and mussels do) and do not live near the bottom (whereas scallops do). In culinary usage, clams are commonly eaten marine bivalves, as in clam digging and the resulting soup, clam chowder. Many edible clams such as palourde clams are ovoid or triangular; however, razor clams have an elongated parallel-sided shell, suggesting an old-fashioned s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchurochelys
''Manchurochelys'' is an extinct genus of turtle in the order Paracryptodira. It existed during the early Cretaceous of what is now northeast China. It has been found in the Jianshangou Bed of West Liaoning's Yixian Formation. However, it is a rarely found fossil. ''Manchurochelys'' was first named by Endo and Shikama in 1942, and contains the single species, ''M. manchoukuoensis'' (sometimes misspelled ''M. manchouensis''). A second species, ''M. liaoxensis'', was named in 1995 but was later shown to be a species of '' Ordosemys''.Tong, H., Ji, S. and Ji, Q. (2004).''Ordosemys'' (Testudines, Cryptodira) from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, northeastern China: new specimens and systematic revision. American Museum Novitates, 3438: 1-20. ''Manchurochelys'' was a relative of the modern-day snapping turtle. It has been occasionally placed in the family Sinemydidae, although it is said to more likely belong in the family Macrobaenidae. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
