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Jabiru Calypso
The jabiru ( or ; ''Jabiru mycteria'') is a large stork found in the Americas from Mexico to Argentina, except west of the Andes. It sometimes wanders into the United States, usually in Texas, but has been reported as far north as Mississippi. It is most common in the Pantanal region of Brazil and the Eastern Chaco region of Paraguay. It is the only member of the genus ''Jabiru''. The name comes from a Tupi–Guaraní language and means "swollen neck". Taxonomy Hinrich Lichtenstein described the jabiru in 1819. The name ''jabiru'' has also been used for two other birds of a distinct genus: black-necked stork (''Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus''), commonly called "jabiru" in Australia; and sometimes also for the saddle-billed stork (''Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis'') of Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, Gardiner's Egyptian hieroglyph G29, believed to depict an ''E. senegalensis'', is sometimes labeled "jabiru" in hieroglyph lists. The ''Ephippiorhynchus'' are believed to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pantanal
The Pantanal () is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay. It sprawls over an area estimated at between . Various subregional ecosystems exist, each with distinct hydrological, geological and ecological characteristics; up to 12 of them have been defined.Susan Mcgrath, photos by Joel Sartore, ''Brazil's Wild Wet'', National Geographic Magazine, August 2005 Roughly 80% of the Pantanal floodplains are submerged during the rainy seasons, nurturing a biologically diverse collection of aquatic plants and helping to support a dense array of animal species. Etymology The name "Pantanal" comes from the Portuguese word ''pântano'' that means "big wetland", "big bog", "big swamp", "big quagmire" or "big marsh" plus the suffix ''-al'', that means "abundance, agglome ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black-necked Stork
The black-necked stork (''Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus'') is a tall long-necked wading bird in the stork family. It is a resident species across the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia with a disjunct population in Australia. It lives in wetland habitats and near fields of certain crops such as rice and wheat where it forages for a wide range of animal prey. Adult birds of both sexes have a heavy bill and are patterned in white and irridescent blacks, but the sexes differ in the colour of the iris with females sporting yellow irises and males having dark-coloured irises. In Australia, it is sometimes called a jabiru although that name refers to a stork species found in the Americas. It is one of the few storks that are strongly territorial when feeding and breeding. Taxonomy and systematics First described by John Latham as ''Mycteria asiatica'', this species was later placed in the genus ''Xenorhynchus'' based on morphology. Based on behavioural similarities, Kahl suggested ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zanclean
The Zanclean is the lowest stage or earliest age on the geologic time scale of the Pliocene. It spans the time between 5.332 ± 0.005 Ma (million years ago) and 3.6 ± 0.005 Ma. It is preceded by the Messinian Age of the Miocene Epoch, and followed by the Piacenzian Age. The Zanclean can be correlated with regionally used stages, such as the Opoitian of New Zealand, and the Tabianian or Dacian of Central Europe. It also corresponds to the late Hemphillian to mid- Blancan North American Land Mammal Ages. In California, the Zanclean roughly corresponds to the middle part of the Delmontian stage. Definition The Zanclean Stage was introduced by Giuseppe Seguenza in 1868. It is named after ''Zancle'', the pre- Roman name for the Italian city of Messina on Sicily. The base of the Zanclean (and the Pliocene Series) lies with the top of magnetic chronozone Cr3 (about 100,000 years before the Thvera normal subchronozone C3n.4n). The base is also close to the extinction level ... [...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] |
Late Pleistocene
The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently defined as the time between c. 129,000 and c. 11,700 years ago. The Late Pleistocene equates to the proposed Tarantian Age of the geologic time scale, preceded by the officially ratified Chibanian (formerly known as Middle Pleistocene) and succeeded by the officially ratified Greenlandian. The estimated beginning of the Tarantian is the start of the Eemian interglacial period ( Marine Isotope Stage 5). It is held to end with the termination of the Younger Dryas, some 11,700 years ago when the Holocene Epoch began. The term Upper Pleistocene is currently in use as a provisional or "quasi-formal" designation by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Although the three olde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ephippiorhynchus
'' Ephippiorhynchus'' is a small genus of storks. It contains two living species only, very large birds more than 140 cm tall with a 230–270 cm wingspan. Both are mainly black and white, with huge bills. The sexes of these species are similarly plumaged, but the eyes are dark brown in males and yellow in females. The members of this genus are sometimes called " jabirus", but this properly refers to a close relative from Latin America. These large wading birds breed in marshes and other wetlands, building a large, deep stick nest in a tree. Like most storks, they fly with the neck outstretched, not retracted like a heron; in flight, they present a strange shape, with the head and large bill somewhat drooping down. They are silent except for bill-clattering at the nest. '' Ephippiorhynchus'' storks, like most of their relatives, feeds mainly on fish, frogs and crabs, but also on young birds, and other land vertebrates. They move in a deliberate and stately manner as they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gardiner's Sign List
Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common Egyptian hieroglyphs compiled by Sir Alan Gardiner. It is considered a standard reference in the study of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Gardiner lists only the common forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but he includes extensive subcategories, and also both vertical and horizontal forms for many hieroglyphs. He includes size-variation forms to aid with the reading of hieroglyphs in running blocks of text. In contrast, for example, the Budge Reference has about 1,000 hieroglyphs listed in 50 pages, but with no size variations. Gardiner does not cross-index signs; once put on the list, other significant uses may be overlooked. One example of this is G16, nbtỉ, the ideogram for the Two Ladies, goddesses Wadjet as the cobra and Nekhbet as the white vulture. These are the protective and patron goddesses of the separate Egyptian kingdoms that joined into ancient Egypt, who were both then displayed on the uraeus of Wadjet when the unification ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,000 graphemes in the Old Kingdom period, reduced to around 750 to 850 in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom, but inflated to the order of some 5,000 signs in the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Through the Phoenician alphabet's major child systems (the Greek and Aramaic scripts), the Egyptian hieroglyphic script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use, most prominently the Latin and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar. He is regarded as one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century. Personal life Gardiner was born on 29 March 1879 in Eltham, then in Kent. His mother died in his infancy and he and his elder brother, the composer H. Balfour Gardiner, were brought up by their father's housekeeper. Gardiner was educated at Temple Grove School and Charterhouse. At school he developed an interest in ancient Egypt, and in 1895–96 he studied under the French archaeologist Gaston Maspero in Paris. He then went to Queen's College, Oxford with a scholarship to study '' Literae humaniores'' (classics). Having achieved a second class in Mods, he changed to Hebrew and Arabic, graduating with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1901. He was later a student of the prominent Egyptologist Kurt Heinrich Sethe in Berlin. In 1901, afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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