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Aegyptocetus NT
''Aegyptocetus'' is an extinct genus of protocetid archaeocete whale known from Egypt. Taxonomy ''Aegyptocetus'' is known from the articulated holotype MSNTUP I-15459, an almost complete cranium, lower jaws (with teeth) and a partial postcranial skeleton (cervical and thoracic vertebrae and ribs). The specimen was recovered when marbleized limestone was imported commercially to Italy. It was collected in the Khashm el-Raqaba limestone quarry (, paleocoordinates ) from the Gebel Hof Formation on the northern flank of Wadi Tarfa in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, dating to the late Mokattamian age of the middle Eocene, about . Its cause of death may have been an attack by a large shark as pattern of shark tooth marks preserved on the ribs. ''Aegyptocetus'' was first named by Giovanni Bianucci and Philip D. Gingerich in 2011 in paleontology, 2011 and the type species is ''Aegyptocetus tarfa''. The name of a biological genus, generic name is derived from ''Aegyptus'', Latin for Eg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " dawn") and (''kainós'', "new") and refers to the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna that appeared during the epoch. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope 12C. The end is set at a major extinction event called the ''Grande Coupure'' (the "Great Break" in continuity) or the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event, which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Siberia and in what is now Chesapeake Bay. As with other geologic periods, the strata that define the start and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mokattam
The Mokattam ( arz, المقطم , also spelled Muqattam), also known as the Mukattam Mountain or Hills, is the name of a range of hills and a suburb in them, located in southeastern Cairo, Egypt. Etymology The Arabic name ''Mokattam'' means cut off or broken off and apparently refers to how the low range of hills is divided into three sections. Paul Casanova advocated the idea that it's a corruption of an older name Maqaduniya (), mentioned in Medieval Arabic sources. Landform The highest segment is a low mountain landform called Moqattam Mountain. In the past the low mountain range was an important ancient Egyptian quarry site for limestone, used in the construction of temples and pyramids. Settlement The hills are in the region of ancient Fustat, the new capital founded by 'Amr ibn al-'As after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 642 CE. The Zabbaleen people, who are an integral part of collecting and processing Cairo's municipal solid waste, live in Manshiyat Na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protocetidae
Protocetidae, the protocetids, form a diverse and heterogeneous group of extinct cetaceans known from Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, and North America. Description There were many genera, and some of these are very well known (e.g., '' Rodhocetus''). Known protocetids had large fore- and hindlimbs that could support the body on land, and it is likely that they lived amphibiously: in the sea and on land. It is unclear at present whether protocetids had flukes (the horizontal tail fin of modern cetaceans). However, what is clear is that they are adapted even further to an aquatic life-style. In '' Rodhocetus'', for example, the sacrum – a bone that in land-mammals is a fusion of five vertebrae that connects the pelvis with the rest of the vertebral column – was divided into loose vertebrae. However, the pelvis retain a sacroiliac joint. Furthermore, the nasal openings are now halfway up the snout; a first step towards the telescoped condition in modern whale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorudon
''Dorudon'' ("spear-tooth") is a genus of extinct basilosaurid ancient whales that lived alongside '' Basilosaurus'' 40.4 to 33.9 million years ago in the Eocene. It was a small whale, with ''D. atrox'' measuring long and weighing . ''Dorudon'' lived in warm seas around the world and fed on small fish and mollusks. Fossils have been found along the former shorelines of the Tethys Sea in present-day Egypt and Pakistan, as well as in the United States, New Zealand, and Western Sahara. Taxonomic history described ''Dorudon serratus'' based on a fragmentary maxilla and a few teeth found in South Carolina. He concluded that the teeth must have belonged to a mammal since they were two-rooted, that they must have been teeth from a juvenile since they were hollow, and also noted their similarity to the teeth then described for ''Zeuglodon'' ('' Basilosaurus''). When exploring the type locality, Gibbes discovered a lower jaw and twelve caudal vertebrae, which he felt obliged to assi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basilosauridae
Basilosauridae is a family of extinct cetaceans. They lived during the middle to the early late Eocene and are known from all continents, including Antarctica. They were probably the first fully aquatic cetaceans.Buono M, Fordyce R.E., Marx F.G., Fernández M.S. & Reguero M. (2019). "Eocene Antarctica: a window into the earliest history of modern whales". ''Advances in Polar Science'' 30(3): p. 293-302. doi10.13679/j.advps.2019.0005/ref> The group is noted to be a paraphyletic assemblage of stem group whales from which the monophyletic Neoceti are derived. Characteristics Basilosaurids ranged in size from and were fairly similar to modern cetaceans in overall body form and function. Some genera tend to show signs of convergent evolution with mosasaurs by having long serpentine body shape, which suggests that this body plan seems to have been rather successful. Basilosaurid forelimbs have broad and fan-shaped scapulae attached to a humerus, radius, and ulna which are fla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qaisracetus
''Qaisracetus'' is an extinct protocetid early whale known from the Eocene (Lutetian, ) of Baluchistan, Pakistan (, paleocoordinates ). Etymology The genus is named after the Qaisrani Baloch tribe which assisted Gingerich and his team during their field work. "Qaisra" is also etymologically close to the royal title used in Persian and many Indo-European languages (e.g. Kaiser, Czar, Caesar). The species is named for Muhammad Arif, former paleontologist at the Geological Survey of Pakistan who contributed significantly to archaeocete paleontology in Pakistan. Description ''Qaisracetus'' is known from a dozen specimens, all found in or near the type locality. Among them are several well-preserved elements, including a well-preserved skull, partial skulls and braincases, several vertebrae including an almost complete sacrum, a left innominate, ribs, and partial limb elements. ''Qaisracetus'' is smaller than ''Pappocetus'' and ''Babiacetus'' but larger than ''Indocetus''. ''Qai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodhocetus
''Rodhocetus'' (from ''Rodho'', the geological anticline at the type locality, and ''cetus'', Latin for whale) is an extinct genus of protocetid early whale known from the Lutetian of Pakistan. The best-known protocetid, ''Rodhocetus'' is known from two partial skeletons that taken together give a complete image of an Eocene whale that had short limbs with long hands and feet that were probably webbed and a sacrum that was immobile with four partially fused sacral vertebrae. It is one of several extinct whale genera that possess land mammal characteristics, thus demonstrating the evolutionary transition from land to sea. Description left, Size of ''Rodhocetus'' relative to a human. ''Rodhocetus'' was a small whale measuring long. Throughout the 1990s, a close relationship between cetaceans and mesonychids, an extinct group of cursorial, wolf-like ungulates, was generally accepted based on morphological analyses. In the late 1990s, however, cladistic analyses based on mole ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neural Spine
The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic irregular bone whose complex structure is composed primarily of bone, and secondarily of hyaline cartilage. They show variation in the proportion contributed by these two tissue types; such variations correlate on one hand with the cerebral/caudal rank (i.e., location within the backbone), and on the other with phylogenetic differences among the vertebrate taxa. The basic configuration of a vertebra varies, but the bone is its ''body'', with the central part of the body constituting the ''centrum''. The upper (closer to) and lower (further from), respectively, the cranium and its central nervous system surfaces of the vertebra body support attachment to the intervertebral discs. The posterior part of a vertebra forms a vertebral arch ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aegyptocetus NT
''Aegyptocetus'' is an extinct genus of protocetid archaeocete whale known from Egypt. Taxonomy ''Aegyptocetus'' is known from the articulated holotype MSNTUP I-15459, an almost complete cranium, lower jaws (with teeth) and a partial postcranial skeleton (cervical and thoracic vertebrae and ribs). The specimen was recovered when marbleized limestone was imported commercially to Italy. It was collected in the Khashm el-Raqaba limestone quarry (, paleocoordinates ) from the Gebel Hof Formation on the northern flank of Wadi Tarfa in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, dating to the late Mokattamian age of the middle Eocene, about . Its cause of death may have been an attack by a large shark as pattern of shark tooth marks preserved on the ribs. ''Aegyptocetus'' was first named by Giovanni Bianucci and Philip D. Gingerich in 2011 in paleontology, 2011 and the type species is ''Aegyptocetus tarfa''. The name of a biological genus, generic name is derived from ''Aegyptus'', Latin for Eg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Specific Name (zoology)
In zoological nomenclature, the specific name (also specific epithet or species epithet) is the second part (the second name) within the scientific name of a species (a binomen). The first part of the name of a species is the name of the genus or the generic name. The rules and regulations governing the giving of a new species name are explained in the article species description. For example, the scientific name for humans is ''Homo sapiens'', which is the species name, consisting of two names: ''Homo'' is the " generic name" (the name of the genus) and ''sapiens'' is the "specific name". Historically, ''specific name'' referred to the combination of what are now called the generic and specific names. Carl Linnaeus, who formalized binomial nomenclature, made explicit distinctions between specific, generic, and trivial names. The generic name was that of the genus, the first in the binomial, the trivial name was the second name in the binomial, and the specific the proper term fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Name Of A Biological Genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. :E.g. '' Panthera leo'' (lion) and '' Panthera onca'' (jaguar) are two species within the genus ''Panthera''. ''Panthera'' is a genus within the family Felidae. The composition of a genus is determined by taxonomists. The standards for genus classification are not strictly codified, so different authorities often produce different classifications for genera. There are some general practices used, however, including the idea that a newly defined genus should fulfill these three criteria to be descriptively useful: # monophyly – all descendants of an ancestral taxon are grouped together (i.e. phylogenetic analysis should clearly demo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
