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Agriotheriinae
Agriotheriini is an extinct tribe of ailuropodine bears from the middle Neogene to early Quaternary periods, with fossils found from Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Taxonomy The tribe Agriotheriini consists of the three (perhaps four) genera * '' Agriotherium'' * ''Huracan'' * '' Indarctos'' * '' Miomaci'' (possibly). The taxonomy of these bears has variously placed some of the genera in other bear lineages such as Hemicyoninae and Ursavinae. Recent papers support their inclusion with giant pandas as members of Ailuropodinae based on diagnostic features like * large cheek teeth * parastyle fourth premolar with an enlarged inner lobe * wide first and second molars being * high mandible, with respect to the lower tooth row. They are unlike their closest living relative, the giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca'') which evolved into a highly specialized bamboo-eater: The evolution of agriotheriins lead to the group becoming large, hypercarnivorous bears that had adap ...
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Bear
Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family (biology), family Ursidae (). They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, and Eurasia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails. While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda is mostly herbivorous, the remaining six species are omnivorous with varying diets. With the exception of courtship display, courting individuals and mothers with their young, bears are typically solitary animals. They may be diurnality, diurnal or nocturnal and have an excellent sense of smell. Despite their heavy build and awk ...
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Agriotherium
''Agriotherium'' is an extinct genus of bears whose fossils are found in Miocene through Pleistocene-aged strata of North America, Eurasia, and Africa. The earliest species, ''A.'' ''aecuatorialis'' evolved during the early Late Miocene, around 11.6 Mya. The last species, ''A. africanum'', going extinct 2.58 Mya, during the late Pliocene. Description and diet ''A. africanum'' measured around in body length and weighed up to , making it larger than most living bears; however, mass estimates vary, with further studies presenting a lower mass estimate of . Along with other large bears such as the cave bear, short-faced bears ''Arctodus'' and ''Arctotherium'', and an extinct subspecies of the modern polar bear '' Ursus maritimus tyrannus'', ''Agriotherium'' was among the largest known terrestrial members of Carnivora. They had longer legs and shorter faces than other bears, and were more lightly built. Their wide, short jaws could generate enormous bite force. It is not certain h ...
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Indarctos
''Indarctos'' is an extinct genus of bear, present in Africa, North America, and Eurasia during the Miocene. It was present from ~11.1 to 5.3 Annum, Ma, existing for approximately . The oldest member is from Arizona (~11.1—7.7 Ma) and youngest is (~9.0—5.3 Ma) from Kazakhstan. In North America this animal was contemporary with ''Plionarctos'' (~10.3—3.3 Ma). Discovery, history and taxonomy Discoveries A Molar (tooth), molar (designated to Museum of Nature in Almaty, MNA 1839/km-83) discovered from the Karabulak formation in 1988 was tentatively assigned to ''Indarctos sp''. In 2017 it was re examined and assigned to ''I. punjabensis.'' The tooth was found to belong to a young individual, which may be a male, and is the largest tooth known from the species. This might be due to sexual dimorphism since extant male bears are larger than the females. Species ''Indarctos'' is known from several species spread widely across Eurasia, North America, and North Africa, howe ...
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Giant Panda
The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear or simply panda, is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its white animal coat, coat with black patches around the eyes, ears, legs and shoulders. Its body is rotund; adult individuals weigh and are typically long. It is sexually dimorphic, with males being typically 10 to 20% larger than females. A thumb is visible on its forepaw, which helps in holding bamboo in place for feeding. It has large molar teeth and expanded temporal fossa to meet its dietary requirements. It can digest starch and is mostly herbivorous with a diet consisting almost entirely of bamboo and bamboo shoots. The giant panda lives exclusively in six montane regions in a few Chinese provinces at elevations of up to . It is solitary and gathers only in mating seasons. It relies on olfactory communication to communicate and uses scent marks as chemical cues and on landmarks like rocks or trees. Females rear c ...
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Amphicyonidae
Amphicyonidae is an extinct family of terrestrial carnivorans belonging to the suborder Caniformia. They first appeared in North America in the middle Eocene (around 45 mya), spread to Europe by the late Eocene (35 mya), and further spread to Asia and Africa by the early Miocene (23 mya). They had largely disappeared worldwide by the late Miocene (5 mya), with the latest recorded species at the end of the Miocene in Africa. They were among the first carnivorans to evolve large body size. Amphicyonids are colloquially referred to as "bear-dogs". Taxonomy The family was erected by Haeckel in 1866 (also attributed to Trouessart 1885). Their exact position has long been disputed. Early paleontologists usually defined them as members of Canidae (the dog family) or Ursidae (the bear family), but the modern consensus is that they form their own family. Some researchers have defined it as the sister clade to ursids, based on morphological analysis of the ear region. However, cladistic ...
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Ipolytarnóc
Ipolytarnóc () is a village in Hungary, Nógrád county. There is a fossil site close to it, the Ipolytarnoc Fossils Nature Conservation Area. Fossils Sometimes referred to as the "Prehistoric Pompeii", Ipolytarnóc is the location of 23 to 17 million year old fossils. These include the teeth of 24 species of sharks as well as the teeth of crocodiles and dolphins, an almost 100 m tall petrified pine, more than 15,000 subtropical exotic leaves and 3,000 animal footprints of 11 species. This is one of the world's richest complex fossil footprint find sites. The fossils were preserved due to a volcanic catastrophe which buried a whole subtropical jungle under volcanic ash. The site became protected in 1944 and is managed by the Directorate of the Bükk National Park Bükk National Park () is a national park in the Bükk Mountains of Northern Hungary, near Miskolc. It was founded in 1977 as the third national park in the country. It contains 431.3 km2 (of which 37.74 k ...
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Shokurchi
Shokurchi () is a village in Chaypareh-ye Pain Rural District of Zanjanrud District in Zanjan County, Zanjan province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort .... Demographics Population At the time of the 2006 National Census, the village's population was 251 in 59 households. The following census in 2011 counted 191 people in 56 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 113 people in 35 households. See also Notes References Populated places in Zanjan County {{ZanjanCounty-geo-stub ...
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Muddy Creek Formation
The Muddy Creek Formation is a geologic formation in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. It preserves fossils dating back to the Neogene period. Distribution and General Expression The following description is from USGS Bulletin 798 by C. R. Longwell in 1928: In all the large intermontane valleys adjacent to the Muddy Mountains and neighboring ranges there are thick clays or silts and associated deposits that have been relatively little disturbed by crustal deformation. As a rule they form belts from a fraction of a mile to several miles wide on each side of present stream valleys, above which the clay outcrops rise to a maximum height of approximately 600 feet. Adjacent to the high lands they feather out, lapping up on the older rocks. Between the Muddy and Virgin Mountains the area occupied by the clays is from 9 to 12 miles wide. South of St. Thomas this large area is divided into two nearly equal belts by Virgin River, and to the north the clays are cut by the convergin ...
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Langebaanweg
Langebaanweg is a town on the southwest coast of South Africa, in Western Cape Province. It is the location of the air force base AFB Langebaanweg. Langebaanweg has been an important mining center, with its main minerals consisting of phosphorites, primarily calcium phosphate. The mining uncovered fossils dating from the late Miocene and early Pliocene, approximately 5 million years ago. Fossil species found there include invertebrates and also a type of rhinoceros, as well as a mousebird and a diving petrel. The West Coast Fossil Park includes displays of fossils found in a former phosphate mine. Brett Hendey, formally of the Iziko South African Museum, documented the significance of the Langebaanweg fossil sites. Langebaanweg is also notable as the birthplace of former England cricketer Allan Lamb, who played 79 Tests for his adopted country as well as in the 1987 and 1992 1992 was designated as International Space Year by the United Nations. Events January ...
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Ichnotaxon
An ichnotaxon (plural ichnotaxa) is "a taxon based on the fossilized work of an organism", i.e. the non-human equivalent of an artifact. ''Ichnotaxon'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''íchnos'') meaning "track" and English , itself derived from Ancient Greek (''táxis'') meaning "ordering".Definition o'ichno'at dictionary.com. Ichnotaxa are names used to identify and distinguish morphologically distinctive ichnofossils, more commonly known as trace fossils (fossil records of lifeforms' movement, rather than of the lifeforms themselves). They are assigned genus and species ranks by ichnologists, much like organisms in Linnaean taxonomy. These are known as ichnogenera and ichnospecies, respectively. "Ichnogenus" and "ichnospecies" are commonly abbreviated as "igen." and "isp.". The binomial names of ichnospecies and their genera are to be written in italics. Most researchers classify trace fossils only as far as the ichnogenus rank, based upon trace fossils that resemble eac ...
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Geobios
Geobios is an academic journal published bimonthly by the publishing house Elsevier. Geobios is an international journal of paleontology, focusing on the areas of palaeobiology, palaeoecology, palaeobiogeography, stratigraphy and biogeochemistry. Geobios is indexed and abstracted in: Science Citation Index, ISI, Bulletin signalétique, PASCAL, Geo Abstracts, Biological Abstracts, The Geoscience Database, Referativnyi Zhurnal, SciSearch, Research Alert and Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences. Description Articles are published only in English, following a standard peer-review process (usually involving 3 reviewers) supervised by an associate-editor through the journal's submission website. Articles are published both in print and in electronic format on the Geobios ScienceDirect website. History Geobios was first published in 1968 by the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 (, UCBL) is one of the three public universities of Lyo ...
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Cursorial
A cursorial organism is one that is adapted specifically to run. An animal can be considered cursorial if it has the ability to run fast (e.g. cheetah) or if it can keep a constant speed for a long distance (high endurance). "Cursorial" is often used to categorize a certain locomotor mode, which is helpful for biologists who examine behaviors of different animals and the way they move in their environment. Cursorial adaptations can be identified by morphological characteristics (e.g. loss of lateral digits as in ungulate species), physiological characteristics, maximum speed, and how often running is used in life. Much debate exists over how to define a cursorial animal specifically. The most accepted definitions include that a cursorial organism could be considered adapted to long-distance running at high speeds or has the ability to accelerate quickly over short distances. Among vertebrates, animals under 1 kg of mass are rarely considered cursorial, and cursorial behaviors ...
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