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Ergilornithidae
Eogruidae (also spelled Eogruiidae in some publications) is an extinct family of large, flightless birds that inhabited Asia from the Eocene to Pliocene epochs. Related to modern ostriches, it was formerly thought to be related to cranes, limpkins and trumpeters and that the similarities with ostriches were due to similar speciations to cursoriality, with both groups showing reduced numbers of toes to two in some taxa.Kurochkin, E.N. 1976. A survey of the Paleogene birds of Asia. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 27:75-86.Kurochkin, E.N. 1981. New representatives and evolution of two archaic gruiform families in Eurasia. Transactions of the Soviet-Mongolian Paleontologial Expedition 15:59-85. It has been suggested that competition from true ostriches has caused the extinction of these birds, though this has never been formally tested and several ostrich taxa do occur in the late Cenozoic of AsiaMayr, G. (2009). Paleogene fossil birds. Springer. and some species do occur in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ostriches
Ostriches are large flightless birds. Two living species are recognised, the common ostrich, native to large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Somali ostrich, native to the Horn of Africa. They are the heaviest and largest living birds, with adult common ostriches weighing anywhere between 63.5 and 145 kilograms and laying the largest eggs of any living land animal.Del Hoyo, Josep, et al. Handbook of the birds of the world. Vol. 1. No. 8. Barcelona: Lynx edicions, 1992. With the ability to run at 70 km/h (43.5 mph), they are the fastest birds on land. They are farmed worldwide, with significant industries in the Philippines and in Namibia. South Africa produces about 70% of global ostrich products, with the industry largely centered around the town of Oudtshoorn. Ostrich leather is a lucrative commodity, and the large feathers are used as plumes for the decoration of ceremonial headgear. Ostrich eggs and meat have been used by humans for millennia. Ostrich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruiformes
The Gruiformes ( ) are an order containing a considerable number of living and extinct bird families, with a widespread geographical diversity. Gruiform means "crane-like". Traditionally, a number of wading and terrestrial bird families that did not seem to belong to any other order were classified together as Gruiformes. These include 15 species of large cranes, about 145 species of smaller crakes and rails, as well as a variety of families comprising one to three species, such as the Heliornithidae, the limpkin, or the Psophiidae. Other birds have been placed in this order more out of necessity to place them ''somewhere''; this has caused the expanded Gruiformes to lack distinctive apomorphies. Recent studies indicate that these "odd Gruiformes" are if at all only loosely related to the cranes, rails, and relatives ("core Gruiformes"). Systematics There are only two suprafamilial clades (natural groups) among the birds traditionally classified as Gruiformes. Rails ( Ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paraphyletic
Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In contrast, a monophyletic grouping (a clade) includes a common ancestor and ''all'' of its descendants. The terms are commonly used in phylogenetics (a subfield of biology) and in the tree model of historical linguistics. Paraphyletic groups are identified by a combination of synapomorphies and symplesiomorphies. If many subgroups are missing from the named group, it is said to be polyparaphyletic. The term received currency during the debates of the 1960s and 1970s accompanying the rise of cladistics, having been coined by zoologist Willi Hennig to apply to well-known taxa like Reptilia (reptiles), which is paraphyletic with respect to birds. Reptilia contains the last common ancestor of reptiles and all descendants of that ancestor exc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Birds Of Asia
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing having spread to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. It is based on an old conception of history that without written records there could be no history. The most common conception today is that history is based on evidence, however the concept of prehistory hasn't been completely discarded. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ratites
Ratites () are a polyphyletic group consisting of all birds within the infraclass Palaeognathae that lack keel (bird anatomy), keels and flightless bird, cannot fly. They are mostly large, long-necked, and long-legged, the exception being the Kiwi (bird), kiwi, which is also the only nocturnal extant ratite. The understanding of relationships within the paleognath clade has been in flux. Previously, all the flightless members had been assigned to the order Struthioniformes, which is more recently regarded as containing only the ostrich. The modern bird superorder Palaeognathae consists of ratites and the Flying and gliding animals, flighted Neotropic tinamous (compare to Neognathae). Unlike other flightless birds, the ratites have no keel (bird), keel on their sternum—hence the name, from the Latin ('raft', a vessel which has no keel—in contradistinction to extant flighted birds with a keel). Without this to anchor their wing muscles, they could not have flown even if they ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swiss Journal Of Palaeontology
The ''Swiss Journal of Palaeontology'' is a biannual open access peer-reviewed scientific journal covering palaeontology and taxonomy published by BioMed Central. It is affiliated with the Swiss Geological Society and a member of the Swiss Academy of Sciences. History The journal was established as ''Schweizerische Paläontologische Abhandlungen'' in 1874 and was published by the Natural History Museum of Basel. In 2011, it was relaunched as the ''Swiss Journal of Palaeontology'' and publisher became BioMed Central. Since 2020 the journal is open access. Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in: According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal has a 2023 impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ... of 3.0. References Exte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Europe
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. Europe is commonly considered to be Boundaries between the continents#Asia and Europe, separated from Asia by the Drainage divide, watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural (river), Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the waterway of the Bosporus, Bosporus Strait. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles." Europe covers approx. , or 2% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface (6.8% of Earth's land area), making it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. The region includes Middle America (Americas), Middle America (comprising the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico) and Northern America. North America covers an area of about , representing approximately 16.5% of Earth's land area and 4.8% of its total surface area. It is the third-largest continent by size after Asia and Africa, and the list of continents and continental subregions by population, fourth-largest continent by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. , North America's population was estimated as over 592 million people in list of sovereign states and dependent territories in North America, 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's popula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geranoididae
Geranoididae is a clade of extinct birds from the early to late Eocene and possibly early Oligocene of North America and Europe. These were mid-sized, long-legged flightless birds.Gerald Mayr (2009). Paleogene Fossil Birds Recent research shows that these birds may actually be palaeognaths related to ostriches. Classification It is rather unambiguous that geranoidids are either part of or stem representatives of Gruoidea, the clade that includes modern cranes, limpkins and trumpeters, though their precise relationship varies among studies, some recovering them as sister taxa to another clade of flightless ratite-like birds, the eogruiids. The most recent consensus appears to be that geranoidids are outside of Gruoidea, with eogruiids being more closely related to modern cranes. However, Mayr (2019) argued that close affinities between Geranoididae and the palaeognathous family Palaeotididae are at least as well supported as the classification of geranoidids into the Gruifor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
