Hypocarnivore
A hypocarnivore is an animal that consumes less than 30% meat for its diet, the majority of which consists of fungi, fruits, and other plant material. Examples of living hypocarnivores are the grizzly bear (''Ursus horribilis''), black bear (''Ursus americanus''), binturong (''Arctictis binturong'') and kinkajou (''Potos flavus'') The evolutionary division of carnivory into three groups, including hypercarnivore and mesocarnivore, appears to have occurred about 40 million years ago (mya). The term hypocarnivory is used with increasing frequency in describing early Canidae evolution, and reliance upon that survival strategy has a documented history in North American Borophaginae during the Miocene (23.03 to 5.33 mya). Twenty-five species of hypocarnivore are documented as co-occurring on the North American continent 30 mya. A shift from hyper- to hypo- occurred at least three times among Oligocene and Miocene canids '' Oxetocyon'', '' Phlaocyon'', and '' Cynarctus''. Large hypo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Omnivore
An omnivore () is an animal that regularly consumes significant quantities of both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and animal matter, omnivores digest carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber, and metabolize the nutrients and energy of the sources absorbed. Often, they have the ability to incorporate food sources such as algae, fungi, and bacteria into their diet. Omnivores come from diverse backgrounds that often independently evolved sophisticated consumption capabilities. For instance, dogs evolved from primarily carnivorous organisms (Carnivora) while pigs evolved from primarily herbivorous organisms (Artiodactyla). Despite this, physical characteristics such as tooth morphology may be reliable indicators of diet in mammals, with such morphological adaptation having been observed in bears. The variety of different animals that are classified as omnivores can be placed into further sub-categories depending on their feeding behaviors. Frug ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carnivore
A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ... whose nutrition and energy requirements are met by eating, consumption of animal tissue (biology), tissues (mainly muscle, adipose tissue, fat and other soft tissues) as food, whether through predation or scavenger, scavenging. Nomenclature Mammal order The technical term for mammals in the order (biology), order Carnivora is ''carnivoran'', and they are so-named because most member species in the group have a carnivorous diet, but the similarity of the name of the order and the name of the diet causes confusion. Many but not all carnivorans are meat eaters; a few, such as the fe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene followed the Oligocene and preceded the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by distinct global events but by regionally defined transitions from the warmer Oligocene to the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, and allowing the interchange of fauna between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans and Ape, hominoids into Eurasia. During the late Miocene, the conn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Feeding Behaviours
Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. Terminology often uses either the suffixes -vore, -vory, or -vorous from Latin ''vorare'', meaning "to devour", or -phage, -phagy, or -phagous from Greek φαγεῖν (), meaning "to eat". Evolutionary history The evolution of feeding is varied with some feeding strategies evolving several times in independent lineages. In terrestrial vertebrates, the earliest forms were large amphibious piscivores 400 million years ago. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and later insects, reptiles began exploring two new food types, other tetrapods (carnivory), and later, plants (herbivory). Carnivory was a natural transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods, requiring minimal adaptation (in contrast, a complex set of adaptations was necessary for feeding on highly fibrous plant materials). Evolutionary adaptations The specialization of organisms towards specific food sources is one of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vertebrate
Vertebrates () are animals with a vertebral column (backbone or spine), and a cranium, or skull. The vertebral column surrounds and protects the spinal cord, while the cranium protects the brain. The vertebrates make up the subphylum Vertebrata with some 65,000 species, by far the largest ranked grouping in the phylum Chordata. The vertebrates include mammals, birds, amphibians, and various classes of fish and reptiles. The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata. The jawed fish include both the Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous fish and the Osteichthyes, bony fish. Bony fish include the Sarcopterygii, lobe-finned fish, which gave rise to the tetrapods, the animals with four limbs. Despite their success, vertebrates still only make up less than five percent of all described animal species. The first vertebrates appeared in the Cambrian explosion some 518 million years ago. Jawed vertebrates evolved in the Ordovician, followed by bony fishes in the Devonian. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prohesperocyon
''Prohesperocyon'' ("before '' Hesperocyon''") is an extinct genus of canid, endemic to North America appearing during the Late Eocene around 36.6 mya ( AEO). Fossil distribution ''Prohesperocyon wilsoni'' was unearthed at the Airstrip (TMM 40504) site, Presidio County, Texas dating between 36.6 and 36.5 million years ago. revised on 2002-06-03, John Alroy
John Alroy is a paleobiologist born in New York in 1966 and now residing in Sydney, Australia.
Area of expertise
Alroy specializes in diversity curves, speciation, and extinction of North American fossil mammals and Phanerozoic marine inverte ... . ...
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Carnassial
Carnassials are paired upper and lower teeth modified in such a way as to allow enlarged and often self-sharpening edges to pass by each other in a shearing manner. This adaptation is found in carnivorans, where the carnassials are the modified fourth upper premolar and the first lower molar (tooth), molar. These teeth are also referred to as sectorial teeth. Taxonomy The name carnivoran is applied to a member of the order Carnivora. Carnivorans possess a common arrangement of teeth called carnassials, in which the first lower Molar (tooth), molar and the last upper premolar possess blade-like enamel Crown (tooth), crowns that act similar to a pair of shears for cutting meat. This dental arrangement has been modified by adaptation over the past 60 million years for diets composed of meat, for crushing vegetation, or for the loss of the carnassial function altogether found in pinnipeds. Carnassial dentition Carnassial teeth are modified molars (and in the case of carnivorans pre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58See the 2014 version of the ICS geologic time scale million years ago (Ma). It is the second and most recent epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic, Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch. Prior to the 2009 revision of the geologic time scale, which placed the four most recent major glaciations entirely within the Pleistocene, the Pliocene also included the Gelasian Stage, which lasted from 2.59 to 1.81 Ma, and is now included in the Pleistocene. As with other older geologic periods, the Stratum, geological strata that define the start and end are well-identified but the exact dates of the start a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cynarctus
''Cynarctus'' is an extinct genus of the Borophaginae subfamily of canids native to North America. The genus was first founded by W. D. Matthew in 1901, based from a pair of lower jaws, ''Cynarctus saxitilis,'' found in the Pawnee Creek Beds of Colorado. It lived during the Middle to Late Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ... 16.0—10.3 mya, existing for approximately . Fossils have been uncovered in Colorado, California, Maryland, western Nebraska, and Texas. It was likely an omnivore, and lacked the bone-cracking adaptations found in some later borophagines. Newer findings have proved the genus to be described as a large dog-like raccoon, a result from combining characteristics from Canidae with Procyonidae. Species Cynarctus crucidens Found by Mr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phlaocyon
''Phlaocyon'' (from Greek ''phlao'', "eat greedily" and ''cyon'', "dog") is an extinct genus of the Borophaginae subfamily of canids native to North America. It lives from the Early Oligocene to the Early Miocene epoch 33.3–16.3 Mya, existing for approximately . It is closely related to '' Cynarctoides''. Phylogeny When discovered in the 19th century and during the following decades, ''Phlaocyon'' was thought to be ancestral to raccoons because of shared convergent adaptations toward hypocarnivorous dentitions, but was the first to discover the canid nature of the middle ear region in ''P. leucosteus'' and ''Phlaocyon'' in now believed to be part of very diverse clade of hypocarnivorous canids, the Phlaocyonini, and only distantly related to raccoons. '' P. mariae'' and '' P. yatkolai'', both known from isolated teeth and fragmentary material, are the largest and most derived species, and both display a tendency away from the hypocarnivorous dentition of the genus and tow ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oxetocyon
''Oxetocyon'' ("beginning dog") is an extinct monospecific genus of the Borophaginae subfamily of canids native to North America. It lived during the Early Oligocene epoch, existing for approximately . Fossils have been found in Nebraska and South Dakota. Fossils of ''Oxetocyon'' are rare and, as a result, the genus is poorly known, and only the teeth, dentaries, and a fragmentary skull have been reported. The teeth of ''Oxetocyon'' indicate a hypocarnivorous diet, as is found in the living raccoon dog ''Nyctereutes'' (Greek: ''nyx, nykt-'' "night" + ''ereutēs'' "wanderer") is a genus of canid which includes only two extant species, both known as raccoon dogs: the common raccoon dog (''Nyctereutes procyonoides'') and the Japanese raccoon do ..., and suggest a potential relationship to the unusual borophagine '' Otarocyon''. ''Oxetocyon'' is distinguished from ''Otarocyon'' by its own set of dental specializations for an omnivorous diet, particularly by the presence of a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Canid
Canidae (; from Latin, ''canis'', "dog") is a family (biology), biological family of caniform carnivorans, constituting a clade. A member of this family is also called a canid (). The family includes three subfamily, subfamilies: the Caninae, and the extinct Borophaginae and Hesperocyoninae. The Caninae are known as canines, and include Dog, domestic dogs, Wolf, wolves, coyotes, raccoon dogs, Fox, foxes, jackals and other species. Canids are found on all continents except Antarctica, having arrived independently or accompanied by Human, human beings over extended periods of time. Canids vary in size from the gray wolf to the fennec fox. The body forms of canids are similar, typically having long muzzles, upright ears, teeth adapted for cracking bones and slicing flesh, long legs, and bushy tails. They are mostly social animals, living together in family units or small groups and behaving co-operatively. Typically, only the dominant pair in a group breeds and a litter of young ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |