J. C. Merriam
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J. C. Merriam
John Campbell Merriam (October 20, 1869 – October 30, 1945) was an American paleontologist, educator, and conservationist. The first vertebrate paleontologist on the West Coast of the United States, he is best known for his taxonomy of vertebrate fossils at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, particularly with the genus ''Smilodon'', more commonly known as the sabertooth cat. He is also known for his work to extend the reach of the National Park Service. Biography He was born in Hopkinton, Iowa, the eldest child of postmaster, store proprietor, and American Civil War veteran Charles E. Merriam. His middle name Campbell was his mother's middle name, and the maiden name of his maternal grandmother. Both his father Charles E. Merriam and his paternal uncle Henry C. Merriam had served as officers in the 12th Iowa Infantry, Company K; after capture at the Battle of Shiloh, they were sent to Libby Prison for some time before being returned to the battlefields. Eventually, whe ...
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Hopkinton, Iowa
Hopkinton is a city in Delaware County, Iowa, United States. The population was 622 at the time of the 2020 census. History Hopkinton was laid out in 1850, and it was incorporated in 1874. The city is the former home of Lenox College, a small school that closed in 1944. The old campus is still maintained as Delaware County Historical Museum Complex. Geography Hopkinton is located near the Maquoketa River. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land. Demographics 2020 census As of the census of 2020, there were 622 people, 261 households, and 167 families residing in the city. The population density was 968.7 inhabitants per square mile (374.0/km2). There were 286 housing units at an average density of 445.4 per square mile (172.0/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 93.6% White, 1.8% Black or African American, 0.6% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 0.0% from other races and 3.5% from two or more races. ...
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La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits comprise an active Paleontological site, paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural Bitumen, asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. "La Brea Tar Pits" is a registered National Natural Landmark. Formation Tar pits are composed of Heavy crude oil, heavy oil fractions, called gilsonite, which seep from the earth as oil. Crude oil seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of Hancock Park. The oil reaches the surface and forms pools, becoming asphalt as the lighter fractions of the petroleum biodegrade or evaporate. The asphalt the ...
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Joseph Le Conte
Joseph Le Conte (alternative spelling: Joseph LeConte) (February 26, 1823 – July 6, 1901) was a physician, geologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, early California conservationist, and eugenicist. Early life Of Huguenot descent, he was born in Liberty County, Georgia, to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted LeConte family, and Ann Quarterman. He was educated at Franklin College in Athens, Georgia (now the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia), where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. After graduation in 1841, he studied medicine and received his degree at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1845. (In 1844 he travelled with his cousin John Lawrence LeConte for over one thousand miles along the Upper Mississippi River in a birchbark canoe.) After practising for three or four years in Macon, Georgia, he entered Harvard University and studied natural history under Louis Agassiz. An excursi ...
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Botany
Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who specialises in this field. "Plant" and "botany" may be defined more narrowly to include only land plants and their study, which is also known as phytology. Phytologists or botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of Embryophyte, land plants, including some 391,000 species of vascular plants (of which approximately 369,000 are flowering plants) and approximately 20,000 bryophytes. Botany originated as history of herbalism#Prehistory, prehistoric herbalism to identify and later cultivate plants that were edible, poisonous, and medicinal, making it one of the first endeavours of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to Monastery, monasteries, contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit. ...
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Geology
Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth sciences, including hydrology. It is integrated with Earth system science and planetary science. Geology describes the structure of the Earth on and beneath its surface and the processes that have shaped that structure. Geologists study the mineralogical composition of rocks in order to get insight into their history of formation. Geology determines the relative ages of rocks found at a given location; geochemistry (a branch of geology) determines their absolute ages. By combining various petrological, crystallographic, and paleontological tools, geologists are able to chronicle the geological history of the Earth as a whole. One aspect is to demonstrate the age of the Earth. Geology provides evidence for plate tectonics, the ev ...
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University Of California
The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is composed of its ten campuses at University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, University of California, Davis, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, University of California, Merced, Merced, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, and University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic centers abroad. The system is the state's land-grant university. In 1900, UC was one of the founders of the Association of American Universities and since the 1970s seven of its campuse ...
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Alma Mater
Alma mater (; : almae matres) is an allegorical Latin phrase meaning "nourishing mother". It personifies a school that a person has attended or graduated from. The term is related to ''alumnus'', literally meaning 'nursling', which describes a school graduate. In its earliest usage, ''alma mater'' was an honorific title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele.''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', 3rd edition Later, in Catholicism, it became a title for Mary, mother of Jesus. By the early 17th century, the nursing mother became an allegory for universities. Used by many schools in Europe and North America, it has special association with the University of Bologna, whose motto ''Alma Mater Studiorum'' ("nurturing mother of studies") emphasizes its role in originating the modern university. Several university campuses in North America have artistic representations of ''alma mater'', depicted as a robed woman wearing a laurel wreath crown. Etymology Although ...
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Iowa
Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east and southeast, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest, and Minnesota to the north. Iowa is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 26th largest in total area and the List of U.S. states and territories by population, 31st most populous of the List of states and territories of the United States, 50 U.S. states, with a population of 3.19 million. The state's List of capitals in the United States, capital, List of cities in Iowa, most populous city, and largest List of metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area fully located within the state is Des Moines, Iowa, Des Moines. A portion of the larger Omaha–Council Bluffs metropolitan area, Omaha, Nebraska, metropolitan area ...
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Invertebrate
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate subphylum Vertebrata, i.e. vertebrates. Well-known Phylum, phyla of invertebrates include arthropods, molluscs, annelids, echinoderms, flatworms, cnidarians, and sponges. The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxon, taxa have a greater number and diversity of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 10 Micrometre, μm (0.0004 in) myxozoans to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid. Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are actually sister chordate subphyla to Vertebrata, being more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the "invertebrates" para ...
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Paleozoic
The Paleozoic ( , , ; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three Era (geology), geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma at the start of the Mesozoic Era. The Paleozoic is subdivided into six period (geology), geologic periods (from oldest to youngest), Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian. Some geological timescales divide the Paleozoic informally into early and late sub-eras: the Early Paleozoic consisting of the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian; the Late Paleozoic consisting of the Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian. The name ''Paleozoic'' was first used by Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873) in 1838 to describe the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. It was redefined by John Phillips (geologist), John Phillips (1800–1874) in 1840 to cover the Cambrian to Permian periods. It is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek ''palaiós'' (πΠ...
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Libby Prison
Libby Prison was a Confederate States of America, Confederate prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. In 1862 it was designated to hold officer prisoners from the Union Army, taking in numbers from the nearby Seven Days battles (in which nearly 16,000 Union men and officers had been killed, wounded, or captured between June 25 and July 1 alone) and other conflicts of the Union's Peninsular campaign to take Richmond and end the war only a year after it had begun. As the conflict wore on the prison gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded and harsh conditions. Prisoners suffered high mortality from disease and malnutrition. By 1863, one thousand prisoners were crowded into large open rooms on two floors, with open, barred windows leaving them exposed to weather and temperature extremes. The building was built before the war as a tobacco warehouse and then used for food and groceries before being converted to a prison. In 1889, Charles F. Gunther moved t ...
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Battle Of Shiloh
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the American Civil War fought on April 6–7, 1862. The fighting took place in southwestern Tennessee, which was part of the war's Western Theater of the American Civil War, Western Theater. The battlefield is located between a small, undistinguished church named Shiloh, Hardin County, Tennessee, Shiloh and Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Two Union Army, Union armies combined to defeat the Confederate States Army, Confederate Army of Mississippi. Major general (United States), Major General Ulysses S. Grant was the Union commander, while General officers in the Confederate States Army#General, General Albert Sidney Johnston was the Confederate commander until his battlefield death, when he was replaced by his second-in-command, General P. G. T. Beauregard. The Confederate army hoped to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could be reinforce ...
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