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Mosasaurus
''Mosasaurus'' (; "lizard of the Meuse River") is the type genus (defining example) of the mosasaurs, an extinct group of aquatic squamate reptiles. It lived from about 82 to 66 million years ago during the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous. The earliest fossils of ''Mosasaurus'' known to science were found as skulls in a chalk quarry near the Dutch city of Maastricht in the late 18th century, which were initially thought to have been the bones of crocodiles or whales. One skull discovered around 1780, and which was seized by France during the French Revolutionary Wars for its scientific value, was famously nicknamed the "great animal of Maastricht". In 1808, naturalist Georges Cuvier concluded that it belonged to a giant marine lizard with similarities to monitor lizards but otherwise unlike any known living animal. This concept was revolutionary at the time and helped support the then-developing ideas of extinction. Cuvier did not designate a scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Tylosaurus
''Tylosaurus'' (from the ancient Greek (') 'protuberance, knob' + Greek (') 'lizard') is a genus of mosasaur, a large, predatory marine reptile closely related to modern monitor lizards and to snakes, from the Late Cretaceous. Description A distinguishing characteristic of ''Tylosaurus'' is the elongated conical rostrum that protrudes from its snout, from which the genus is named. Unlike typical mosasaurs, ''Tylosaurus'' did not have teeth up to the end of the snout nor on the bony protuberance that is the rostrum, and scientists believe that this feature was primarily used for combative purposes such as ramming. This is supported with a uniquely broad and somewhat rectangular internarial bar (the extension of the premaxilla on the top of the skull that held together the nasal and upper jaws) that provided high cranial stability and resistance to stress forces. In addition, the development of the elongated rostrum in infant ''Tylosaurus'' rules out the alternative explanatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Mosasaur
Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Ancient Greek, Greek ' meaning 'lizard') comprise a group of extinct, large marine reptiles from the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. They belong to the order Squamata, which includes lizards and snakes. Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as Aigialosauridae, aigialosaurs in the Late Cretaceous, Earliest Late Cretaceous with 42 described genera. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period (Turonian–Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and Pliosauridae, pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They themselves became extinct as a result of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago. Description Mosasaurs breathed air, were powerful swimmers, and were well-adapted to livi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Prognathodon
''Prognathodon'' is an extinct genus of marine lizard belonging to the mosasaur family. It is classified as part of the Mosasaurinae subfamily, alongside genera like ''Mosasaurus'' and '' Clidastes''. ''Prognathodon'' has been recovered from deposits ranging in age from the Campanian to the Maastrichtian in the Middle East, Europe, New Zealand, and North America. ''Prognathodon'' means "forejaw tooth", which originates from the Latin ''pro''- ("earlier" or "prior"), Greek ''gnathos'' ("jaw") and ''odṓn'' ("tooth"). Twelve nominal species of ''Prognathodon'' are recognised, from North America, northern and western Africa, the Middle East, western Europe and New Zealand. Due to the sometimes clear differences between them and the incomplete nature of many of the specimens, the systematics of the genus and which species should properly be considered ''Prognathodon'' is controversial. Some species have been assigned to other genera, such as ''Dollosaurus'' and ''Brachysaurana'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Maastrichtian
The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval from . The Maastrichtian was preceded by the Campanian and succeeded by the Danian (part of the Paleogene and Paleocene). The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (formerly known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event) occurred at the end of this age. In this mass extinction, many commonly recognized groups such as non-avian dinosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, as well as many other lesser-known groups, died out. The cause of the extinction is most commonly linked to an asteroid about wide colliding with Earth, ending the Cretaceous. Stratigraphic definitions Definition The Maastrichtian was introduced into scientific literature by Belgian geologist André Hubert Dumont in 1849, after studying rock strata of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Maastricht Natural History Museum
Maastricht Natural History Museum (Dutch: ''Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht'') is a museum of natural history in Maastricht, Netherlands. The museum is located in a former monastery called ''Grauwzustersklooster'' (English: ''Monastery of the Grey Sisters'') in the historic district Jekerkwartier in the centre of Maastricht. The collection is dedicated to the geology, paleontology, flora and fauna of South Limburg. Highlights from the collection are Cretaceous fossils from Sint-Pietersberg, most notably the skull of a Mosasaur (nicknamed "Bèr") and specimens of Hoffmann's giant turtle, ''Allopleuron hofmanni'' and Suyckerbuyk's turtle, ''Glyptochelone suyckerbuyki''. The museum also has a period room with cabinets of curiosities. A remarkable piece from that collection is a rat king from the 19th century. Behind the museum is a botanical garden, situated on the banks of the small river Jeker The Jeker (; french: Geer, ) is a river in Belgium and in the Netherlands. It is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of 19. Though his father tried to raise Cope as a gentleman farmer, he eventually acquiesced to his son's scientific aspirations. Cope married his cousin and had one child; the family moved from Philadelphia to Haddonfield, New Jersey, although Cope would maintain a residence and museum in Philadelphia in his later years. Cope had little formal scientific training, and he eschewed a teaching position for field work. He made regular trips to the American West, prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s, often as a member of United States Geological Survey teams. A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. Cuvier's work is considered the foundation of vertebrate paleontology, and he expanded Linnaean taxonomy by grouping classes into phylum, phyla and incorporating both fossils and living species into the classification. Cuvier is also known for establishing extinction as a fact—at the time, extinction was considered by many of Cuvier's contemporaries to be merely controversial speculation. In his ''Essay on the Theory of the Earth'' (1813) Cuvier proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic flooding events. In th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Extinction
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds ( taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Snake
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads ( cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbae ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Endotherm
An endotherm (from Greek ἔνδον ''endon'' "within" and θέρμη ''thermē'' "heat") is an organism that maintains its body at a metabolically favorable temperature, largely by the use of heat released by its internal bodily functions instead of relying almost purely on ambient heat. Such internally generated heat is mainly an incidental product of the animal's routine metabolism, but under conditions of excessive cold or low activity an endotherm might apply special mechanisms adapted specifically to heat production. Examples include special-function muscular exertion such as shivering, and uncoupled oxidative metabolism, such as within brown adipose tissue. Only birds and mammals are extant universally endothermic groups of animals. However, Argentine black and white tegu, leatherback sea turtles, lamnid sharks, tuna and billfishes, cicadas, and winter moths are also endothermic. Unlike mammals and birds, some reptiles, particularly some species of python and tegu, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Species Description
A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have been described previously or are related. In order for species to be validly described, they need to follow guidelines established over time. Zoological naming requires adherence to the ICZN code, plants, the ICN, viruses ICTV, and so on. The species description often contains photographs or other illustrations of type material along with a note on where they are deposited. The publication in which the species is described gives the new species a formal scientific name. Some 1.9 million species have been identified and described, out of some 8.7 million that may actually exist. Millions more have become extinct throughout the existence of life on Earth. Naming process A name of a new species becomes valid (available in zo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Food Chain
A food chain is a linear network of links in a food web starting from producer organisms (such as grass or algae which produce their own food via photosynthesis) and ending at an apex predator species (like grizzly bears or killer whales), detritivores (like earthworms or woodlice), or decomposer species (such as fungi or bacteria). A food chain also shows how organisms are related to each other by the food they eat. Each level of a food chain represents a different trophic level. A food chain differs from a food web because the complex network of different animals' feeding relations are aggregated and the chain only follows a direct, linear pathway of one animal at a time. Natural interconnections between food chains make it a food web. Food chains were first introduced by the Arab scientist and philosopher Al-Jahiz in the 10th century and later popularized in a book published in 1927 by Charles Elton, which also introduced the food web concept. A common metric used to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |