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Nqwebasaurus Scale
''Nqwebasaurus'' (; anglicized as or ) is a basal coelurosaur and is the basal-most member of the coelurosaurian clade Ornithomimosauria from the Early Cretaceous of South Africa. The name ''Nqwebasaurus'' is derived from the Xhosa word "Nqweba" which is the local name for the Kirkwood district, and "thwazi" is ancient Xhosa for "fast runner". Currently it is the oldest coelurosaur in Africa and shows that basal coelurosaurian dinosaurs inhabited Gondwana 50 million years earlier than previously thought. The type specimen of ''Nqwebasaurus'' was discovered by William J. de Klerk who is affiliated with the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. It is the only fossil of its species found to date and was found in the Kirkwood Formation of the Uitenhage Group. ''Nqwebasaurus'' has the unofficial nickname "Kirky", due to being found in the Kirkwood. History of discovery ''Nqwebasaurus'' was first discovered by William J. de Klerk and Callum Ross in July 1996 during a joint expedition l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Early Cretaceous
The Early Cretaceous (geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous ( chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma. Geology Proposals for the exact age of the Barremian-Aptian boundary ranged from 126 to 117 Ma until recently (as of 2019), but based on drillholes in Svalbard the defining early Aptian Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (OAE1a) was carbon isotope dated to 123.1±0.3 Ma, limiting the possible range for the boundary to c. 122–121 Ma. There is a possible link between this anoxic event and a series of Early Cretaceous large igneous provinces (LIP). The Ontong Java- Manihiki- Hikurangi large igneous province, emplaced in the South Pacific at c. 120 Ma, is by far the largest LIP in Earth's history. The Ontong Java Plateau today covers an area of 1,860,000 km2. In the Indian Ocean another LIP began to form at c. 120 Ma, the Kergue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nqwebasaurus Scale
''Nqwebasaurus'' (; anglicized as or ) is a basal coelurosaur and is the basal-most member of the coelurosaurian clade Ornithomimosauria from the Early Cretaceous of South Africa. The name ''Nqwebasaurus'' is derived from the Xhosa word "Nqweba" which is the local name for the Kirkwood district, and "thwazi" is ancient Xhosa for "fast runner". Currently it is the oldest coelurosaur in Africa and shows that basal coelurosaurian dinosaurs inhabited Gondwana 50 million years earlier than previously thought. The type specimen of ''Nqwebasaurus'' was discovered by William J. de Klerk who is affiliated with the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. It is the only fossil of its species found to date and was found in the Kirkwood Formation of the Uitenhage Group. ''Nqwebasaurus'' has the unofficial nickname "Kirky", due to being found in the Kirkwood. History of discovery ''Nqwebasaurus'' was first discovered by William J. de Klerk and Callum Ross in July 1996 during a joint expedition l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanycolagreus
''Tanycolagreus'' is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod from the Late Jurassic of North America. Discovery and naming In 1995 Western Paleontological Laboratories, Inc. uncovered the partial skeleton of a small theropod at the Bone Cabin Quarry West locality, Albany County, Wyoming, from the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation, dating to the Oxfordian-Tithonian. At first the find was considered to be a specimen of ''Coelurus'' but subsequent study indicated it represented a species new to science, that in 2001 was announced to be named ''Tanycolagreus topwilsoni''. It was actually named and described by Kenneth Carpenter, Clifford Miles and Karen Cloward in 2005. The etymology of the generic name ''Tanycolagreus'', suggested by Ben Creisler, is based upon the greater length of its forelimbs and hindlimbs compared to ''Coelurus''. It is derived from the Greek prefix τανυ~, ''tany''~: 'long, stretched out', κῶλον, ''kolon'': 'limb' and ἀγρεύς, ''agreus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zuolong Salleei
''Zuolong'' (Zuo's dragon) is a genus of coelurosaur dinosaur which existed in what is now Wucaiwan, Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China during the Late Jurassic period (lower Oxfordian stage). It was found in the Shishugou Formation, Xinjiang, China. Discovery The holotype fossil of ''Zuolong'', IVPP V15912, a partial skeleton with skull, was discovered in 2001 in China, in the upper part of the Shishugou Formation of Xinjiang. It was a subadult animal which measured approximately in length and weighed up to approximately . ''Zuolong'' was named by Jonah N. Choiniere, James M. Clark, Catherine A. Forster and Xu Xing in 2010, and the type species is ''Zuolong salleei''. The generic name honours General Zuo Zongtang, who secured Xinjiang for China in the nineteenth century. The specific name honours Hilmar Sallee, whose bequest helped finance the research. The specific age for the holotype specimen is 161.2 to 155.2 million years ago. The holotype is considered by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zuolong
''Zuolong'' (Zuo's dragon) is a genus of coelurosaur dinosaur which existed in what is now Wucaiwan, Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China during the Late Jurassic period (lower Oxfordian stage). It was found in the Shishugou Formation, Xinjiang, China. Discovery The holotype fossil of ''Zuolong'', IVPP V15912, a partial skeleton with skull, was discovered in 2001 in China, in the upper part of the Shishugou Formation of Xinjiang. It was a subadult animal which measured approximately in length and weighed up to approximately . ''Zuolong'' was named by Jonah N. Choiniere, James M. Clark, Catherine A. Forster and Xu Xing in 2010, and the type species is ''Zuolong salleei''. The generic name honours General Zuo Zongtang, who secured Xinjiang for China in the nineteenth century. The specific name honours Hilmar Sallee, whose bequest helped finance the research. The specific age for the holotype specimen is 161.2 to 155.2 million years ago. The holotype is considered by Tho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. In a ''rooted'' phylogenetic tree, each node with descendants represents the inferred most recent common ancestor of those descendants, and the edge lengths in some trees may be interpreted as time estimates. Each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed. Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetics. ''Unrooted'' trees illustrate only the relatedness of the leaf nodes and do not require the ancestral root ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maniraptora
Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the non-avian dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to '' Ornithomimus velox''. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Deinonychosauria, Oviraptorosauria and Therizinosauria. ''Ornitholestes'' and the Alvarezsauroidea are also often included. Together with the next closest sister group, the Ornithomimosauria, Maniraptora comprises the more inclusive clade Maniraptoriformes. Maniraptorans first appear in the fossil record during the Jurassic Period (see '' Eshanosaurus''), and survive today as living birds. Description Maniraptorans are characterized by long arms and three-fingered hands (though reduced or fused in some lineages), as well as a "half-moon shaped" (semi-lunate) bone in the wrist ( carpus). In 2004, Tom Holtz and Halszka Osmólska pointed out six other maniraptoran characters relating to specific details of the skeleton. Unlike most other saurischian dinosaurs, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogenetics
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups of organisms. These relationships are determined by Computational phylogenetics, phylogenetic inference methods that focus on observed heritable traits, such as DNA sequences, protein amino acid sequences, or morphology. The result of such an analysis is a phylogenetic tree—a diagram containing a hypothesis of relationships that reflects the evolutionary history of a group of organisms. The tips of a phylogenetic tree can be living taxa or fossils, and represent the "end" or the present time in an evolutionary lineage. A phylogenetic diagram can be rooted or unrooted. A rooted tree diagram indicates the hypothetical common ancestor of the tree. An unrooted tree diagram (a network) makes no assumption about the ancestral line, and doe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thermoregulation
Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature as its own body temperature, thus avoiding the need for internal thermoregulation. The internal thermoregulation process is one aspect of homeostasis: a state of dynamic stability in an organism's internal conditions, maintained far from thermal equilibrium with its environment (the study of such processes in zoology has been called physiological ecology). If the body is unable to maintain a normal temperature and it increases significantly above normal, a condition known as hyperthermia occurs. Humans may also experience lethal hyperthermia when the wet bulb temperature is sustained above for six hours. The opposite condition, when body temperature decreases below normal levels, is known as hypothermia. It results when the homeostati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbivore
A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material. A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. This flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria. Etymology Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, ''herbivora'', cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 '' Principles of Geology''.J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, eds. (2000) ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. 8, p. 155. Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons. ''Herbivora'' is derived from Latin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gastrolith
A gastrolith, also called a stomach stone or gizzard stone, is a rock held inside a gastrointestinal tract. Gastroliths in some species are retained in the muscular gizzard and used to grind food in animals lacking suitable grinding teeth. In other species the rocks are ingested and pass through the digestive system and are frequently replaced. The grain size depends upon the size of the animal and the gastrolith's role in digestion. Other species use gastroliths as ballast.Rondeau, et aLarval Anurans Adjust Buoyancy in Response to Substrate IngestionCopeia: February 2005, Vol. 2005, No. 1, pp. 188-195. Particles ranging in size from sand to cobble have been documented. Etymology Gastrolith comes from the Greek γαστήρ (''gastēr''), meaning "stomach", and λίθος (''lithos''), meaning "stone". Occurrence Among living vertebrates, gastroliths are common among crocodiles, alligators, herbivorous birds, seals and sea lions. Domestic fowl require access to ''grit''. Stone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Struthiomimus
''Struthiomimus'' (meaning "ostrich mimic", from the Greek στρούθειος/''stroutheios'' meaning "of the ostrich" and μῖμος/''mimos'' meaning "mimic" or "imitator") is a genus of ornithomimid dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous of North America. Ornithomimids were long-legged, bipedal, ostrich-like dinosaurs with toothless beaks. The type species, ''Struthiomimus altus'', is one of the more common small dinosaurs found in Dinosaur Provincial Park; its abundance suggests that these animals were herbivores or omnivores rather than pure carnivores. History of discovery In 1901, Lawrence Lambe found some incomplete remains, holotype CMN 930, and named them ''Ornithomimus altus'', placing them in the same genus as material earlier described by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1890. The specific name ''altus'' is from Latin, meaning "lofty" or "noble". However, in 1914, a nearly complete skeleton (AMNH 5339) was discovered by Barnum Brown at the Red Deer River site in Alberta, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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