Palaelodidae
Palaelodidae is a family of extinct birds in the group Phoenicopteriformes, which today is represented only by the flamingos. They were widespread during the Neogene, with fossil remains found on all continents other than Antarctica. The oldest remains referred to this group appeared in the fossil record during the Oligocene in Egypt and Belgium, before palaelodids reached their peak diversity during the Miocene. Following this the group declined in the early Pliocene before going extinct on most continents. However, remains found near Cooper Creek in the Lake Eyre Basin indicate that palaelodids managed to survive in Australia until the Pleistocene. Currently three genera are recognized by scientists: '' Adelalopus'', '' Palaelodus'' and '' Megapaloelodus''. Most fossil remains stem from Europe and have been assigned to the type species, ''Palaelodus ambiguus''. Due to the fragmentary nature of most of these species, little is known about their ecology. They appear to have preferr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Palaelodus
''Palaelodus'' is an extinct genus of bird of the Palaelodidae family, distantly related to flamingos. They were slender birds with long, thin legs and a long neck resembling their modern relatives, but likely lived very different livestyles. They had straight, conical beaks not suited for filter feeding and legs showing some similarities to grebes. Their precise lifestyle is disputed, with researchers in the past suggesting they may have been divers, while more recent research suggests they may have used their stiff toes as paddles for swimming while feeding on insect larvae and snails. This behavior may have been key in later phoenicopteriforms developing filterfeeding bills. The genus includes between five and eight species and is found across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and possibly South America. However some argue that most of the taxa named from Europe simply represent differently sized individuals of one single species. ''Palaelodus'' was most abundant during the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Megapaloelodus
''Megapaloelodus'' is an extinct genus of stem flamingo of the family Palaelodidae. ''Megapaloelodus'' is primarily known from Miocene America, from South Dakota and Oregon in the north to Argentina in the south, but the species ''Megapaloelodus goliath'' was found in Europe. Additionally, one unnamed species was discovered in Miocene sediments from Namibia. Due to a lack of skull material, little can be said about the ecology of ''Megapaloelodus''. Species of this genus are typically larger than those of ''Palaelodus'' and appear to have inhabited similar brackish lake environments. Additionally, they may have been capable of "locking" their legs in a standing position. History and naming ''Megapaloelodus'' was named by American Alden H. Miller in 1944 on the basis of a fossil femur and tarsometatarsus collected from the lower Miocene Rosebud Formation of South Dakota. Recognizing similarities to fossils of '' Palaelodus'', Miller described the material as a new genus of phoenic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phoenicopteriformes
Phoenicopteriformes is a group of water birds which comprises flamingos and their extinct relatives. Flamingos (Phoenicopteriformes) and the closely related grebes ( Podicipedidae) are contained in the parent clade Mirandornithes. Fossil record Flamingos and their relatives are well attested in the fossil record, with the first unequivocal member of the Phoenicopteridae, '' Elornis'', known from the late Eocene epoch. Relation to extinct palaelodids The Palaelodidae – an extinct family of peculiar "swimming flamingos" – are believed to be the closest relatives of the modern flamingos, with the extinct genus '' Juncitarsus'' slightly more primitive than the clade which contains flamingos and grebes ( Mirandornithes). The foot and wing anatomy of fossil palaelodids suggests that they were surface-swimming birds, rather than grebe-like divers as was proposed in the past. Whether swimmers or divers, that both primitive phoenicopteriforms and their closest relatives, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Adelalopus
''Adelalopus'' is an extinct genus of palaelodid bird from the lowermost Oligocene of Belgium. It is the oldest member of its family and the largest known palaelodid from Europe, slightly larger than '' Megapaloelodus goliath''. It contains a single species, ''Adelalopus hoogbutseliensis''. History and naming The remains of ''Adelalopus'' were discovered at the locality of Hoogbutsel, Belgium, approximately east of Brussels and are stored at the Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium. The type specimen IRScNB Av 71 consists of an incomplete furcula, parts of a coracoid, a scapula, the distal end of an ulna and the shaft of a radius as well as an incomplete tarsometatarsus. A second specimen (IRScNB Av 72) is referred to the genus, consisting of the extremitas omalis of the left coracoid. The same element is present for the right coracoid in the holotype. All material included in the type specimen is considered to be from a single individual based on the proximity of the bones, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Etymology
Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. Most directly tied to historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, it additionally draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to attempt a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings and changes that a word (and its related parts) carries throughout its history. The origin of any particular word is also known as its ''etymology''. For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, particularly texts about the language itself, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlantic, North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and List of islands of France, many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it Exclusive economic zone of France, one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north; Germany to the northeast; Switzerland to the east; Italy and Monaco to the southeast; Andorra and Spain to the south; and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its Regions of France, eighteen integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of and hav ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alphonse Milne-Edwards
Alphonse Milne-Edwards (Paris, 13 October 1835 – Paris, 21 April 1900) was a French mammalogist, ornithologist, and carcinologist. He was English in origin, the son of Henri Milne-Edwards and grandson of Bryan Edwards, a Jamaican planter who settled at Bruges (then in France). Milne-Edwards obtained a medical degree in 1859 and became assistant to his father at the ' in 1876. He became the director of the in 1891, devoting himself especially to fossil birds and deep-sea exploration. In 1881, he undertook a survey of the Gulf of Gascony with Léopold de Folin and worked aboard the ''Travailleur'' and the '' Talisman,'' researching the seas off the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Azores. For this, he received a gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His major ornithological works include ' published in two parts in 1867 and 1872, ' 1866–1874 and ' 1868–1874. His study of fossils led to the discovery of tropical birds such as trogons and parrots ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leonhard Stejneger
Leonhard Hess Stejneger (30 October 1851 – 28 February 1943) was a Norwegian-born American ornithologist, herpetologist and zoologist. Stejneger specialized in vertebrate natural history studies. He gained his greatest reputation with reptiles and amphibians. Wetmore, Alexander (1945). "Leonhard Hess Stejneger (1851–1943)". ''Biographical Memoir. Nat. Acad. Sci.'' 24: 145–195PDF/ref> Early life and family Stejneger was born in Bergen, Norway. His father was Peter Stamer Steineger, a merchant and auditor; his mother was Ingeborg Catharine (née Hess). Leonhard was the eldest of seven children. His sister Agnes Steineger was a Norwegian artist. Until 1880, the Steineger family had been one of the wealthy families in Bergen; at that time business reverses led to the father declaring bankruptcy. Stejneger attended the Smith Theological School in Bergen from 1859 to 1860, and Bergen Latin School until 1869. His interests in zoology developed early. By age sixteen, he h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pierce Brodkorb
William Pierce Brodkorb (September 29, 1908, Chicago – July 18, 1992, Gainesville, Florida) was an American ornithologist and paleontologist. Interested in birds since childhood, he was taught to prepare birds at the age of 16. Later, he received the opportunity to work as a staff technician in the Ornithology Division of the Field Museum. He entered the University of Michigan in 1933 and obtained his PhD degree in 1936. Subsequently, he became an assistant curator of birds at the Museum of Zoology in Michigan until 1946. In 1946, he accepted a professorate in the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. His doctoral students include Glen E. Woolfenden. From the 1950s, Brodkorb built up a huge collection of bird fossils from the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene of Florida, which included 12,500 skeletons from 129 families, and is on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History, part ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States asserts sovereignty over five Territories of the United States, major island territories and United States Minor Outlying Islands, various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. It is a megadiverse country, with the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest land area and List of countries and dependencies by population, third-largest population, exceeding 340 million. Its three Metropolitan statistical areas by population, largest metropolitan areas are New York metropolitan area, New York, Greater Los Angeles, Los Angel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alden H
Alden may refer to: Places United States *Alden, California, a former settlement * Alden, Illinois *Alden, Iowa * Alden, Kansas * Alden, Michigan * Alden, Minnesota * Alden, Oklahoma * Alden, Pennsylvania * Alden, New York ** Alden (village), New York * Alden, Wisconsin * Alden, Virginia * Alden Township, McHenry County, Illinois * Alden Township, Freeborn County, Minnesota * Alden Township, St. Louis County, Minnesota * Alden Township, Hettinger County, North Dakota * Alden Township, Hand County, South Dakota Elsewhere *Alden (crater), on the Moon * Alden, Norway, a small island in Sogn og Fjordane county * 2941 Alden, an asteroid * Alden Valley, Lancashire, England Other uses * Alden (name) * Alden House (other), various houses on the National Register of Historic Places *Alden Research Laboratory, a hydraulic laboratory in Massachusetts *Alden Rowing *Alden Shoe Company The Alden Shoe Company is an American shoe company founded in 1884 by Charles H. Alden in Middl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |