Gorgosaurus

Gorgosaurus ( ; meaning "dreadful lizard") is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period (Campanian), between about 76.6 and 75.1 million years ago. Fossil remains have been found in the Canadian province of Alberta and possibly the U.S. state of Montana. Paleontologists recognize only the type species, "G. libratus", although other species have been erroneously referred to the genus.
Like most known tyrannosaurids, "Gorgosaurus" was a bipedal predator weighing more than two metric tons as an adult; dozens of large, sharp teeth lined its jaws, while its two-fingered forelimbs were comparatively small. "Gorgosaurus" was most closely related to "Albertosaurus", and more distantly related to the larger "Tyrannosaurus". "Gorgosaurus" and "Albertosaurus" are extremely similar, distinguished mainly by subtle differences in the teeth and skull bones. Some experts consider "G. libratus" to be a species of "Albertosaurus"; this would make "Gorgosaurus" a junior synonym of that genus.
"Gorgosaurus" lived in a lush floodplain environment along the edge of an inland sea. It was an apex predator, preying upon abundant ceratopsids and hadrosaurs. In some areas, "Gorgosaurus" coexisted with another tyrannosaurid, "Daspletosaurus". Although these animals were roughly the same size, there is some evidence of niche differentiation between the two. "Gorgosaurus" is the best-represented tyrannosaurid in the fossil record, known from dozens of specimens. These plentiful remains have allowed scientists to investigate its ontogeny, life history and other aspects of its biology.
Discovery and naming.
"Gorgosaurus libratus" was first described by Lawrence Lambe in 1914. Its name is derived from the Greek γοργος/"gorgos" ("fierce" or "terrible") and /"saurus" ("lizard"). The type species is "G. libratus"; the specific epithet "balanced" is the past participle of the Latin verb "librare", meaning "to balance".
The holotype of "Gorgosaurus libratus" (NMC 2120) is a nearly complete skeleton associated with a skull, discovered in 1913 by Charles M. Sternberg. This specimen was the first tyrannosaurid found with a complete hand. It was found in the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta and is housed in the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Prospectors from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City were active along the Red Deer River in Alberta at the same time, collecting hundreds of spectacular dinosaur specimens, including four complete "G. libratus" skulls, three of which were associated with skeletons. Matthew and Brown described four of these specimens in 1923.
Matthew and Brown also described a fifth skeleton (AMNH 5664), which Charles H. Sternberg had collected in 1917 and sold to their museum. It was smaller than other "Gorgosaurus" specimens, with a lower, lighter skull and more elongate limb proportions. Many sutures between bones were unfused in this specimen as well. Matthew and Brown noted that these features were characteristic of juvenile tyrannosaurids, but still described it as the holotype of a new species, "G. sternbergi". Today's paleontologists regard this specimen as a juvenile "G. libratus". Dozens of other specimens have been excavated from the Dinosaur Park Formation and are housed in museums across the United States and Canada. "G. libratus" is the best-represented tyrannosaurid in the fossil record, known from a virtually complete growth series.
In 1856, Joseph Leidy described two tyrannosaurid premaxillary teeth from Montana. Although there was no indication of what the animal looked like, the teeth were large and robust, and Leidy gave them the name "Deinodon". Matthew and Brown commented in 1922 that these teeth were indistinguishable from those of "Gorgosaurus", but in the absence of skeletal remains of "Deinodon", opted not to unequivocally synonymize the two genera, provisionally naming a "?Deinodon libratus". Although "Deinodon" teeth are very similar to those of "Gorgosaurus", tyrannosaurid teeth are extremely uniform, so it cannot be said for certain which animal they belonged to. "Deinodon" is usually regarded as a "nomen dubium" today. Additional likely synonyms of "G. libratus" and/or "D. horridus" include "Laelaps falculus", "Laelaps hazenianus", "Laelaps incrassatus", and "Dryptosaurus kenabekides".
Several tyrannosaurid skeletons from the Two Medicine Formation and Judith River Formation of Montana probably belong to "Gorgosaurus", although it remains uncertain whether they belong to "G. libratus" or a new species. One specimen from Montana (TCMI 2001.89.1), housed in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, shows evidence of severe pathologies, including healed leg, rib, and vertebral fractures, osteomyelitis (infection) at the tip of the lower jaw resulting in permanent tooth loss, and possibly a brain tumor.
Formerly assigned species.
Several species were incorrectly assigned to "Gorgosaurus" in the 20th century. A complete skull of a small tyrannosaurid (CMNH 7541), found in the younger, late Maastrichtian-age Hell Creek Formation of Montana, was named "Gorgosaurus lancensis" by Charles Whitney Gilmore in 1946. This specimen was renamed "Nanotyrannus" by Bob Bakker and colleagues in 1988. Currently, many paleontologists regard "Nanotyrannus" as a juvenile "Tyrannosaurus rex". Similarly, Evgeny Maleev created the names "Gorgosaurus lancinator" and "Gorgosaurus novojilovi" for two small tyrannosaurid specimens (PIN 553-1 and PIN 552–2) from the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia in 1955. Kenneth Carpenter renamed the smaller specimen "Maleevosaurus novojilovi" in 1992, but both are now considered juveniles of "Tarbosaurus bataar".
Description.
"Gorgosaurus" was smaller than "Tyrannosaurus" or "Tarbosaurus", closer in size to "Albertosaurus" and "Daspletosaurus". Adults reached from snout to tail. Paleontologists have estimated full-grown adults to weigh about , perhaps approaching . The largest known skull measures long, just slightly smaller than that of "Daspletosaurus". As in other tyrannosaurids, the skull was large compared to its body size, although chambers within the skull bones and large openings (fenestrae) between bones reduced its weight. "Albertosaurus" and "Gorgosaurus" share proportionally longer and lower skulls than "Daspletosaurus" and other tyrannosaurids. The end of the snout was blunt, and the nasal and parietal bones were fused along the midline of the skull, as in all other members of the family. The eye socket was circular rather than oval or keyhole-shaped as in other tyrannosaurid genera. A tall crest rose from the lacrimal bone in front of each eye, similar to "Albertosaurus" and "Daspletosaurus". Differences in the shape of bones surrounding the brain set "Gorgosaurus" apart from "Albertosaurus".
"Gorgosaurus" teeth were typical of all known tyrannosaurids. The eight premaxillary teeth at the front of the snout were smaller than the rest, closely packed and "D"-shaped in cross section. In "Gorgosaurus", the first tooth in the maxilla was also shaped like the premaxillary teeth. The rest of the teeth were oval in cross section, rather than blade-like as in most other theropods. Along with the eight premaxillary teeth, "Gorgosaurus" had 26 to 30 maxillary teeth and 30 to 34 teeth in the dentary bones of the lower jaw. This number of teeth is similar to "Albertosaurus" and "Daspletosaurus" but is fewer than those of "Tarbosaurus" or "Tyrannosaurus".
"Gorgosaurus" shared its general body plan with all other tyrannosaurids. Its massive head was perched on the end of an "S"-shaped neck. In contrast to its large head, its forelimbs were very small. The forelimbs had only two digits, although a third metacarpal is known in some specimens, the vestigial remains of the third digit seen in other theropods. "Gorgosaurus" had four digits on each hindlimb, including a small first toe (hallux) which did not contact the ground. Tyrannosaurid hindlimbs were long relative to overall body size compared with other theropods. The largest known "Gorgosaurus" femur measured long. In several smaller specimens of "Gorgosaurus", the tibia was longer than the femur, a proportion typical of fast-running animals. The two bones were of equal length in the largest specimens. The long, heavy tail served as a counterweight to the head and torso and placed the center of gravity over the hips.
In 2001, paleontologist Phil Currie reported skin impressions from the holotype specimen of "G. libratus". He originally reported the skin as being essentially smooth and lacking the scales found in other dinosaurs, similar to the secondarily featherless skin found in large modern birds. Scales of some sort were present in this specimen, but they are reportedly widely dispersed from each other and very small. Other patches of isolated "Gorgosaurus" skin shows denser, and larger though still relatively fine scales (smaller than hadrosaurid scales and approximately as fine as a Gila monster's). Neither of these specimens was associated with any particular bone or specific body area. In the "Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs" Kenneth Carpenter pointed out that traces of skin impressions from the tail of "Gorgosaurus" showed similar small rounded or hexagonal scales.
Classification and systematics.
"Gorgosaurus" is classified in the theropod subfamily Albertosaurinae within the family Tyrannosauridae. It is most closely related to the slightly younger "Albertosaurus". These are the only two definite albertosaurine genera that have been described, although other undescribed species may exist. "Appalachiosaurus" was described as a basal tyrannosauroid just outside Tyrannosauridae, although American paleontologist Thomas Holtz published a phylogenetic analysis in 2004 which indicated it was an albertosaurine. More recent, unpublished work by Holtz agrees with the original assessment. All other tyrannosaurid genera, including "Daspletosaurus", "Tarbosaurus" and "Tyrannosaurus", are classified in the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae. Compared to the tyrannosaurines, albertosaurines had slender builds, with proportionately smaller, lower skulls and longer bones of the lower leg (tibia) and feet (metatarsals and phalanges).
The close similarities between "Gorgosaurus libratus" and "Albertosaurus sarcophagus" have led many experts to combine them into one genus over the years. "Albertosaurus" was named first, so by convention it is given priority over the name "Gorgosaurus", which is sometimes considered its junior synonym. William Diller Matthew and Barnum Brown doubted the distinction of the two genera as early as 1922. "Gorgosaurus libratus" was formally reassigned to "Albertosaurus" (as "Albertosaurus libratus") by Dale Russell in 1970, and many subsequent authors followed his lead. Combining the two greatly expands the geographical and chronological range of the genus "Albertosaurus". Other experts maintain the two genera as separate. Canadian paleontologist Phil Currie claims there are as many anatomical differences between "Albertosaurus" and "Gorgosaurus" as there are between "Daspletosaurus" and "Tyrannosaurus", which are almost always kept separate. He also notes that undescribed tyrannosaurids discovered in Alaska, New Mexico and elsewhere in North America may help clarify the situation. Gregory S. Paul has suggested that "Gorgosaurus libratus" is ancestral to "Albertosaurus sarcophagus".
Below is the cladogram of Tyrannosauridae based on the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Loewen "et al." in 2013.
Paleobiology.
Life history.
Gregory Erickson and colleagues have studied the growth and life history of tyrannosaurids using bone histology, which can determine the age of a specimen when it died. A growth curve can be developed when the ages of various individuals are plotted against their sizes on a graph. Tyrannosaurids grew throughout their lives, but underwent tremendous growth spurts for about four years, after an extended juvenile phase. Sexual maturity may have ended this rapid growth phase, after which growth slowed down considerably in adult animals. Examining five "Gorgosaurus" specimens of various sizes, Erickson calculated a maximum growth rate of about per year during the rapid growth phase, slower than in tyrannosaurines like "Daspletosaurus" and "Tyrannosaurus", but comparable to "Albertosaurus".
"Gorgosaurus" spent as much as half its life in the juvenile phase before ballooning up to near-maximum size in only a few years. This, along with the complete lack of predators intermediate in size between huge adult tyrannosaurids and other small theropods, suggests that these niches may have been filled by juvenile tyrannosaurids. This pattern is seen in modern Komodo dragons, whose hatchlings start off as tree-dwelling insectivores and slowly mature into massive apex predators capable of taking down large vertebrates. Other tyrannosaurids, including "Albertosaurus", have been found in aggregations that some have suggested to represent mixed-age packs, but there is no evidence of gregarious behavior in "Gorgosaurus".
Paleopathology.
Several pathologies have been documented in the "Gorgosaurus libratus" holotype, NMC 2120. These include the third right dorsal rib, as well as healed fractures on the 13th and 14th gastralia and left fibula. Its fourth left metatarsal bore roughened exostoses both in the middle and at the far end. The third phalanx of the third right toe is deformed, as the claw on that digit has been described as "quite small and amorphous". The three pathologies may have been received in a single encounter with another dinosaur.
Another specimen cataloged as TMP94.12.602 bears multiple pathologies. A longitudinal fracture is present in the middle of the right fibula's shaft. Multiple ribs bear healed fractures and the specimen had a pseudoarthortic gastralium. Lesions from a bite received to the face were present and showed evidence that the wounds were healing before the animal died.
TMP91.36.500 is another "Gorgosaurus" with preserved face bite injuries but also has a thoroughly healed fracture in the right fibula. Also present was a healed fracture in the dentary and what the authors describing the specimen referred to as "a mushroom-like hyperostosis of a right pedal phalanx." Ralph Molnar has speculated that this may be the same kind of pathology afflicting an unidentified ornithomimid discovered with a similar mushroom shaped growth on a toe bone. TMP91.36.500 is also preserved in a characteristic death pose.
Another specimen has a poorly healed fracture of the right fibula, which left a large callus on the bone. In a 2001 study conducted by Bruce Rothschild and other paleontologists, 54 foot bones referred to "Gorgosaurus" were examined for signs of stress fracture, but none were found.
Bite force.
According to a scientific paper published in 2012, "Gorgosaurus" could exert a bite force of around 42,000 newtons.
Paleoecology.
Most specimens of "Gorgosaurus libratus" have been recovered from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta. This formation dates to the middle of the Campanian, between 76.5 and 74.8 million years ago, and "Gorgosaurus libratus" fossils are known specifically from the lower to middle section of the formation, between 76.6 and 75.1 million years ago. The Two Medicine Formation and Judith River Formation of Montana have also yielded possible "Gorgosaurus" remains. At this time, the area was a coastal plain along the western edge of the Western Interior Seaway, which divided North America in half. The Laramide Orogeny had begun uplifting the Rocky Mountains to the west, from which flowed great rivers that deposited eroded sediment in vast floodplains along the coast. The climate was subtropical with marked seasonality, and periodic droughts sometimes resulted in massive mortality among the great herds of dinosaurs, as represented in the numerous bonebed deposits preserved in the Dinosaur Park Formation. Conifers formed the forest canopy, while the understory plants consisted of ferns, tree ferns and angiosperms. Around 73 million years ago, the seaway began to expand, transgressing into areas formerly above sea level and drowning the Dinosaur Park ecosystem. This transgression, called the Bearpaw Sea, is recorded by the marine sediments of the massive Bearpaw Shale.
The Dinosaur Park Formation preserves a great wealth of vertebrate fossils. A wide variety of fish swam the rivers and estuaries, including gars, sturgeons, sharks and rays, among others. Frogs, salamanders, turtles, crocodilians and champsosaurs also dwelled in the aquatic habitats. Azhdarchid pterosaurs and ornithuran birds like "Apatornis" flew overhead, while the enantiornithine bird "Avisaurus" lived on the ground alongside multituberculate, metatherian and eutherian mammals. A number of species of terrestrial lizards were also present, including whiptails, skinks, monitors and alligator lizards. Dinosaur fossils in particular are found with unrivaled abundance and diversity. Huge herds of ceratopsids roamed the floodplains alongside equally large groups of saurolophine and lambeosaurine hadrosaurs. Other herbivorous groups like ornithomimids, therizinosaurs, pachycephalosaurs, small ornithopods, nodosaurids and ankylosaurids were also represented. Small predatory dinosaurs like oviraptorosaurs, troodonts and dromaeosaurs hunted smaller prey than the huge tyrannosaurids; "Daspletosaurus" and "Gorgosaurus", which were two orders of magnitude larger in mass. Intervening predatory niches may have been filled by young tyrannosaurids. A "Saurornitholestes" dentary has been discovered in the Dinosaur Park Formation that bore tooth marks left by the bite of a young tyrannosaur, possibly "Gorgosaurus".
Coexistence with "Daspletosaurus".
In the middle stages of the Dinosaur Park Formation, "Gorgosaurus" lived alongside a rarer species of tyrannosaurid, "Daspletosaurus". This is one of the few examples of two tyrannosaur genera coexisting. Similar-sized predators in modern predator guilds are separated into different ecological niches by anatomical, behavioral or geographical differences that limit competition. Niche differentiation between the Dinosaur Park tyrannosaurids is not well understood. In 1970, Dale Russell hypothesized that the more common "Gorgosaurus" actively hunted fleet-footed hadrosaurs, while the rarer and more troublesome ceratopsians and ankylosaurians (horned and heavily armoured dinosaurs) were left to the more heavy built "Daspletosaurus". However, a specimen of "Daspletosaurus" (OTM 200) from the contemporaneous Two Medicine Formation of Montana preserves the digested remains of a juvenile hadrosaur in its gut region, and another bonebed contains the remains of three "Daspletosaurus" along with the remains of at least five hadrosaurs.
Unlike some other groups of dinosaurs, neither genus was more common at higher or lower elevations than the other. However, "Gorgosaurus" appears more common in northern formations like Dinosaur Park, with species of "Daspletosaurus" being more abundant to the south. The same pattern is seen in other groups of dinosaurs. Chasmosaurine ceratopsians and saurolophine hadrosaurs are also more common in the Two Medicine Formation of Montana and in southwestern North America during the Campanian, while centrosaurines and lambeosaurines dominate in northern latitudes. Holtz has suggested this pattern indicates shared ecological preferences between tyrannosaurines, chasmosaurines and saurolophines. At the end of the later Maastrichtian stage, tyrannosaurines like "Tyrannosaurus rex", saurolophines like "Edmontosaurus" and "Kritosaurus" and chasmosaurines like "Triceratops" and "Torosaurus" were widespread throughout western North America, while lambeosaurines were rare, consisting of a few species like "Hypacrosaurus", and albertosaurines and centrosaurines had gone extinct. However, in the case of the centrosaurines, they had thrived in Asia with species like "Sinoceratops". While albertosaurine remains have been found in the Hell Creek Formation, it is most likely these are indeterminate remains belonging to a species of "Tyrannosaurus".


Quercypsitta

Quercypsitta is a genus of prehistoric bird from the Late Eocene ("circa" 37-34 Mya) Quercy phosphorites in France.
Known from rather fragmentary remains (some foot and wing bones for the type species "Q. sudrei", three coracoids for the species "Q. ivani"), it was described as a parrot sufficiently distinct to be included in its own family, the Quercypsittidae. These birds apparently formed an early offshoot of the parrots which spread to Europe and became extinct in the Miocene at latest. This coincided with a period of global cooling, when their relatives - the ancestors of the African and Asian parrots known today - had in the meantime settled the warmer areas south of the Quercypsittidae's distribution.
The genus "Palaeopsittacus" is sometimes included in the Quercypsittidae together with "Quercypsitta," but it is not certain that the former was indeed a parrot.


Mount Breakenridge

Mount Breakenridge, , is a mountain in the Lillooet Ranges of southwestern British Columbia, Canada, located on the east side of upper Harrison Lake in the angle of mountains formed by that lake and the Big Silver River.
Name.
The name was conferred by Lieutenant Palmer RE for Archibald, T. Breakenridge RE, a member of his party, during a reconnaissance survey by the Royal Engineers from the north end of Harrison Lake to Four Mile House in the Douglas Road along the Lillooet River in 1859.
In Ucwalmícwts, the language of the Lower Lillooet people, the mountain's name is mólkwcen (no translation given), which is also the name of a fishing camp located near the mouth of Stokke Creek, a creek feeding Harrison Lake from its origins on the flank of Breakenridge.
Potential landslide and tsunami hazard.
Mount Breakenridge is the subject of intensive study by government geologists due to the location of a fracture or shear zone on the mountainside above Harrison Lake. Researchers have identified the shear zone as a major risk for collapse into Harrison Lake, one of British Columbia's largest and deepest lakes, causing a large megatsunami. The fracture is a group of cracks caused by tension from a large and unstable piece of rock, and was most likely made more unstable by the abundant rain and seismic activity of the area. Supermarine landslides, which is what is feared in the case of Mount Breakenridge, disrupt the body of water from above when debris falls in, and then the energy from the debris travels into the water. If the unstable piece of rock fell, it would very quickly move and displace extremely large amounts of water. When a landslide generates a tsunami, it can produce waves that cause very severe damage, especially when the energy of the waves is amplified by being trapped in an inlet of the coast.
Potential destruction and the areas and industries at risk.
The potential destruction that could be seen in the event of a landslide and accompanying tsunami would be devastating. These types of tsunamis have enough strength to cause a serious threat for any village nearby and have even been known to remove all the sand off a beach after moving through the area. Most at risk is the resort village of Harrison Hot Springs, which is located at the south end of the lake. Other towns that would be reached by the water are Port Douglas, which is at the head of the lake, Fraser Valley, and even Whatcom County, Washington. Any town along the Harrison River is potentially at risk. There are many industries that would take a serious hit if a tsunami were to come through the area. The roads would be destroyed or blocked, inhibiting transportation for the logging trucks, and fisheries would be destroyed or unable to function due to the disturbed lake. The aspects of the area that draw in tourists to the resort town, such as skiing and camping, would also be negatively affected.
Preparations in place.
The areas that would potentially be affected do have some precautionary measures in place. There are defensive structures in place to help stop flowing debris that were constructed to protect the transportation routes. There is also a tsunami warning and alerting plan in place that notifies citizens of impending danger via sirens, phone calls, and door to door messages. There are also online precautionary and educational resources available such as suggested safety plans (most of which rely on getting to higher ground before the waves arrive) although in the event of the tsunami occurring, there would likely not be much warning time.
Resilience of the area.
The expansion of development in the region is making the community more vulnerable to disaster. The area is a naturally forested landscape, and the intact forests may reduce the force of an incoming tsunami, lessening the damage and loss to life, although the exact level of destruction and disturbance regime is still dependent on local factors such as the shape or features of the coastline. After a destructive event such as the feared tsunami, there would most likely be secondary succession, which is a type of ecological recovery where the area is not totally destroyed and the species that once lived there can eventually return. However, this depends on how the community reacts to help the area recover, such as clearing trash and debris from the tsunami out of the landscape, etc. Depending on the level of destruction (and the level would be high in the expected scenario) the infrastructure, industrial facilities, and residential parts of the community would have to be rebuilt, either partially or completely.
Social, environmental, ecological, and economic significance.
It is important that citizens of the area and also the rest of the world know about the danger that is possible due to the instability of the mountainside and the potential for a resulting megatsunami. Tsunamis are an unstoppable force but people need to be proactive, educated, and prepared to try to lessen the damage and loss through evacuation planning and be ready to assist in recovery after the fact. People's lives, property, homeland, and financial livelihoods are at risk, as well as the species of the surrounding ecosystem and the landscape itself being in the path of danger. Depending on how common these species are and what roles they play in the ecosystem, their extinction caused by such a disaster would have a large impact on the way the area's systems functioned. If nothing else, the economic hit that the tsunami would produce would be devastating due to the effects it could have on the logging, fishing, and tourism industries.
Area of Scientific Interest.
Geoscientists of BC have a keen interest in this area and continue to study it with interest. More information can be found online, including geotechnical reports and studies.
https://www.sfu.ca/cnhr/news_events/newsletter/RiskyGround_News_2020-09-21_mobile.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343725592_Previously_undiscovered_landslide_deposits_in_Harrison_Lake_British_Columbia_Canada
Related historical events.
In the past, there have been several tsunamis in the British Columbia area. Two, occurring in 1700 and 1946, were caused by earthquakes and never hit the shore. Three tsunamis did make landfall. One struck in 1960, and was caused by a magnitude 9.5 quake. It affected the town of Tofino by damaging the local log booms. The next, in 1964, was caused by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake and produced a 14-foot wave that completely flooded parts of the towns Hot Springs Cove, Bamfield, and Port Alberni. The wave was traveling over 435 mph and caused about 8 million dollars in damage. The last tsunami, in 1975, was caused by an undersea landslide and occurred in the Kitimat Inlet of the Douglas Channel.


Deiphon

Deiphon is a distinctive genus of Silurian phacopid trilobites of the family Cheiruridae found in Western and Central Europe, and in Central and Eastern United States. The type species, "D. forbesi", from England, Bohemia, and Sweden, was discovered and described by the French paleontologist, Joachim Barrande in 1850.
Description.
The glabella was inflated, and globular-shaped, and covered in small wart-like bumps. If it was filled with fat, or oil, the glabellum would have helped to have made the creature positively buoyant. On the other hand, trilobites with large glabellae are often suspected of being predatory, as the volume of glabella would be filled with digestive organs, or used to store captured/swallowed prey. The free cheeks of the cephalon formed a pair of long, curved spines, and the segments of the pleural lobes were separated and elongated to form rib-like struts. These modifications, along with the "V" shaped pygidium give these trilobites a cartoon "fish-skeleton" appearance. The defensive value of these highly elongate spines is also apparent, as they would have stuck in the throats of vertebrate predators, such as the Silurian acanthodian "Nostolepis".
Each species differed from each other in the sizes of their glabella, as well as the size and curves of the pygidium and free cheek spines.
Cheirurids had the ability to enroll to protect their softer ventral area, and the spines would have thrust upward and outward. In all adult specimens of the genus, the body has up to nine segments, not including the cephalon or pygidium (which is formed from at least two fused and reduced segments).
Ecology.
Because some of the other highly derived cheirurid trilobites, such as the Devonian "Crotalocephalus" and "Cybelloides" of the Ordovician, have been interpreted as being swimmers or plankters, the species of "Deiphon" have been popularly thought of as being planktonic, as well. Mostly, it is due to the idea that its globular glabellum was filled with fat or oil, thus, serving as a balloon to keep it in the water column, and its elongated pleural lobes serving to keep it from sinking. If it were a nektonic or planktonic trilobite, the spherical glabellum, coupled with its rib cage-like pleural lobes and spine-like cephalon cheeks would have presented serious impediments to its hydrodynamic ability, and would have been either a drifter, or a very leisurely swimmer, feeding on phytoplankton, or slow-moving zooplankton.
On the other hand, because of "Deiphon"'s questionable hydrodynamics, and relatively tiny eyes (as opposed to the tremendous eyes normally found on other swimming or planktonic trilobites), some think of it as being a benthic predator that scurried on top of the substrate in search of prey, only swimming when necessary (such as evading larger predators). It may have even used its enormous glabellum to store subdued prey for later digestion.


Voulismeno Aloni

Voulismeno Aloni (Βουλισμένο Αλώνι, Greek: sunken threshing floor) is a sinkhole located at the feet of Mt Stroumboulas, next to the old national road, at the 14th kilometer from Heraklion to Rethymnon, on the island of Crete (35°19′48″N, 25°01′05″E).
It is a ground subsidence with a circular shape up to 90 meters in diameter. Its slopes are steep and vertical reaching up to 60 meters of height from the bottom of the formation. Descent into the interior is feasible on foot from the South-West side following a certain pathway.
Geologists believe that it is a sinkhole, formed by the depression of a cave, during the Pleistocene period.
In spite of what its name implies, it is believed that it was never used as a threshing floor.


Cerro Capurata

Cerro Capurata, also known as "Elena Capurata" or "Quimsachatas" is a stratovolcano in the Andes of Bolivia and Chile. Capurata is covered with ice. To the south of Capurata lies Cerro Casparata and straight west Guallatiri.
Compared to Acotango and Humurata, Capurata's rocks are relatively well preserved. Some hydrothermal alteration, partly associated with fumarolic activity, is present however. The total volume of the edifice is . Sulfur deposits formed by solfataras are also found on Capurata.
Incan Ruins.
Capurata has a 10x5 metre ruin sitting on the top, towards north side. The structure is probably incan and it was photographed by Pedro Hauck during his last ascent in 2014. The ruin is ofter buried under snow during winter.
First Ascent.
A light party of the Club Andino de Chile, Sección Santiago, made the first ascent of this snow volcano (19,653 feet) on the Chilean-Bolivian border. Police Captain Pedro Rosendo and Ignacio Morlans reached the top on October 7, 1967. After this, the fourth expedition of the club to this area, there remain unclimbed only the twin peaks of Pusupata and Umorata (both 5730 meters or 18,799 feet) and Larancagua (5830 meters or 19,128 feet).
Elevation.
It has an official height of 5990 metres, although two different expeditions have registered altitudes above 6000 meters using regular handheld GPS devices (6013 and 6014).
Based on the elevation provided by the available Digital elevation models SRTM (5,979m), SRTM2 (5,979 meters), ASTER (5,979 meters) and TanDEM-X 90m (6.019 meters) and one handheld GPS survey by Maximo Kausch on July 2013 when he measured 6013m.
The height of the nearest key col is 5,441 meters so its prominence is 570 meters. Capurata is listed as a mountain based on the Dominance system and its dominance is 9.48%. This information was obtained during a research by Suzanne Imber in 2014.


Trans-Pecos Volcanic Field

The Trans-Pecos Volcanic Field is a volcanic field located in Western texas in the counties of Brewster, Jeff Davis, Presidio, and extends into northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila. It is the southern most Volcanic field to be documented and recorded in the Continental United States. The Field started volcanic activity around 48 MYA in the middle Eocene period, and ended around 31 million years later in the miocene period.
Most of the volcanoes in the field are Calderas. Some of the volcanoes are:
The field is currently undergoing geological studying and researched by several colleges and the United States Geological Survey.


Allpajata

Allpajata (possibly from quechua "allpa" earth, "qhata" slope, hillside, "earth slope") is mountain in the Carabaya mountain range in the Andes of Peru, about high. It is located in the Puno Region, Carabaya Province, on the border of the districts of Ituata and Macusani. Allpajata lies northwest of Queroni, and east and southeast of the lake and the mountain named Tocsajota.


Wintonotitan

Wintonotitan (meaning "Winton titan") is a genus of titanosauriform dinosaur from late Albian (Early Cretaceous)-age Winton Formation of Australia. It is known from partial postcranial remains.
Description and history.
Fossils that are now known under the name "Wintonotitan" were first found in 1974 by Keith Watts. At the time, the specimens were assigned to an "Austrosaurus" sp., "Austrosaurus" then being the only named Australian Cretaceous sauropod genus. These fossils, catalogued as QMF 7292, consisted of a left shoulder blade, much of the forelimbs, a number of back, hip, and tail vertebrae, part of the right hip, ribs, chevrons, and unidentifiable fragments. QMF 7292 was established as the type specimen of "Wintonotitan" in 2009 by Scott Hocknull and colleagues. Hocknull suggested that "Austrosaurus mckillopi" differed only slightly from the QMF 7292, the holotype of "Wintonotitan wattsii", and should be considered a "nomen dubium". The type species is "W. wattsi", honoring the original discoverer. A phylogenetic analysis found "Wintonotitan" to be a basal titanosauriform sauropod, in a comparable part of the titanosauriform tree to "Phuwiangosaurus".
Palaeoecology.
QMF 7292 was found about northwest of Winton, near Elderslie Station. A second specimen, QMF 10916, consisting of isolated tail vertebrae, was found at Chorregan. Both were recovered from the lower part of the Winton Formation, dated to the latest Albian. QMF 7292 was found in sandstone interpreted as a point bar of a river. Also found at the site were fish fragments, a theropod tooth, and a variety of plant fossils, including woody stems, branch impressions, cones and cone scales, and pieces of leaves. The Winton Formation had a faunal assemblage including bivalves, gastropods, insects, the lungfish "Metaceratodus", turtles, the crocodilian "Isisfordia", pterosaurs, and several types of dinosaurs, such as the theropod "Australovenator", the sauropod "Diamantinasaurus", and unnamed ankylosaurians and hypsilophodonts. "Wintonotitan" bones can be distinguished from "Diamantinasaurus" bones because "Wintonotitan" bones are not as robust. Plants known from the formation include ferns, ginkgoes, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. Like other sauropods, "Wintonotitan" would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.


Mount Kupe

Mount Kupe or Mont Koupé is a plutonic mountain in the Western High Plateau of Cameroon, part of the Cameroon line of volcanoes. It is the highest of the Bakossi mountains, rising to .
The mountain is revered by the local Bakossi people as the home of their ancestral and forest spirits.
Missionaries in the 1890s observed that the mountain had a strong magical reputation, and it still has an important role in beliefs related to "ekong", a form of witchcraft.
The mountain used to be forest-covered apart from a few small grassy areas near the summit. The causes of deforestation in the Bakossi landscape, are shifting cultivation, logging for timber, felling for fuelwood, growth and expansion of human settlements and establishment of pasture lands.
All sides of the mountain have been steadily converted to agricultural use.
Forest has been cleared up to 1,500m on the eastern slopes and up to between 750m and 1,100m on the western and northern sides, above the villages of Mbule and Nyasoso.
As of 2010, there was still primary mid-altitude and montane rainforest on the northern side.
The cloud forest supports rich biodiversity, and is home to chimpanzees and several species of threatened primates.
The Mount Kupe bushshrike "Telophorus kupeensis" is known to be endangered due to its small range and declining quality of its habitat.
The Mount Kupe Forest Project was at first managed by BirdLife International, later by WWF-UK and then by WWF-Cameroon. As of 2010 the project was dormant.


Archeopelta

Archeopelta is an extinct genus of carnivorous archosauriform from the late Middle or early Late Triassic period (late Ladinian to early Carnian stage). It was a 2 m (6 ft) long predator which lived in what is now southern Brazil. Its exact phylogenetic placement within Archosauriformes is uncertain; it was originally classified as a doswelliid, but subsequently it was argued to be an erpetosuchid archosaur.
Discovery.
It is only known from the holotype CPEZ-239a, which consists of partial skeleton (including vertebrae, partial right front and hind limbs, a partial hip, and an undetermined bone which may be part of a tibia) and braincase. It was found in the Santa Maria 1 Sequence, previously known as the Santa Maria Formation, in Chiniquá region, São Pedro do Sul of Rio Grande do Sul State. It was first named by Julia B. Desojo, Martín D. Ezcurra and César L. Schultz in 2011 and the type species is Archeopelta arborensis. The generic name comes from "archeo", ancient in Greek and "pelta", armoured, in reference to its thick osteoderms. The specific name is derived from "arbor", tree in Latin, in reference to Sanga da Árvore where the fossils were found.
Description.
CPEZ-239a's braincase is low, without an occipital neck. The exoccipitals do not meet each other medially. The paraoccipital processes extend outwards and slightly downwards, and the supraoccipital has a ridge. Uniquely, a very deep fossa is present in the corner of the opisthotics. The exit of the hypoglossal nerve is a single opening. The basal tubera are very low and separated by a deep notch. The parabasisphenoid is short and its exits for the internal carotid arteries are small and pushed to the rear edge of the bone. The basipterygoid processes are close to each other and project anterolaterally. The exit for the facial nerve is present on the vestibule, and the lamina separating the metotic foramen and the fenestra ovalis is very thin.
The back vertebrae are only slightly elongated and are not constricted from the sides. The diapophyses are thick, subrectangular, and elongated. The prezygapophyses are short while the neural spines are long and oval-shaped in cross section. The first 'primordial' sacral vertebra (likely the second sacral) is low and wide, with characteristically-shaped sacral ribs. The sacral ribs expand anteroposteriorly at their tips, with the anterior expansions being large and subtriangular. The first primordial's unique prezygapophyses are very large and circular, with their faces pointing upward and inwards. On the other hand, the postzygapophyses are short, downwards-pointing, and connected by a V-shaped hyposphene. Although incomplete, the second 'primordial' sacral (likely the third sacral) is also low, with sacral ribs similarly shaped to those of the first 'primordial' sacral.
The humeral head is offset from the humeral shaft, and the right humerus as a whole is wide and distally tapering (although missing the distal portion). A thin bone has been interpreted to be a right ilium, with an unusual illiac blade which is S-shaped in posterior view. However, this interpretation is uncertain and the bone's shape may be a result of postmortem deformation. The right ischium has a long and deep pubic peduncle but a very short illiac peduncle. The ischial shaft is thin and the lower edge bends towards the midline. The right femur is S-shaped from the front, with a transversely very wide distal end and poorly developed condyles and tubercules. The right tibia is anteroposteriorly wide but distally tapering and missing its distal tip. An unusual rod-like bone may be the distal part of a tibia.
Several osteoderms are preserved with CPEZ-239a. At least two rows of osteoderms attached to each neural spine of the vertebrae, and there is evidence that additional rows of lateral osteoderms were also present. The osteoderms are very thick and quadrangular in shape, with straight posterior and medial borders and rounded anterior and lateral borders. They were rough and covered in deep, circular pits, with each possessing an anterior articular lamina (a smooth area where the preceding osteoderm would have overlapped the front edge of the following osteoderm). Although they had serrated edges, they did not possess a raised keel or peak (a dorsal prominence) on their surface. Small, circular plates attached to the femur may be appendicular osteoderms, although poor preservation makes this uncertain.
Classification.
Upon the initial description of "Archeopelta", it was placed as a close relative of "Doswellia" in the newly created family Doswellidae. This referral was due to the structure of its osteoderms, which were very similar to those of "Doswellia". In addition, "Archeopelta" shared several other features with "Doswellia" which were unknown in "Tarjadia", which was rather incomplete at the time of "Archeopelta's" description. Among these features are the wide first primordial sacral, a long and laterally deflected illiac blade, and anterolaterally-projected basipterygoid processes. This is the cladogram from the study, after Desojo, Ezcurra & Schultz, 2011:

In 2013, Lucas, Spielmann, and Hunt claimed that "Archeopelta" was a junior synonym of "Tarjadia" due to a lack of distinguishing features between the two. However, Ezcurra (2016) provided several differences between the two genera. For example, "Archeopelta" has unconstricted dorsal vertebrae and a ridge on the supraoccipital, while "Tarjadia" has the opposite traits. Nevertheless, Ezcurra observed that both genera had very thick osteoderms, and he considered that both of them were doswellids more closely related to each other than to "Doswellia".
New specimens of "Tarjadia" described in 2017 provided a phylogenetic analysis that argued that "Tarjadia" and "Archeopelta" were not doswellids, but rather pseudosuchian archosaurs of the family Erpetosuchidae. The strict consensus tree of this analysis is given below. Erpetosuchid osteoderms are similar to Doswellid osteoderms, which explains the earlier classification of "Tarjadia" and "Archeopelta". Even in non-parmonious phylogenetic trees of the analysis which forced them to be recovered as doswellids, "Tarjadia" and "Archeopelta" still formed a clade with "Erpetosuchus". Despite the change in "Archeopelta's" classification, it still forms a clade with "Tarjadia" as an erpetosuchid. This is due to both of them possessing a very short or absent occipital neck and osteoderms without a dorsal prominence.


Romeosaurus

Romeosaurus is an extinct genus of yaguarasaurine mosasaur known from the early Late Cretaceous "Lastame" lithotype (lower Turonian to lower Santonian) of northern Italy. It contains two species, "Romeosaurus sorbinii" and "Romeosaurus fumanensis". Of the two species, "R. sorbinii" is known only through very fragmented fossil records of a single specimen and is otherwise poorly described. "R. fumanensis" is known through more specimens found across a small geographic area in Italy. The genus is named after the character Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Of all specimens recovered, none had well enough preserved post-cranial fossils to make good judgments of their post-cranial anatomy.


Aegirosaurus

Aegirosaurus is an extinct genus of platypterygiine ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs known from the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous of Europe. It was originally named as a species of "Ichthyosaurus".
Discovery and species.
Originally described by Wagner (1853) as a species of the genus "Ichthyosaurus" ("I. leptospondylus"), the species "Aegirosaurus leptospondylus" has had an unstable taxonomic history. It has been referred to the species "Ichthyosaurus trigonus posthumus" (later reclassified in the dubious genus "Macropterygius") in the past, and sometimes identified with "Brachypterygius extremus". In 2000, Bardet and Fernández selected a complete skeleton in a private collection as the neotype for the species "I. leptospondylus", as the only other described specimen was destroyed in World War II. A second specimen from the Munich collection was referred to the same taxon. Bardet and Fernández concluded that the neotype should be assigned to a new genus, "Aegirosaurus". The name means 'Aegir (teutonic god of the ocean) lizard with slender vertebrae'.
Within the Ophthalmosauridae, scientists once believed "Aegirosaurus" was most closely related to "Ophthalmosaurus". However, many recent cladistic analyses found it is more closely related to "Sveltonectes" (and probably to "Undorosaurus"). "Aegirosaurus" lineage was found to include "Brachypterygius" and "Maiaspondylus", too, and to nest within the Platypterygiinae, which is the sister taxon of Ophthalmosaurinae.
Stratigraphic range.
"Aegirosaurus" is known from the lower Tithonian (Upper Jurassic) of Bavaria, Germany. Its remains were discovered in the Solnhofen limestone formations, which have yielded numerous well-known fossils, such as "Archaeopteryx", "Compsognathus", and "Pterodactylus".
In addition to its late Jurassic occurrence, "Aegirosaurus" has recently been discovered from the late Valanginian (early Cretaceous) of southeastern France (Laux-Montaux, department of Drôme; Vocontian Basin), the first diagnostic ichthyosaur recorded from the Valanginian. This shows that most types of late Jurassic ichthyosaurs crossed the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary.
Palaeobiology.
It was a small genus of ichthyosaur, with adults being less than in length. Tooth morphology and wear pattern suggest that "Aegirosaurus" belonged to the "Pierce II/ Generalist" feeding guild.


Cave bear

The cave bear ("Ursus spelaeus") was a species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.
Both the word "cave" and the scientific name "spelaeus" are used because fossils of this species were mostly found in caves. This reflects the views of experts that cave bears may have spent more time in caves than the brown bear, which uses caves only for hibernation.
Taxonomy.
Cave bear skeletons were first described in 1774 by Johann Friedrich Esper in his book "Newly Discovered Zoolites of Unknown Four Footed Animals". While scientists at the time considered that the skeletons could belong to apes, canids, felids, or even dragons or unicorns, Esper postulated that they actually belonged to polar bears. Twenty years later, Johann Christian Rosenmüller, an anatomist at the Leipzig University, gave the species its binomial name. The bones were so numerous that most researchers had little regard for them. During World War I, with the scarcity of phosphate dung, earth from the caves where cave bear bones occurred were used as a source of phosphates. When the "dragon caves" in Austria's Styria region were exploited for this purpose, only the skulls and leg bones were kept.
Many caves in Central Europe have skeletons of cave bears inside, for example the "Heinrichshöhle" in Hemer, the "Dechenhöhle" in Iserlohn, Germany. A complete skeleton, five complete skulls, and 18 other bones were found inside Jaskinia Niedźwiedzia ("bear cave") in 1966 in Poland. In Romania, in a cave called Bears' Cave, 140 cave bear skeletons were discovered in 1983.
In August 2020 a 'completely preserved' ice age cave bear carcass was found by reindeer herders in Russia. The preserved carcass was estimated to be between 22,000 and 39,500 years old with radiocarbon dating proposed to ascertain a more accurate age. It is the only find of its kind with full soft tissue preservation such that even the nose was still intact. The preserved bear was found on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, part of the Lyakhovsky Islands archipelago. In a separate discovery, a well preserved cave bear cub was also found.
Evolution.
Both the cave bear and the brown bear are thought to be descended from the Plio-Pleistocene Etruscan bear ("Ursus etruscus") that lived about 5.3 Mya to 100,000 years ago. The last common ancestor of cave bears and brown bears lived between 1.2–1.4 Mya. The immediate precursor of the cave bear was probably "Ursus deningeri" (Deninger's bear), a species restricted to Pleistocene Europe about 1.8 Mya to 100,000 years ago. The transition between Deninger's bear and the cave bear is given as the last interglacial, although the boundary between these forms is arbitrary, and intermediate or transitional taxa have been proposed, e.g. "Ursus spelaeus deningeroides", while other authorities consider both taxa to be chronological variants of the same species.
Cave bears found in different regions vary in age, thus facilitating investigations into evolutionary trends. The three anterior premolars were gradually reduced, then disappeared, possibly in response to a largely vegetarian diet. In a fourth of the skulls found in the Conturines, the third premolar is still present, while more derived specimens elsewhere lack it. The last remaining premolar became conjugated with the true molars, enlarging the crown and granting it more cusps and cutting borders. This phenomenon, called "molarization", improved the mastication capacities of the molars, facilitating the processing of tough vegetation. This allowed the cave bear to gain more energy for hibernation, while eating less than its ancestors.
In 2005, scientists recovered and sequenced the nuclear DNA of a cave bear that lived between 42,000 and 44,000 years ago. The procedure used genomic DNA extracted from one of the animal's teeth. Sequencing the DNA directly (rather than first replicating it with the polymerase chain reaction), the scientists recovered 21 cave bear genes from remains that did not yield significant amounts of DNA with traditional techniques. This study confirmed and built on results from a previous study using mitochondrial DNA extracted from cave bear remains ranging from 20,000 to 130,000 years old. Both show that the cave bear was more closely related to the brown bear and polar bear than it was to the American black bear, but had split from the brown bear lineage before the distinct eastern and western brown bear lineages diversified and before the split of brown bears and polar bears. The divergence date estimate of cave bears and brown bears is about 1.2–1.4 Mya. However, a recent study showed that both species had some hybridization between them.
Description.
Standing close to 3.5 meters (11.50 ft) tall while rearing up, the cave bear had a very broad, domed skull with a steep forehead. Its stout body had long thighs, massive shins and in-turning feet, making it similar in skeletal structure to the brown bear. Cave bears were comparable in size to the largest modern-day bears. The average weight for males was , though some specimens weighed as much as 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), while females weighed . Of cave bear skeletons in museums, 90% are male due to a misconception that the female skeletons were merely "dwarfs". Cave bears grew larger during glaciations and smaller during interglacials, probably to adjust heat loss rate.
Cave bears of the last Ice Age lacked the usual two or three premolars present in other bears; to compensate, the last molar is very elongated, with supplementary cusps. The humerus of the cave bear was similar in size to that of the polar bear, as were the femora of females. The femora of male cave bears, however, bore more similarities in size to those of Kodiak bears.
Behaviour.
Dietary habits.
Cave bear teeth were very large and show greater wear than most modern bear species, suggesting a diet of tough materials. However, tubers and other gritty food, which cause distinctive tooth wear in modern brown bears, do not appear to have constituted a major part of cave bears' diets on the basis of dental microwear analysis.
The morphological features of the cave bear chewing apparatus, including loss of premolars, have long been suggested to indicate their diets displayed a higher degree of herbivory than the Eurasian brown bear. Indeed, a solely vegetarian diet has been inferred on the basis of tooth morphology. Results obtained on the stable isotopes of cave bear bones also point to a largely vegetarian diet in having low levels of nitrogen-15 and carbon-13, which are accumulated at a faster rate by carnivores as opposed to herbivores.
However, some evidence points toward the occasional inclusion of animal protein in cave bear diets. For example, toothmarks on cave bear remains in areas where cave bears are the only recorded potential carnivores suggests occasional cannibalistic scavenging, possibly on individuals that died during hibernation, and dental microwear analysis indicates the cave bear may have fed on a greater quantity of bone than its contemporary, the smaller Eurasian brown bear. Additionally, cave bear remains from Peștera cu Oase in the southwestern tip of the Romanian part of the Carpathian Mountains had elevated levels of nitrogen-15 in their bones, indicative of omnivorous diets, although the values are within the range of those found for the strictly herbivorous mammoth.
Although the current prevailing opinion concludes that cave bears were largely herbivorous, and more so than any modern species of the genus "Ursus", increasing evidence points to omnivorous diets, based both on regional variability of isotopic composition of bone remains indicative of dietary plasticity, and on a recent re-evaluation of craniodental morphology that places the cave bear squarely among omnivorous modern bear species with respect to its skull and tooth shapes.
Mortality.
Death during hibernation was a common end for cave bears, mainly befalling specimens that failed ecologically during the summer season through inexperience, sickness or old age. Some cave bear bones show signs of numerous ailments, including spinal fusion, bone tumours, cavities, tooth resorption, necrosis (particularly in younger specimens), osteomyelitis, periostitis, rickets and kidney stones. Male cave bear skeletons have been found with broken bacula, probably due to fighting during the breeding season. Cave bear longevity is unknown, though it has been estimated that they seldom exceeded twenty years of age. Paleontologists doubt adult cave bears had any natural predators, save for pack-hunting wolves and cave hyenas, which would probably have attacked sick or infirm individuals. Cave hyenas are thought to be responsible for the disarticulation and destruction of some cave bear skeletons. Such large carcasses were an optimal food resource for the hyenas, especially at the end of the winter, when food was scarce. The presence of fully articulated adult cave lion skeletons, deep in cave bear dens, indicates the lions may have occasionally entered dens to prey on hibernating cave bears, with some dying in the attempt.
Range and habitat.
The cave bear's range stretched across Europe; from Spain and Great Britain in the west, Italy, parts of Germany, Poland, the Balkans, Romania and parts of Russia, including the Caucasus; and northern Iran. No traces of cave bears have been found in Scotland, Scandinavia or the Baltic countries, which were all covered in extensive glaciers at the time. The largest numbers of cave bear remains have been found in Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, northern Spain, southern France, and Romania, roughly corresponding with the Pyrenees, Alps, and Carpathians. The huge number of bones found in southern, central and eastern Europe has led some scientists to think Europe may have once had herds of cave bears. Others, however, point out that, though some caves have thousands of bones, they were accumulated over a period of 100,000 years or more, thus requiring only two deaths in a cave per year to account for the large numbers.
The cave bear inhabited low mountainous areas, especially in regions rich in limestone caves. They seem to have avoided open plains, preferring forested or forest-edged terrains.
Relationship with humans.
Between the years 1917 and 1923, the Drachenloch cave in Switzerland was excavated by Emil Bächler. The excavation uncovered more than 30,000 cave bear skeletons. It also uncovered a stone chest or cist, consisting of a low wall built from limestone slabs near a cave wall with a number of bear skulls inside it. Also, a cave bear skull was found with a femur bone from another bear stuck inside it. Scholars speculated that it was proof of prehistoric human religious rites involving the cave bear, or that the Drachenloch cave bears were hunted as part of a hunting ritual, or that the skulls were kept as trophies. In "Archaeology, Religion, Ritual" (2004), archaeologist Timothy Insoll strongly questions whether the Drachenloch finds in the stone cist were the result of human interaction. Insoll states that the evidence for religious practices involving cave bears in this time period is "far from convincing". He also states that comparisons with the religious practices involving bears that are known from historic times are invalid.
A similar phenomenon was encountered in Regourdou, southern France. A rectangular pit contained the remains of at least twenty bears, covered by a massive stone slab. The remains of a Neanderthal lay nearby in another stone pit, with various objects, including a bear humerus, a scraper, a core, and some flakes, which were interpreted as grave offerings.
An unusual discovery in a deep chamber of Basura Cave in Savona, Italy, is thought to be related to cave bear worship, because there is a vaguely zoomorphic stalagmite surrounded by clay pellets. It was apparently used by Neanderthals for a ceremony; bear bones scattered on the floor further suggests it was likely to have had some sort of ritual purpose.
Extinction.
Recent reassessment of fossils indicate that the cave bear probably died out 24,000 years ago. A complex set of factors, rather than a single factor, are suggested to have led to the extinction. However, there have been archeological finds of cave bear teeth used in a necklace that dates back only 12,000 years ago, suggesting that the extinction may have happened much later.
Compared with other megafaunal species that also became extinct during the last glacial maximum, the cave bear was believed to have had a more specialized diet of high-quality plants and a relatively restricted geographical range. This was suggested as an explanation as to why it died out so much earlier than the rest. Some experts have disputed this claim, as the cave bear had survived multiple climate changes prior to extinction. Additionally, mitochondrial DNA research indicated that the genetic decline of the cave bear began long before it became extinct, demonstrating habitat loss due to climate change was not responsible. Finally, high δ15N levels were found in cave bear bones from Romania, indicating wider dietary possibilities than previously believed.
Overhunting by humans has been largely dismissed because human populations at the time were too small to pose a serious threat to the cave bear's survival, though the two species may have competed for living space in caves. Unlike brown bears, cave bears are seldom represented in cave paintings, leading some experts to believe the cave bear may have been avoided by human hunters or their habitat preferences may not have overlapped. The late paleontologist Björn Kurtén hypothesized cave bear populations were fragmented and under stress even before the advent of the glaciers. Populations living south of the Alps possibly survived significantly longer.
Some evidence indicates that the cave bear used only caves for hibernation and was not inclined to use other locations, such as thickets, for this purpose, in contrast to the more versatile brown bear. This specialized hibernation behavior would have caused a high winter mortality rate for cave bears that failed to find available caves. Therefore, as human populations slowly increased, the cave bear faced a shrinking pool of suitable caves, and slowly faded away to extinction, as both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans sought out caves as living quarters, depriving the cave bear of vital habitat. This hypothesis is being researched at this time. According to the research study, published in the journal "Molecular Biology and Evolution", radiocarbon dating of the fossil remains shows that the cave bear ceased to be abundant in Central Europe around 35,000 years ago.
In 2019 the results of a large scale study of 81 bone specimens (resulting in 59 new sequences), and 64 previously published complete mitochondrial genomes of cave bear mitochondrial DNA remains found in Switzerland, Poland, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Serbia, indicated that the cave bear population drastically declined starting around 40,000 years ago at the onset of the Aurignacian, coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans. It was concluded that human hunting and/or competition played a major role in their decline and ultimate disappearance, and that climate change was not likely to have been the dominant factor. In a study of Spanish cave bear mtDNA, each cave used by cave bears was found to contain almost exclusively a unique lineage of closely related haplotypes, indicating a homing behaviour for birthing and hibernation. The conclusion of this study is cave bears could not easily colonize new sites when in competition with humans for these resources.
In 2020 a well preserved ice age cave bear was found on the Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. Nearby, on the Siberian mainland of Yakutia, a tiny, beautifully preserved cave bear cub recently emerged from another patch of melting permafrost.


Diluvicursor

Diluvicursor ("flood runner") is a genus of small ornithischian from the Lower Albian (Early Cretaceous) of Australia. It is known from one species, the type species D. pickeringi. The two known specimens, a vertebra and a partial juvenile postcranium discovered in 2005 from the Eumeralla Formation, are known, and they were named in early 2018.
Discovery and naming.
The remains of "Diluvicursor" were discovered in 2005 in the Eumeralla Formation, dating from the early Albian, in Victoria, southeastern Australia at the beach of Cape Otway near the extensively excavated Dinosaur Cove, a location where the remains of several other ornithischians had been previously discovered, alongside remains of other species. The then new locality was named the "Eric the Red West Sandstone" (ETRW). The find was reported in the scientific literature by Thomas Rich "et al.", in 2009, in a study about remains from ETRW referred to the mammal "Bishops". The authors tentatively it referred to Ornithopoda. The vertebra of a spinosaurid, NMV P221081, was also found at the site. In a 2013 review of ornithopods from Victoria, it was given a diagnosis and preliminary description.
The specimens were described and named online, through use of ZooBank registration, in January 2018, in a study in which the sedimentology, taphonomy, palaeoecology, and stratigraphy of the site were also investigated. The generic name of the taxon is derived from the Latin "diluvi"~, meaning "flood" or "deluge", which was chosen in reference to the fact that the type specimen was deposited in a high energy river and the species would have lived in a prehistoric floodplain, and the Latin word "cursor", which means "runner". The specific name, "pickeringi", is honoring David A. Pickering, who had made notable contributions to palaeontology in Australia, and who died at the time of the preparation of the study.
The holotype, NMV P221080, consists of an almost complete articulated tail lacking only the first, second and twelfth tail vertebra, and parts of the lower right leg: the lower end of the shinbone and calfbone, the complete ankle bones, the metatarsus, the first toe and the first phalanges of the second, third and fourth toes. This specimen is preserved on a stone plate, separated into five blocks. It would have been deposited in a deep and high-energy river, the carcass thought to have been caught in a trap of plant debris on a standing tree stump. It represents a juvenile individual. Specimen NMV P229456, a partial tail vertebra of a larger individual, found nearby in the same deposit, was referred to the taxon.
Description.
The holotype individual, thought to be an older juvenile, was estimated to be in length, using the proportions of "Hypsilophodon" to fill in unknown areas; it has been compared to the size of a modern wild turkey. It was noted, however, that the tail being preserved in a curled fashion made exact tail length uncertain, owing to difficulty in measuring intervertebral space; the size estimate is therefore uncertain. Based on an isolated caudal vertebra, NMV P229456, twice the length of vertebrae from the holotype, adults are estimated to have measured at least long, closer to the size of a rhea, and still small for an ornithopod. The taxon was noted in Herne's PhD thesis as being distinctly more robust than other assumed relatives from the area. Ten autapomorphies, unique traits, were identified in the holotype.
Phylogeny.
The cladogram below results from analysis by Herne "et al.", 2019.


Wasson Bluff

Wasson Bluff (also known as Wasson's Bluff) is the name applied to a series of imposing cliff faces on the north shore of the Minas Basin about east of the town of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. The cliffs, which stretch approximately from Wasson Brook in the east, to Swan Creek in the west, consist of 200-million-year-old rocks that have yielded a wide array of fossils including more than 100,000 bones from Canada's oldest-known dinosaurs as well as the smallest dinosaur tracks ever found. The fossils date from a critical time in the evolution of life, the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic geological periods, when mass extinctions led not only to the dominance of the dinosaurs, but also to the evolution of groups of vertebrates, such as fish, crocodiles, frogs and mammals, whose descendants are still alive today. The abrasive action of the tides, considered to be the world's highest, constantly exposes fossils on the cliff faces, shores and seabed.
In 1990, Paul E. Olsen, one of the paleontologists who has conducted extensive fossil excavations at Wasson Bluff wrote: "Every time I stand before these cliffs, I feel dwarfed by the immensity of time."
Geology.
The cliffs at Wasson Bluff stand at the edge of the ancient rift valley known as the Fundy Basin. It was created when the supercontinent Pangaea began to break up about 225 million years ago. As the continental plates moved apart, they ruptured, and blocks subsided or rose along fault lines creating complex, twisted layers of rock turned at odd angles.
The orange and red sandstones visible at Wasson Bluff formed as rivers swollen by intense rains carried coarse sediments from nearby highlands into the Fundy Basin. Other deposits came from wind-blown sand dunes or from the sediments on the bottoms of shallow lakes that, at various times, occupied the floor of the basin. As Pangea broke apart, magma rose to the surface through deep fissures in the Earth's crust erupting as lava flows. This massive volcanic activity created the greenish-grey columns and grey-black blocks of basalt that form large sections of the cliffs.
Fossil discoveries.
Tiny dinosaur tracks.
On April 10, 1984, veteran fossil hunter and amateur geologist, Eldon George, made a discovery that drew the world's attention to Wasson Bluff. George was riding along the shoreline on his all-terrain vehicle when he stopped behind an outcropping to take shelter from the wind. As he bent over his ATV to warm his hands, his experienced eye picked out what appeared to be tiny tracks. Using a jackknife, he gradually exposed five fossil trackways imprinted in a slab of sandstone measuring . The three-toed, penny-sized footprints were made by a theropod dinosaur about the size of a robin. They were the smallest dinosaur tracks ever found.
Although the tiny dinosaur tracks are Eldon George's most famous discovery, he has made many others in a career that began in the 1940s. His finds include a wide variety of fossilized amphibian and dinosaur prints that are displayed, along with the world's smallest dinosaur tracks, at his Parrsboro Rock and Mineral Shop and Museum. One of them, also found at Wasson Bluff, is a track that may have been made by a primitive, two-legged, crocodile-like creature that was nearly long.
Rich fossil beds.
In January 1986, American paleontologists Paul Olsen and Neil Shubin announced they had recovered hundreds of thousands of bones at Wasson Bluff, the largest fossil find in North America dating from the geological period 200 million years ago known as the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. It was a time when massive lakes of lava spewed from fissures in the earth as the supercontinent Pangea broke apart. Some scientists believe that the volcanic eruptions and the poisonous gases they released caused the mass extinction of nearly half of the world's creatures ending a period dominated by huge reptiles and enabling dinosaurs to become dominant. The sandstone and basalt cliffs at Wasson Bluff were formed during the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. They contain fossil remains of the creatures who lived both before and after the mass extinction.
In 1984, Neil Shubin found the jaw of a mammal-like reptile known as a trithelodont, the first such discovery in North America. The next summer he and Paul Olsen, along with Hans-Dieter Sues of the Royal Ontario Museum and William Amaral, Charles Schaff, and Steven Orzack of Harvard University, uncovered 12 complete skulls of trithelodonts, a discovery that has helped scientists gain a better understanding of the origins of mammals. They also retrieved many other fossils including teeth from small, bird-hipped dinosaurs, skulls of lizard-like creatures known as sphenodontids, ancestral crocodile bones and skulls, as well as fossilized fish and shark bones.
Restrictions on fossil collection.
A special permit is required before anyone can collect fossils or use rock hammers in the Wasson Bluff area. The site is protected under Nova Scotia's Special Places Protection Act. The law aims to preserve places that are important for cultural, historical and environmental reasons and that are significant sites for scientific research.


Tuxpan Formation

The Tuxpan Formation is a geologic formation in Mexico. It preserves fossils dating back to the Neogene period.


Annamitella

Annamitella Mansuy 1916 is a genus of trilobite, extinct marine arthropods. "Annamitella" lived from the Arenig to the Llandeilo age of the Ordovician Period from 478.6 to 460.9 million years ago.
Distribution.
The genus has been reported from:


Mont Pilat

Mont Pilat or the Pilat massif is a mountainous area in the east of the Massif Central of France.
Name.
The origin of the name "Pilat" is uncertain.
The word may have a Latin origin ("Mons Pileatus").
Another legend says that the body of Pontius Pilate was buried in the massif.
For a long time "Mont Pilat" designated the main mountain, with the double peaks or crests (crêts) of Perdrix and Oeillon.
Modern maps generally designate this area as "Les Crêts".
However, the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) continues to use the term "Mont Pilat" to refer to the television transmitter on the Crêt de l'Oeillon.
The whole mountain range is commonly called "Mont Pilat".
The "Communauté de communes des Monts du Pilat" coordinates various administrative and developmental functions for the communes in the massif.
The term "Pilat" is also used to refer to the area that became the Parc naturel régional du Pilat in 1974.
Topography.
The Pilat massif is part of the French Massif Central range. It lies in the extreme east of the range looking over the Rhone valley.
The overall orientation of the massif is from south-west to north-east, creating a variety of climates.
The massif generally rises about above its surroundings.
Perdrix (Partridge mountain) rises to above sea level and Pyfara and Panère are high.
Pilat is separated from the Monts du Lyonnais to the north by the Saint-Étienne basin, the Gier valley.
The Gier rises at La Jasserie on the Perdrix mountain at about .
The river runs along the north side of the massif for before joining the Rhone at Givors.
The Gier receives the Janon from its left at Saint-Chamond.
The Janon from Terrenoire (now part of Saint-Étienne) to Saint-Chamond and then the Gier from Saint-Chamond to Givors create a valley in the coal basin that runs between the Pilat massif and the Riverie chain of the Monts du Lyonnais.
Climate.
Pilat has a wide variety of plants, reflecting different climate zones in a relatively small area.
The Rhone valley on the south of the massif has a warm Mediterranean climate.
Fruit trees and vineyards are cultivated on the south-facing slopes.
On the north side there is a cooler continental climate, with conifers, juniper and ferns. There is heavy snow in the winter.
On the crests, the altitude, winds and snow prevent the growth of trees. Vegetation includes heath plants such as heather and bilberry.
History.
Flint and pottery found in the municipality of Saint-Genest-Malifaux show that humans were present in pre-historic times.
During the Celtic era the Pilat was shared by two Celtic peoples, the Segusiavi and the Allobroges.
They gave the region the name Pilat, meaning broad mountain ("pi": mountain and "lat": broad).
The Celts also left many places of worship, arrangements of stones such as those at Château de Belize above Chuyer,
the Rock Altar Roisey and La Garde, the sacred precincts of Saint-Sabin and the peak of the Three Teeth,
and especially the "Menhir du Flat" near Colombier.
In Roman times the water of the river Gier was supplied to Lyon through the aqueduct of the Gier.
The water was collected above Saint-Chamond and routed through tunnels, of which there are remains at Chagnon and Saint-Martin-la-Plaine, and aqueducts such as the one at Chaponost. During the Roman era Pilat formed the border between the provinces of Gallia Narbonensis" and "Gallia Lugdunensis".
There are remains of Roman roads in places such as Pélussin and Saint-Régis-du-Coin.
On 1 November 1944 a U.S. Army Douglas C-47 Skytrain crashed due to bad weather carrying five crew members, army nurse lieutenant Aleda E. Lutz and fifteen wounded of whom some were German prisoners. There were no survivors. It took several hours for help to arrive. The crash occurred in the hollow of La Botte not far from La Jasserie, where a monument was raised in 2002 commemorating the accident.
Administration.
The Pilat is mostly located in the Loire department southeast of the city of Saint-Étienne and southwest of the cities of Vienne and Givors.
The massif is bordered by the departments of Rhône, Isère, Ardèche and Haute-Loire.
The communes of the "Communauté de communes des Monts du Pilat" are Bourg-Argental, Burdignes, Colombier, Graix, Jonzieux, La Versanne, Le Bessat, Marlhes, Planfoy, Saint-Genest-Malifaux, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette, Saint-Régis-du-Coin, Saint-Romain-les-Atheux, Saint-Sauveur-en-Rue, Tarentaise and Thélis-la-Combe.
Attractions.
Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez lies in northern Pilat. Once it was a fortified 13th century monastery, but after the French Revolution it became a village. The high country around the Crêt de la Perdrix and the Crêt de l'Œillon is popular for cross-country skiing in the winter.
The region is attractive to motorcyclists, with winding roads leading through bright valleys and deep forests, and with magnificent views of the Alps and the Massif Central.
The "Saut du Gier" waterfall near the head of the Gier is in the Pilat Regional Natural Park.
It is a trickle in the summer, but a waterfall in autumn and spring.
The "Pierre des Trois évêques" (Three Bishops' Stone) is in the commune of Saint-Régis-du-Coin.
It marked the meeting point of three provinces of Roman Gaul: Lyon, Narbonne and Aquitaine.
Under Charlemagne the stone marked the point where Aquitaine, Provence and Burgundy met, and was used as a reference point during the partition of the empire in 843 AD.
In the Middle Ages it delineated the Archdioceses of Lyon, Vienna and Puys.
The "Pierre Saint-Martin" (Saint Martin's Stone) is located near Mont Chaussitre.
According to legend, Saint Martin of Tours left his mark here when he moved.
Since then, according to local belief, the stone would be able to help young children to walk.
References.
Citations
Sources


Josephulus

Josephulus is a genus of trilobites in the order Phacopida (family Pliomeridae) that existed during the upper Ordovician in what is now Sweden. It was described by Warburg in 1925, and the type species is "Josephulus gracilis". The type locality was the Upper Leptaena Limestone.


Svartsengi Power Station

The Svartsengi Power Station ("Svartsengi" (); "black meadow" in Icelandic) is a geothermal power plant, which is located in the Svartsengi geothermal field, about four km north of Grindavík, approximately 20 km SE of Keflavík International Airport and 45 km from Reykjavík.
The electric power station was built in 1976 by the subsidiary of Alterra Power, HS Orka and it was the world´s first geothermal power plant for electric power generation and hot water production for district heating.
The power station, which consists of an area of 150 ha, was constructed in six sequent phases "(finished in 2008)", in each phase they built a new power plant, so the generation capacity increased to 150 MWth for the district heating and the nameplate capacity to 75 MW for electricity power.
Since the Svartsengi Power Station is the only heating system for the local district on the Reykjanes Peninsula, which pipes hot geothermal water to more than 21,000 households, it is considered one of the most important heating plants.
This Geothermal Power Plant not only produces hot water and energy, but has also produced spin-offs; one of these side products is one of Iceland's most popular bathing resorts, the Blue Lagoon, and another spin off is the first renewable methanol plant, Carbon Recycling International.
Geothermal Power Plant details.
In the beginning of 1976, the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant was completely liquid-dominated, but it changed into a liquid dominated with a steam cap geothermal system.
Today, it consists of 13 production boreholes connected to the six plants, eight of those wells are producing a mixture of steam and brine and the other five are shallow dry steam wells.
It also possesses one of the largest Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) in Iceland with the P-CIM monitors and the 50 substations, which include hot water/ cold water/ electricity distribution systems and 11 turbines and generators.
Power Plant Units.
Nowadays, the combined capacity of the Svartsengi Power Plant is 75 MW in electrical energy and 150 MW in thermal energy.
Energy Plant 1, with its two back-pressure turbines, was constructed in 1977 – 1979. It consisted of four thermal energy circuits, which produced 40 l/s of heating water and 50 MW energy for its own power needs, but today it is mostly out of action and only two circuits are in use, so the produced capacity is 25 MW of thermal energy.
Energy Plant 2 was built in 1980 and it produces, with its three thermal energy exchange systems 225 l/s (3 x 75 l/s) of hot water and 75 MW "(3 x 25 MW)" energy.
Energy Plant 3, with its 6 MW counter-pressure steam turbines, is especially used for producing electricity. Each second 40 kg of steam passes through the turbines with 5 bar pressure.
Energy Plant 4, with its seven 1.2 MW Isopentan Ormat turbines, was built in 1989-1992 to produce energy with hot excess steam and low pressure steam from the other energy plants.
Energy Plant 5 was built in 1999 to substitute the old energy plant 1 and to increase the energy and hot water, so the demand could be met. It produces with its 30 MW turbines and 75 MW thermal energy exchange system, around 225 GWh per annum.
Energy Plant 6 is a condenser plant with unique high pressure steam turbines and a total capacity of 30 MW. It produces only electricity, which depends on the using of the district heating and the electrical use.


Auguste Pomel

Nicolas Auguste Pomel (20 September 1821 – 2 August 1898) was a French geologist, paleontologist and botanist. He worked as a mines engineer in Algeria and became a specialist in north African vertebrate fossils. He was Senator of Algeria for Oran from 1876 to 1882.
Life.
Nicolas-Auguste Pomel was born in Issoire, Puy-de-Dôme, on 20 September 1821.
He studied at the Lycée de Clermont and earned his Licence ès sciences.
He was conscripted into the army when he was prepared to enter the École des mines.
He became a civil engineer after being released.
After the coup d'état of 2 December 1851 his Republican beliefs earned him deportation.
He became a "Garde des mines" in Oran in 1866, and was promoted to the 1st class in 1872.
From 1876 to 1882 he was member of the Senate (Oran division).
In 1882 he was tasked with geological mapping of Algeria. He died in Dra-el-Mizan.
Pomel was also a prolific botanist, naming and describing many plant species and some genera as well. The genus "Pomelia" () from the family Apiaceae is named in his honor.
Published works.
He was the author of nearly 100 publications on North Africa; his works include "Sur les Alcyonaires fossiles Miocenes de l'Algerie" (1868) and "Des races indigènes de l'Algérie et du rôle que leur reservent leurs aptitudes" (1871). Other written efforts by Pomel are:


Anurognathus

Anurognathus is a genus of small pterosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic period (Tithonian stage). "Anurognathus" was first named and described by Ludwig Döderlein in 1923. The type species is "Anurognathus ammoni". The genus name "Anurognathus" is derived from the Greek "αν"/ "an-" ("without"), "оυρα"/ "oura" ("tail"), and "γναθος"/ "gnathos" ("jaw") in reference to its unusually small tail relative to other "rhamphorhynchoid" (i.e. basal) pterosaurs. The specific name "ammoni" honours the Bavarian geologist Ludwig von Ammon, from whose collection Döderlein had acquired the fossil in 1922.
Description.
The genus is based on holotype BSP 1922.I.42 (Bayerische Staatssammlung für Palaeontologie und Geologie), found in the Solnhofen limestone near Eichstätt. It consists of a crushed, relatively complete skeleton on a slab. The counterslab is missing and with it most of the bones: much of the skeleton is only visible as an impression.
"Anurognathus" had a short head with pin-like teeth for catching insects and although it traditionally is ascribed to the long-tailed pterosaur group "Rhamphorhynchoidea", its tail was comparatively short, allowing it more maneuverability for hunting. According to Döderlein the reduced tail of "Anurognathus" was similar to the pygostyle of modern birds. Its more typical "rhamphorhynchoid" characters include its elongated fifth toe and short metacarpals and neck. With an estimated wingspan of fifty centimetres (20 inches) and a nine centimetre long body (skull included), its weight was limited: in 2008 Mark Paul Witton estimated a mass of forty grammes for a specimen with a 35 centimetre wingspan. The holotype was redescribed by Peter Wellnhofer in 1975.
Later a second, smaller specimen was found, probably of a subadult individual. Its slab and counterslab are separated and both were sold to private collections; neither has an official registration. It was described by S. Christopher Bennet in 2007. This second exemplar is much more complete and better articulated. It shows impressions of a large part of the flight membrane and under UV-light remains of the muscles of the thigh and arm become visible. It provided new information on many points of the anatomy. The skull was shown to have been very short and broad, wider than long. It transpired that Wellnhofer had incorrectly reconstructed the skull in 1975, mistaking the large eye sockets for the "fenestrae antorbitales", skull openings that in most pterosaurs are larger than the orbits but in "Anurognathus" are small and together with the nostrils placed at the front of the flat snout. The eyes pointed forwards to a degree, providing some binocular vision. Most of the skull consisted of bone struts. The presumed pygostyle was absent; investigating the real nine tail vertebrae instead of impressions showed that they were unfused, though very reduced. The wing finger lacked the fourth phalanx. According to Bennett a membrane, visible near the shin, showed that the wing contacted the ankle and was thus rather short and broad. Bennett also restudied the holotype, interpreting bumps on the jaws as an indication that hairs forming a protruding bristle were present on the snout.
Classification.
"Anurognathus" was assigned by Oskar Kuhn to the family Anurognathidae in 1937. In the modern clade Anurognathidae, "Anurognathus" is the sister taxon of the clade Batrachognathinae, which contains the species "Batrachognathus", "Dendrorhynchoides" and "Jeholopterus".
In 2021, a phylogenetic analysis conducted by Xuefang Wei and colleagues recovered "Anurognathus" within the subfamily Anurognathinae, a subfamily within the family Anurognathidae. "Anurognathus" was found to have been the sister taxon to "Vesperopterylus" in the study. Below is a cladogram representing their phylogenetic analysis:
Paleobiology.
According to Döderlein "Anurognathus" was, with its long wings, a swift flyer, surprising its prey, similar to the modern nightjar. Bennett, however, infers from the discovery of the true shorter size of the wings, combined with the short tail, that it was a slower flying predator, specialised in hunting by manoeuvrability, its large eyes adapted to a crepuscular way of life. This would also be supported by a very large flexibility of the wing finger joints.
Researcher Chris Bennett published a paper in 1995 that looked into the growth rates of pterosaurs. With the fossils found of "Rhamphorhynchus", he was able to see that all bones that were preserved on few-day old species were very hard from ossifications just as if it would be seen with adults. This developmental stage was rapidly progressing compared to that of modern-day birds. This would lead to the young pterosaurs being less dependent on their parents or for shorter durations and be able to fly away sooner at an earlier stage compared to how we see in modern-day birds.
Habib and Witton also went in to describe how insectivory evolved with pterosaurs, just like what is seen with "Anurognathus ammoni" and "Dendrorhynchoides curvidentatus", and how that relates to their functional morphology. They explained that with the great locomotion and flexibility that their wings showed, "Anurognathus ammoni", "Dendrorhynchoides curvidentatus", and some other small species, were able to catch insects and maneuver between low areas and potentially around/under trees. When predicting the gape measurements for these small pterosaurs, they used measurements of the premaxillary tip all the way to the jaw tips and then the width between the sections as references. They predicted 1734mm^2 for the estimated gaps provided from the holotype of "Anurognathus", "Dendrorhynchoides", and "Jeholopterus". The research team ended up concluding that consumed prey would have to be very small in length, around 11 mm total.


Rheinwesterwald Volcanic Ridge

The Rheinwesterwald Volcanic Ridge (), or more rarely, the Asberg Plateau ("Asberg-Hochfläche") is a hill ridge and natural region, roughly 13 kilometres long and 3 to 4 kilometres wide, in the north of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate and south of North Rhine-Westphalia west of the Rhine, which is adjoined in the south by the Siebengebirge. The name was introduced in the late 1950s together with the natural regional major unit of Niederwesterwald.
The ridge or plateau also bears the regional name of "Linzer Höhe" ("Linz Hills") south of the Asberg. This name was being used by the 17th century to refer to the area outside the town walls of the church parish of Linz and on the side facing the hills.
Hills.
The hills of the region include the Asberg (), the Meerberg (), the Minderberg (), the Hummelsberg (), the Römerich (), the Willscheider Berg () and the Himberg (). In the Siebengebirge Nature Park on the North Rhine-Westphalian side are also the Leyberg (), the Himmerich (), the Broderkonsberg () and the Zickelburg () (see also complete list). A majority of the area is counted as part of the forests of Erpeler Kirchspielwald, Dattenberger Wald and Leubsdorfer Wald.
Places.
The settlements of the natural region are Ginsterhahn, Grendel, Hargarten, Kaimig (municipality of St. Katharinen), Kretzhaus (borough of Linz am Rhein), Ober- and Untererl (municipality of Kasbach-Ohlenberg), (southwestern part of) Vettelschoß, Oberkalenborn (municipality of Vettelschoß), Ronigerhof (borough of Linz am Rhein) and Rothe Kreuz (municipality of Leubsdorf).


Georges Le Mesle

Georges Le Mesle (21 August 1828 – 31 December 1895) was a French geologist. He is best known for his work on the geology of northern and southern Tunisia, which he undertook between 1887 and 1891.
Life.
Georges Le Mesle was a geologist, paleontologist, correspondent of the National Museum of Natural History and member of the Scientific Commission of Tunisia.
Le Mesle was born in Paris on 21 August 1828.
He became a corresponding geologist of the Museum of Natural History of Paris, which charged him with a mission to Indochina.
He undertook useful work in Tonkin.
Some of his photographs have been preserved by the Paris Society of Geography.
The society calls them "photos of the Ba Keng Buddha, near Angkor, 1864", but the date is dubious since Angkor had only recently been found by European travellers.
Le Mesle visited Algeria several times, and built up a valuable collection of fossils, which were used by M. Peron in his works on Algeria.
In the 1870s Le Mesle found tridactyl footprints in Algeria, which the local people attributed to a giant bird, a view that Le Mesle shared.
The botanist Ernest Cosson led the "Mision Scientifique de Tunisie" (Tunisian Scientific Exploration Mission) from 1885 to 1887.
In 1884 a geological section under Georges Rolland was added to the mission.
Rolland was assisted by Philippe Thomas from 1885 and by Georges Le Mesle in 1887.
Rolland covered the centre of the country, while Thomas worked further south and Le Mesle worked mainly in the north, apart from an expedition to the extreme south.
The team gave good descriptions of the Jurassic of the Zaghouan region and the Eocene of the Maktar and Kairouan regions.
On the mission Le Mesle travelled with Jean Albert Gaudry.
Georges Le Mesle died on 31 December 1895 in Bône (now Annaba) in Algeria.
Tunisian research.
In 1888 Le Mesle published the results of his first exploration, which took place in April–June 1887, in the form of a daily journal that recorded minor facts and incidents of the journey along with scientific observations.
Le Mesle made some preliminary trips around Tunis, then studied the peninsula of Cap Bon, which based on his observations formed an archipelago at the start of the Quaternary and did not become part of the continent until quite recently.
He then investigated the region of Bizerte, where the substrate of limestones consists entirely of microscopic foraminifera.
The foraminifera belonged the same genera as those found in chalk of the Paris basin, such as Globigerina, Textularia, Orbulina and Rotalina.
Above these he found hard sandstone, alternating marls and soft sandstones from the Late Miocene or the Pliocene, and then an upper layer of sand and clay sandstones rich in fossils. He then studied the very difficult regions of Mateur, Beja and Kef.
He confirmed earlier observation of phosphate deposits with commercial potential.
At Djebel Zaghouan in Tunisia Le Mesle found Jurassic terrain in which Kobelt had discovered "Perisphinctes Kobelti" from the Oxfordian age.
He collected "Aptychus" (from the lamellosi group), "Peltoceras transversarium", "Rhacophyllites tortisulcatus", "Oppelia" cf. "Bachiana", "Lytoceras" cf. "Liebigi" and "Perisphinctes" cf. "Kobelti".
In 1888, since Rolland had not been able to complete his investigation of the center, Le Mesle resumed his itinerary between Zaghouan and Kairouan in April, May and June.
From there he went to Cherichira and Trozza, and then to Souk-el-Arba, Beja, Ain-Draham and Taharque before returning to Tunis.
The mission was interrupted for two years due to the death of its head in 1889.
Le Mesle then resumed his explorations between November 1890 and February 1891.
He visited Medenine, the environs of Tataouine and Douirat and the Oudernas massif, where he discovered a very interesting Jurassic stage.
At the end of this journey he described himself as being morally and physically in tatters, and he did not recover.
His last two travel journals did not appear until 1899, after his death.
Publications.
Georges Le Mesle published very little himself, but donated his collections to the National Museum of Paris where others could study them.


Ampullaria bicarinata

Ampullaria bicarinata is an extinct species of freshwater snail with an operculum, an aquatic gastropod mollusk in the family Ampullariidae.
Distribution.
The type locality of "Ampullaria bicarinata" is Vrška Čuka (in Serbian Cyrillic: Вршка Чука), eastern Serbia near the border of Bulgaria.