The sand cat is a small wild cat that inhabits sandy and stony deserts far from water sources. With its sandy to light grey fur, it is well camouflaged in a desert environment. Its head-and-body length ranges from 39–52 cm (15–20 in) with a 23–31 cm (9.1–12.2 in) long tail. Its 5–7 cm (2.0–2.8 in) short ears are set low on the sides of the head, aiding detection of prey moving underground. The long hair covering the soles of its paws insulates its pads against the extreme temperatures found in deserts.
Alfred Cort Haddon, Sc.D., FRS, FRGS FRAI was an influential British anthropologist and ethnologist. Initially a biologist, who achieved his most notable fieldwork, with W.H.R. Rivers, C.G. Seligman and Sidney Ray on the Torres Strait Islands. He returned to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate, and effectively founded the School of Anthropology. Haddon was a major influence on the work of the American ethnologist Caroline Furness Jayne.
The Arabian wolf is a subspecies of gray wolf native to the Arabian Peninsula—to the west of Bahrain, as well as Oman, southern Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. They are also found in Israel’s Negev and Arava Deserts, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. It is the smallest Gray wolf subspecies, and a specialized xerocole (arid-adapted) animal that normally lives in smaller familial packs. Arabian wolves are omnivorous and opportunistic eaters; they consume small to medium-sized prey, from insects, reptiles and birds to rodents and small ungulates, such as young Nubian ibex and several species of gazelle.
The Egyptian mongoose, also known as ichneumon, is a mongoose species native to the tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands of Africa and around the Mediterranean Basin in North Africa, the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula. Whether it is introduced or native to the Iberian Peninsula is in some doubt. Because of its widespread occurrence, it is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
The Djadochta Formation is a highly fossiliferous geological formation situated in Central Asia, Gobi Desert, dating from the Late Cretaceous period, about 75 million to 71 million years ago. The type locality is the Bayn Dzak locality, famously known as the Flaming Cliffs. Reptile and mammal remains are among the fossils recovered from the formation.
Helicidae is a large, diverse family of western Palaearctic, medium to large-sized, air-breathing land snails, sometimes called the "typical snails." It includes some of the largest European land snails, several species are common in anthropogenic habitats, and some became invasive on other continents. A number of species in this family are valued as food items, including Cornu aspersum the brown or garden snail, and Helix pomatia. The biologies of these two species in particular have been thoroughly studied and documented.
Thalassiodracon (tha-LAS-ee-o-DRAY-kon) is an extinct genus of plesiosauroid from the Pliosauridae that was alive during the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic (Rhaetian-Hettangian) and is known exclusively from the Lower Lias of England. The type and only species, is Thalassiodracon (Plesiosaurus) hawkinsii.
Bird collections are curated repositories of scientific specimens consisting of birds and their parts. They are a research resource for ornithology, the science of birds, and for other scientific disciplines in which information about birds is useful. These collections are archives of avian diversity and serve the diverse needs of scientific researchers, artists, and educators. Collections may include a variety of preparation types emphasizing preservation of feathers, skeletons, soft tissues, or (increasingly) some combination thereof. Modern collections range in size from small teaching collections, such as one might find at a nature reserve visitor center or small college, to large research collections of the world's major natural history museums, the largest of which contain hundreds of thousands of specimens. Bird collections function much like libraries, with specimens arranged in drawers and cabinets in taxonomic order, curated by scientists who oversee the maintenance, use, and growth of collections and make them available for study through visits or loans.
The International Office of Public Hygiene (OIPH), also known by its French name as the Office International d'Hygiène Publique (OIHP), was an international organization founded 9 December 1907 and based in Paris, France. It merged into the World Health Organization in 1946.
Frederick William FitzSimons, was an Irish-born South African naturalist, noted as a herpetologist for his research on snakes and their venom, and on the commercial production of anti-venom.
Sphincterochila zonata zonata is a subspecies of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Sphincterochilidae.
Typhloperipatus is a genus of velvet worm in the family Peripatidae, containing the sole species Typhloperipatus williamsoni. This genus is notable for containing the only species in the phylum Onychophora found in South Asia. This species is also striking in that this velvet worm shows no external trace of eyes, although rudimentary optical vesicles are present internally.
Eremina is a genus of land snails.
Hypatia is a small stone found in Egypt in 1996. It has been claimed to be both a meteorite and kimberlite debris. It has also been claimed to be the first known specimen of a comet nucleus on Earth, although defying physically-accepted models for hypervelocity processing of organic material. As of November 2023, Hypatia has not been officially classified as a meteorite in the Meteoritical Bulletin, which is tasked with recording all scientifically proven meteorites.
Denis Gascoigne Lillie was a British biologist who participated in the Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913) to the Antarctic. He collected numerous marine animals as well as plants and fossils–many of which were new to science–and published scientific papers on whales, fossils, and medicine. He received the Polar Medal along with other Terra Nova members in 1913. He was also a noted caricaturist who made cartoons of professors, colleagues, and friends: some of his caricatures are collected in the National Portrait Gallery. He worked as a government bacteriologist during World War I and then suffered a severe mental breakdown, spending three years at Bethlem Royal Hospital and never fully recovering. He is commemorated in the names of several marine organisms as well as Lillie Glacier in Antarctica.
A. N. Waterhouse, also known as Annie Newman Waterhouse was an English illustrator, woodcutter, engraver, and teacher. She is best known for her illustrations in working with Joseph Wilson Lowry on Samuel Pickworth Woodward's A Manual of the Mollusca, which was published in three parts. The first part of A Manual of the Mollusca was published in 1851, and it was one of the most notable works on Mollusks that existed at that time. She was also a professor at Marlborough House, and taught classes on wood engraving for ladies only.
Susannah "Susie" Catherine Rose Maidment is a British palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London. She is also an honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham. She is internationally recognised for her research on ornithischian dinosaur evolution, and was awarded the 2016 Hodson Award of the Palaeontological Association and the 2017 Lyell Fund of the Geological Society of London. She was featured as a 2019 National Geographic Women of Impact.
