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The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, 419.2 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, 358.9 Mya. It is named after Devon, England, where rocks from this period were first studied.
An extinction event is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation. The number of major mass extinctions in the last 440 million years are estimated from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from disagreement as to what constitutes an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.
A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood, oil, coal, and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the fossil record.
Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch. It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BCE. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term itself originates from Greek παλα, ὄν, and λόγος.
The gastropods, commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda.
A trace fossil, also ichnofossil, is a fossil record of biological activity but not the preserved remains of the plant or animal itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of parts of organisms' bodies, usually altered by later chemical activity or mineralization. The study of such trace fossils is ichnology and is the work of ichnologists.
Balaenoptera, from Latin: balaena ('whale') and Ancient Greek: pteron ('fin'), is a genus of Balaenopteridae, and contains eight extant species. Balaenoptera comprises all but one of the extant species in its family.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is a California State Park located within the Colorado Desert of southern California, United States. The park takes its name from 18th century Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and borrego, a Spanish word for sheep. With 585,930 acres (237,120 ha) that includes one-fifth of San Diego County, it is the largest state park in California.
Ophidia is a group of squamate reptiles including modern snakes and all reptiles more closely related to snakes than to other living groups of lizards.
Megalodon, meaning "big tooth", is an extinct species of mackerel shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (Mya), during the Early Miocene to the Pliocene. It was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae and a close relative of the great white shark. However, it is now classified into the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the great white shark during the Early Cretaceous. Its genus placement is still debated, authors placing it in either Carcharocles, Megaselachus, Otodus, or Procarcharodon. This is because transitional fossils have been found showing that megalodon is the final chronospecies of a lineage of giant sharks originally of the genus Otodus which evolved during the Paleocene.
Mosasaurs comprise a group of extinct, large marine reptiles from the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. They belong to the order Squamata, which includes lizards and snakes.
A microfossil is a fossil that is generally between 0.001 mm and 1 mm in size, the visual study of which requires the use of light or electron microscopy. A fossil which can be studied with the naked eye or low-powered magnification, such as a hand lens, is referred to as a macrofossil.
Bramerton Pits is a 0.7-hectare (1.7-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of the village of Bramerton in Norfolk on the southern banks of the River Yare. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.
Halimornis was an enantiornithine bird. It lived during the Late Cretaceous about 80 mya and is known from fossils found in the Mooreville Chalk Formation in Greene County, Alabama. It is known from a single fossil individual, including preserved vertebrae, leg bones and part of the humerus.
Santanachelys gaffneyi is an extinct species of sea turtle. It is the only species in the genus Santanachelys, which itself is a member of the extinct family Protostegidae. The species was first described from a 20-centimeter long fossil specimen unearthed in 1998 from the Santana Formation of eastern Brazil. From the rock layer from which it was excavated, it was determined that the specimen was from the Early Cretaceous period. It is therefore one of the oldest known sea turtles. It was even recorded as the oldest sea turtle in Encyclopædia Britannica, but a new fossil named Desmatochelyspadillai in 2015 is estimated to be as old as 120 million years.
Paleontology in Texas refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Texas. Author Marian Murray has remarked that "Texas is as big for fossils as it is for everything else." Some of the most important fossil finds in United States history have come from Texas. Fossils can be found throughout most of the state. The fossil record of Texas spans almost the entire geologic column from Precambrian to Pleistocene. Shark teeth are probably the state's most common fossil. During the early Paleozoic era Texas was covered by a sea that would later be home to creatures like brachiopods, cephalopods, graptolites, and trilobites. Little is known about the state's Devonian and early Carboniferous life. However, evidence indicates that during the late Carboniferous the state was home to marine life, land plants and early reptiles. During the Permian, the seas largely shrank away, but nevertheless coral reefs formed in the state. The rest of Texas was a coastal plain inhabited by early relatives of mammals like Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus. During the Triassic, a great river system formed in the state that was inhabited by crocodile-like phytosaurs. Little is known about Jurassic Texas, but there are fossil aquatic invertebrates of this age like ammonites in the state. During the Early Cretaceous local large sauropods and theropods left a great abundance of footprints. Later in the Cretaceous, the state was covered by the Western Interior Seaway and home to creatures like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and few icthyosaurs. Early Cenozoic Texas still contained areas covered in seawater where invertebrates and sharks lived. On land the state would come to be home to creatures like glyptodonts, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, titanotheres, uintatheres, and dire wolves. Archaeological evidence suggests that local Native Americans knew about local fossils. Formally trained scientists were already investigating the state's fossils by the late 1800s. In 1938, a major dinosaur footprint find occurred near Glen Rose. Pleurocoelus was the Texas state dinosaur from 1997 to 2009, when it was replaced by Paluxysaurus jonesi after the Texan fossils once referred to the former species were reclassified to a new genus.
Crustaceans form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, prawns, woodlice, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata; because of recent molecular studies it is now well accepted that the crustacean group is paraphyletic, and comprises all animals in the clade Pancrustacea other than hexapods. Some crustaceans are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans.
The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event was a sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, approximately 66 million years ago. With the exception of some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians, no tetrapods weighing more than 25 kilograms survived. It marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and with it the Mesozoic Era, while heralding the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, which continues to this day.
Dearcmhara is a genus of marine reptile from the early to mid-Jurassic period around 170 million years ago, known from fossil remains found on the island of Skye in Scotland. The type species is Dearcmhara shawcrossi. Fragmentary fossil remains of the animal were discovered by an amateur fossil hunter in 1959 and were subsequently donated to a museum, but it was not until 2014 that a scientific research project determined that the fossils were of a previously unknown species.
The Namaqua Fossil Forest Marine Protected Area is an offshore conservation region in the territorial waters/exclusive economic zone of South Africa
References
- 1 2 3 Sepkoski, Jack (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera (Trilobita entry)". Bulletins of American Paleontology. 363: 1–560. Archived from the original on 2006-09-05. Retrieved 2008-01-12.
- ↑ "†Loxonepea Opik 1970". Paleobiology Database. Fossilworks. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
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