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Teutobochus or Theutobochus [1] was a legendary giant and king of the Teutons. Large bones discovered in France in 1613 were claimed to be his skeleton. [2]
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Teutobochus or Theutobochus [1] was a legendary giant and king of the Teutons. Large bones discovered in France in 1613 were claimed to be his skeleton. [2]
In 1869 W.A. Seaver wrote: "In times more modern (1613), some masons digging near the ruins of a castle in Dauphiné, in a field which by tradition had long been called 'The Giant's Field,' at a depth of 18 feet discovered a brick tomb 30 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet high, on which was a gray stone with the words 'Theutobochus Rex' cut thereon. When the tomb was opened they found a human skeleton entire, 30-1/2 feet long, 10 feet wide across the shoulders, and 5 feet deep from the breast to the back. His teeth were about the size of an ox's foot, and his shin-bone measured 4 feet in length." [3]
The bones were displayed in Paris by Pierre Mazurier, a surgeon who claimed to be one of the finders. [4]
After the finding of the bones, the legend of the king Teutobochus, which was thought to be the Teuton king defeated by Caius Marius, spread despite analysis by anatomist Jean Riolan the Younger, who ascribed the bones to one of Hannibal's elephants. The French scholar Peiresc also demonstrated that such bones belong to elephants. [1] Theutobochus mentioned by Robert Plot in his Natural history of Oxfordshire, 1677, along with other purported giant skeletons. [5]
Much later, the zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville analyzed the bones and concluded they came from a mastodon. Finally in 1984, the paleontologist Léonard Ginsburg analyzed a plaster mold from the Paris Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, that came from the giant bones, and identified a Deinotherium . [6] The bones are housed in the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy. [7]
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus Mammuthus. They lived from the late Miocene epoch into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabiting Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Mammoths are distinguished from living elephants by their spirally twisted tusks and in at least some later species, the development of numerous adaptions to living in cold environments, including a thick layer of fur.
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier, known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.
A mastodon is a member of the genus Mammut, which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to the early Holocene. Mastodons belong to the order Proboscidea, the same order as elephants and mammoths. Mammut is the type genus of the extinct family Mammutidae, which diverged from the ancestors of modern elephants at least 27–25 million years ago, during the Oligocene.
Timeline of paleontology
Folk memory, also known as folklore or myths, refers to past events that have been passed orally from generation to generation. The events described by the memories may date back hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years and often have a local significance. They may explain physical features in the local environment, provide reasons for cultural traditions or give etymologies for the names of local places.
The Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium is a Brussels museum dedicated to natural history. It is a part of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.
The pygmy mammoth or Channel Islands mammoth is an extinct species of dwarf mammoth native to the northern Channel Islands off the coast of southern California during the Late Pleistocene. It was descended from the Columbian mammoth of mainland North America, which are suggested to have colonised the islands around 250–150,000 years ago. At only 1.72–2.02 m (5.6–6.6 ft) tall at the shoulder, it was around 17% the size of its mainland ancestor. The species became extinct around 13,000 years ago, co-inciding with major environmental change and the arrival of humans in the Channel islands.
The Columbian mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that inhabited North America from southern Canada to Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch. The Columbian mammoth descended from Eurasian steppe mammoths that colonised North America during the Early Pleistocene around 1.5–1.3 million years ago, and later experienced hybridisation with the woolly mammoth lineage. The Columbian mammoth was among the last mammoth species, and the pygmy mammoths evolved from them on the Channel Islands of California. The closest extant relative of the Columbian and other mammoths is the Asian elephant.
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself.
The Adams mammoth also known as the Lenskymammoth is the first woolly mammoth skeleton with skin and flesh still attached to be recovered by scientists. The mostly complete skeleton and flesh were discovered in 1799 in the northeastern Arctic Siberia peninsula Mys Bykov on delta Lena river by Ossip Shumachov, an Evenki hunter and subsequently recovered in 1806 when Russian botanist Mikhail Adams journeyed to the location and collected the remains.
Melbourne Bone Bed is a paleontological site located at Crane Creek in Melbourne, in the U.S. state of Florida. This site contains fossils from the Late Pleistocene period 20,000 to 10,000 years before the present. The fossils include extinct animals such as varieties of camels, dire wolves, Florida cave bears, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant bison, giant ground sloths, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and tapirs.
Paleontology or palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils. This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (ichnites), burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised feces (coprolites), palynomorphs and chemical residues. Because humans have encountered fossils for millennia, paleontology has a long history both before and after becoming formalized as a science. This article records significant discoveries and events related to paleontology that occurred or were published in the year 1677.
The woolly mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that lived from the Middle Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in Siberia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridised with each other. Mammoth remains had long been known in Asia before they became known to Europeans. The origin of these remains was long a matter of debate and often explained as being remains of legendary creatures. The mammoth was identified as an extinct species of elephant by Georges Cuvier in 1796.
Paleontology in Kentucky refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Kentucky.
Paleontology in New York refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of New York. New York has a very rich fossil record, especially from the Devonian. However, a gap in this record spans most of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic.
Paleontology in Nebraska refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Nebraska. Nebraska is world-famous as a source of fossils. During the early Paleozoic, Nebraska was covered by a shallow sea that was probably home to creatures like brachiopods, corals, and trilobites. During the Carboniferous, a swampy system of river deltas expanded westward across the state. During the Permian period, the state continued to be mostly dry land. The Triassic and Jurassic are missing from the local rock record, but evidence suggests that during the Cretaceous the state was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, where ammonites, fish, sea turtles, and plesiosaurs swam. The coasts of this sea were home to flowers and dinosaurs. During the early Cenozoic, the sea withdrew and the state was home to mammals like camels and rhinoceros. Ice Age Nebraska was subject to glacial activity and home to creatures like the giant bear Arctodus, horses, mammoths, mastodon, shovel-tusked proboscideans, and Saber-toothed cats. Local Native Americans devised mythical explanations for fossils like attributing them to water monsters killed by their enemies, the thunderbirds. After formally trained scientists began investigating local fossils, major finds like the Agate Springs mammal bone beds occurred. The Pleistocene mammoths Mammuthus primigenius, Mammuthus columbi, and Mammuthus imperator are the Nebraska state fossils.
Paleontology in Colorado refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Colorado. The geologic column of Colorado spans about one third of Earth's history. Fossils can be found almost everywhere in the state but are not evenly distributed among all the ages of the state's rocks. During the early Paleozoic, Colorado was covered by a warm shallow sea that would come to be home to creatures like brachiopods, conodonts, ostracoderms, sharks and trilobites. This sea withdrew from the state between the Silurian and early Devonian leaving a gap in the local rock record. It returned during the Carboniferous. Areas of the state not submerged were richly vegetated and inhabited by amphibians that left behind footprints that would later fossilize. During the Permian, the sea withdrew and alluvial fans and sand dunes spread across the state. Many trace fossils are known from these deposits.
Paleontology in New Mexico refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of New Mexico. The fossil record of New Mexico is exceptionally complete and spans almost the entire stratigraphic column. More than 3,300 different kinds of fossil organisms have been found in the state. More than 700 of these were new to science and more than 100 of those were type species for new genera. During the early Paleozoic, southern and western New Mexico were submerged by a warm shallow sea that would come to be home to creatures including brachiopods, bryozoans, cartilaginous fishes, corals, graptolites, nautiloids, placoderms, and trilobites. During the Ordovician the state was home to algal reefs up to 300 feet high. During the Carboniferous, a richly vegetated island chain emerged from the local sea. Coral reefs formed in the state's seas while terrestrial regions of the state dried and were home to sand dunes. Local wildlife included Edaphosaurus, Ophiacodon, and Sphenacodon.
Paleontology in the United States can first be traced to the Native Americans, who have been familiar with fossils for thousands of years. They both told myths about them and applied them to practical purposes. African slaves also contributed their knowledge; the first reasonably accurate recorded identification of vertebrate fossils in the new world was made by slaves on a South Carolina plantation who recognized the elephant affinities of mammoth molars uncovered there in 1725. The first major fossil discovery to attract the attention of formally trained scientists were the Ice Age fossils of Kentucky's Big Bone Lick. These fossils were studied by eminent intellectuals like France's George Cuvier and local statesmen and frontiersman like Daniel Boone, Benjamin Franklin, William Henry Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. By the end of the 18th century possible dinosaur fossils had already been found.
The research history of Mammut is extensive given its complicated taxonomic and non-taxonomic histories, with the earliest recorded fossil finds dating back to 1705 in Claverack, New York during the colonial era of what is now the United States of America. Initially thought to belong to biblical antediluvian giants, the fossils were later determined to belong to a proboscidean species as a result of more complete 18th century finds from the locality of Big Bone Lick in what is now Kentucky. The molars were studied by European and American naturalists, who were generally baffled on its lack of analogue to modern elephants, leading to varying hypothesis on the affinities of the teeth. More complete skeletons were found after the independence of the United States colonies from Great Britain within the early 19th century. American historians of the 21st century have made arguments that the early history of M. americanum finds and studies played major roles in shaping American nationalism on the basis of the large sizes and relative completeness of the fossils to disprove the negative theory of social degeneracy in North America.
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