scholarly journals Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Joel Cracraft

The Australian avifauna is one of the most biologically important in the world. For its size, it has the highest diversity and endemism of any continent. Importantly, as a key piece of Gondwana, it was at a crossroads for the early history of modern birds (Neornithes). Indeed, it has phylogenetically deep lineages of palaeognaths, galliforms, anseriforms, caprimulgiforms, parrots, and songbirds. Moreover, patterns of endemism and diversity are well-marked and provide a natural laboratory for the study of speciation and diversification. All of this is why studies of the systematics and taxonomy of Australian birds are so important, for without a clear understanding of the taxonomic limits of taxa and their relationships we cannot hope to make progress toward answering critical evolutionary questions. Nor can we provide the systematic framework for comparative studies in the organismal sciences, especially behaviour, ecology, and conservation biology.

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148
Author(s):  
Joel Cracraft

The Australian avifauna is one of most biologically important in the world. For its size, it has the highest diversity and endemism of any continent. Importantly, as a key piece of Gondwana, it was at a crossroads for the early history of modern birds (Neornithes). Indeed, it has phylogenetically deep lineages of palaeognaths, galliforms, anseriforms, caprimulgiforms, parrots, and songbirds. Moreover, patterns of endemism and diversity are well-marked and provide a natural laboratory for the study of speciation and diversification. All of this is why studies of the systematics and taxonomy of Australian birds are so important, for without a clear understanding of the taxonomic limits of taxa and their relationships we cannot hope to make progress toward answering critical evolutionary questions. Nor can we provide the systematic framework for comparative studies in the organismal sciences, especially behaviour, ecology, and conservation biology.


A brief review of the major advances since 1979 in Silurian and Devonian palaeobotany is followed by a preliminary report on a Gedinnian assemblage from the Welsh Borderland. This is dominated by rhyniopsids and includes several species of Cooksonia and Salopella . Spores have been isolated from a number of taxa. The assemblage is used to illustrate the problems of recognition and classification of early vascular plants. Parallel sedimentological and palaeogeographical studies permit speculation on the ecology and life histories of the plants that colonized the Old Red Continent. It is concluded that the lack of well preserved and independently dated assemblages from elsewhere in the world (an exception being the Baragwanathia flora of Australia) prevents the detection of any provincialism in the late Silurian and early Devonian and makes generalizations on the early history of vascular plants premature.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Peck ◽  
Stephen M. Rowland

ABSTRACT Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894) was a British scientific illustrator and sculptor who illustrated many British exploration reports in the 1830s and 1840s. In the early 1850s, Hawkins was commissioned to create life-size, concrete sculptures of Iguanodon, ichthyosaurs, and other extinct animals for a permanent exhibition in south London. They were the first large sculptures of extinct vertebrates ever made, and they are still on view today. Inspired by his success in England, Hawkins launched a lecture tour and working trip to North America in 1868. Soon after his arrival, he was commissioned to “undertake the resuscitation of a group of animals of the former periods of the American continent” for public display in New York City. Had it been built, this would have been the first paleontological museum in the world. As part of this ambitious project, with the assistance of the American paleontologist Joseph Leidy, Hawkins cast the bones of a recently discovered Hadrosaurus specimen and used them to construct the first articulated dinosaur skeleton ever put on display in a museum. It was unveiled at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in November 1868. Hawkins worked tirelessly on New York’s proposed “Paleozoic Museum” for two years, until his funding was cut by William “Boss” Tweed, the corrupt leader of the Tammany Hall political machine, who grew hostile to the project and abolished the Central Park Commission that had made it possible. When Hawkins defiantly continued to work, without funding, Tweed dispatched a gang of thugs to break into his studio and smash all of the sculptures and molds. Although Hawkins would create several copies of his articulated Hadrosaurus skeleton for other institutions, the prospect of building a grand museum of paleontology in America was forever destroyed by Tweed’s actions.


The Royal Society was not the first scientific society, or organized academy for the promotion of science, to be founded, since it was preceded by the original Accademia del Cimento, which took its rise in 1657, but lived only ten years. The Royal Society is, then, the oldest corporate body of its kind to have enjoyed continuous existence until today. In a like way the Philosophical Transactions was not the earliest scientific periodical to come forth, since the first number of the Journal des Sçavans appeared, on 5 January 1665, two months before the first number of the Transactions . The Journal , however, while much concerned with scientific matters, including scientific books, dealt with the world of learning in general, including literary, legal and theological matters. Its pronouncements often led to stormy controversy, it had a troubled history and finally ceased to appear in 1790. The Transactions , except for a short break when it was replaced by Hooke’s Philosophical Collections , and for an interruption of three years that followed the landing of William of Orange and the flight of James II, has been published continuously from the issue of the first number dated 6 March 1664/5, the present year thus being the three hundredth anniversary of its beginning. Conspicuously connected with the first appearance of the Philosophical Transactions was Henry Oldenburg, a character very much to the fore in the early history of the Society.


2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa M. Wilcox

“It seems to me, now,” reflected Troy Perry, four years after founding a successful new Protestant denomination, “that it must have been a matter of timing, and I think that it was fate, too! God chose me for my mission at a time when He knew the world would respond, once the need was made clear.” While the question of divine ordination is a bit outside the scholar's jurisdiction, the question of timing is a crucial one for historical inquiry, and Perry's remarks show an insightful awareness that the success of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC) was due in large part to timing. As with any successful religious group, however, the seeds of the UFMCC germinated, sprouted, and grew as a result of a multitude of interconnected factors, including both external back-ground factors in American society at large and internal factors within the UFMCC itself. This article relates the history and early growth of the UFMCC to this constellation of factors in order to gain a clearer understanding of both the denomination itself and the social changes of which it was an integral part.


The realization that the behaviour of the Earth has changed radically during geological time has come about largely in the last decade. This development, which constitutes one of the major advances in geological thinking, results from the study of Precambrian phenomena in many parts of the world and in particular from the work of a small number of geochronologists. In the last ten years as large numbers of unfossiliferous Precambrian rocks have been dated, it has become clear that the nature of geological processes has varied throughout geological time and that one of the cardinal doctrines of geology - the concept that the present is the key to the past — could not be applied to the study of the early history of the Earth.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 213
Author(s):  
Nasrul Hasan

Transformation is any displacement of science, the intellectual activity, from teacher to student and so in the context of the growth and development of education in the early history of Islam. The purpose of this discussion to determine the form peralihanilmu and development of Islamic education in the early history of Islam. This writing method descriptive analysis. Discussion regarding the form of change and transition of science in the early history of Islam. Makkah period, the process of transition of knowledge from the companions of the Prophet to be done with the system dealing directly with the Prophet (musyafahah) .After the system says, memorizing and teaching returned as received from the teacher (talaqqi). Both systems are considered to be very tested and most noble among sistempendidikan that ever existed in the world of education. Medina period, is aimed more at political and social education and citizenship. The subject matter of this education is basic thoughts contained in the Charter of Medina and also the teaching of the Koran remains a priority


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Yana Martianova

The article considers a degree of knowledge and the current state of scientific researche in the problem of functioning in camps of integrated units of Ukrainian Galician Army in Czechoslovakia (Deutsch Gabel, Liberec, Josefov), of a number of magazines (including «Voice of the Camp», «Ukrainian Shooter», «Ukrainian Wanderer» and so on). The materials, published on the pages of the above mentioned camp periodicals, represent a special value as the primary sources of the history of UGA camps. Their study is absolutely necessary for understanding the informative-educational and organizational-mobilization functions of the camp press of interned Ukrainian soldiers in the second half of 1919 – 1923. The journalistic period in the camp of international relations of the UGA in Czechoslovakia has established itself as an effective tool for influencing the world outlook and value orientations of Ukrainian soldiers. The idea of a united fighting for the independence of Ukraine. At the same time, in accordance with these living circumstances, in different living conditions in the conditions of emigration, an adaptation of the interned military personnel took place. The publication of camp periodicals became one of the evidence of a clear understanding by their first colleagues of the tasks and prospects of the Ukrainian liberation movement. Thus, we can easily imagine the daily life of the interned soldiers of the UGA in the camp.


Author(s):  
M. F. Burnyeat

In the fourth century BCE, Anaxarchus and Monimus compared the world to stage-painting, to express scepticism about sense-perception and the worthlessness of human affairs, respectively. But the comparison traces back to Democritus’ discussion of Anaxagoras’ famous claim, a century earlier, that ‘appearances are a sight of things unseen’. According to Vitruvius, they were influenced by what Agatharchus had written about stage-painting, something that can be assessed properly only by considering the genre of technical treatises and the claims of those who were first to write on a subject. The comparison with phenomenal experience should ultimately be credited to Anaxagoras, though the points that he and Democritus make differ, owing to their different views of how the macroscopic world is related to underlying reality. These texts are thus not about the early history of perspectival painting, but stem from a fifth-century epistemological debate about what, if anything, sense-perception reveals about reality.


Author(s):  
Patrick Olivelle

The terms ‘renunciation’ and ‘renouncer’ have become commonplace in modern scholarship on ancient and medieval Indian religions. One of the prominent examples of the use of these terms is the seminal study of Louis Dumont (1960), ‘World Renunciation in Indian Religions’, which had a profound impact on later scholarship. He makes several sweeping assertions relating to the centrality of renunciation both within Hinduism and more generally in Indian religions. ‘The secret of Hinduism’, he claims, ‘may be found in the dialogue between the renouncer and the man-in-the-world’ (37). While the ‘man-in-the-world’ is bound in a network of relationships including caste, the renouncer ‘depends upon no one but himself, he is alone’; ‘he thinks as an individual and this is the distinctive trait which opposes him to the man-in-the-world and brings him closer to the western thinker’ (46). It is not this chapter’s intention to analyse these assertions or determine their historical accuracy. Rather, the beginning of this chapter, devoted to exploring the origins of the institution that Dumont elevates to such a central position, defines the terms and categories used. What is ‘renunciation’? Who is a ‘renouncer’? To which Indian institutions and indigenous terms and categories do they refer?


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