Macroevolutionary trends in the genus Torvoneustes (Crocodylomorpha: Metriorhynchidae) and discovery of a giant specimen from the Late Jurassic of Kimmeridge, UK

2019 ◽  
Vol 189 (2) ◽  
pp. 483-493
Author(s):  
Mark T Young ◽  
Davide Foffa ◽  
Lorna Steel ◽  
Steve Etches
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Body Length ◽  
Late Jurassic ◽  
Occipital Region ◽  
Posterior Surface ◽  
Carotid Canal ◽  
Attachment Sites ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Clay Formation ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract The metriorhynchid crocodylomorph fauna of the Late Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation (KCF) of the UK was highly diverse. One genus from this Formation, Torvoneustes, was unique in evolving dentition similar to known chelonivorous crocodylomorphs and enlarged attachment sites for the pterygoideus adductor musculature. Here we report the largest known Torvoneustes specimen, the occipital region of a large cranium that was discovered on the shore of Brandy Bay, Dorset, UK (KCF). We also report three tooth crowns discovered during the 19th century from Oxfordshire that can also be referred to Torvoneustes. The partial braincase is unique in having: verticalized basioccipital tuberosities that have thickened ventral margins, the notch between the basioccipital tuberosities is a narrow inverted ‘U’-shape and a subrectangular-shaped carotid canal foramina. The presence of ‘occipital fossae’ (deep concavities with the hypoglossal foramina in their dorsomedial corners) and carotid foramina with raised rims relative to the basioccipital posterior surface, allow us to refer it to Torvoneustes. Although incomplete, the exceptional size of the specimen demonstrates that Torvoneustes attained larger body lengths than previously supposed (3.7–4.7 m). Comparing the dimensions of this specimen to other metriorhynchids suggests that at least some Torvoneustes specimens rivalled Plesiosuchus manselii in body length.

scholarly journals Rhetorical uses of precise numbers and semi-magical round numbers in political discourse about COVID-19: Examples from the government of the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 095792652110131
Author(s):  
Michael Billig
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
British Government ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Round Numbers ◽  
Magical Power ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

This paper examines how the British government has used statistics about COVID-19 for political ends. A distinction is made between precise and round numbers. Historically, using round numbers to estimate the spread of disease gave way in the 19th century to the sort precise, but not necessarily accurate, statistics that are now being used to record COVID-19. However, round numbers have continued to exert rhetorical, ‘semi-magical’ power by simultaneously conveying both quantity and quality. This is demonstrated in examples from the British government’s claims about COVID-19. The paper illustrates how senior members of the UK government use ‘good’ round numbers to frame their COVID-19 goals and to announce apparent achievements. These round numbers can provide political incentives to manipulate the production of precise number; again examples from the UK government are given.

Academic surgery in the UK and the Surgical Research Society 50 years ago

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Harold Ellis
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Medical Schools ◽  
Research Society ◽  
Surgical Research ◽  
Academic Surgery ◽  
Surgical Units ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

Fifty years ago, in 1970, academic surgical units had finally been established throughout the universities in the UK. Such departments had been created in the Scottish university cities in the 19th century; some medical schools in London had resisted this custom, but by now these bastions of the old system had surrendered!

scholarly journals Evidence of macrophagous teleosaurid crocodylomorphs in the Corallian Group (Oxfordian, Late Jurassic) of the UK

PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Foffa ◽  
Mark T. Young ◽  
Stephen L. Brusatte
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Late Jurassic ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Lower Jaw ◽  
Abundance And Diversity ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Clay Formation ◽  
Tooth Count

Teleosaurids were a group of semi-aquatic crocodylomorphs with a fossil record that spanned the Jurassic Period. In the UK, abundant specimens are known from the Oxford Clay Formation (OCF, Callovian to lower Oxfordian), but are very rare in the Kimmeridge Clay Formation (KCF, Kimmeridgian to lower Tithonian), despite their abundance in some contemporaneous deposits in continental Europe. Unfortunately, due to the paucity of material from the intermediate ‘Corallian Gap’ (middle to upper Oxfordian), we lack an understanding of how and why teleosaurid taxic abundance and diversity declined from the OCF to the KCF. The recognition of an incomplete teleosaurid lower jaw from the Corallian of Weymouth (Dorset, UK) begins to rectify this. The vertically oriented dentition, blunt tooth apices, intense enamel ornamentation that shifts to an anastomosed pattern apically, and deep reception pits on the dentary unambiguously demonstrates the affinity of this specimen with an unnamed sub-clade of macrophagous/durophagous teleosaurids (‘Steneosaurus’obtusidens+Machimosaurus). The high symphyseal tooth count allows us to exclude the specimen fromM. hugiiandM. mosae, but in absence of more diagnostic material we cannot unambiguously assign DORCM G.3939 to a more specific level. Nevertheless, this specimen represents the first mandibular material referable to Teleosauridae from the poorly sampled middle-upper Oxfordian time-span in the UK.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Hanks ◽  
Richard Coates ◽  
Peter McClure
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
Family Names ◽  
Oxford Dictionary ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

Over 45,000 entriesThis huge new dictionary is the ultimate reference work on family names of the UK, covering English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames. It includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers, and those that had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census.Each entry contains lists of variant spellings of the name, an explanation of its origins (including the etymology), lists of early bearers showing evidence for formation and continuity from the date of formation down to the 19th century, geographical distribution, and, where relevant, genealogical and bibliographical notes, making this a fully comprehensive work on family names.This authoritative guide also includes an introductory essay explaining the historical background, formation, and typology of surnames and a guide to surnames research and family history research. Additional material also includes a list of published and unpublished lists of surnames from the Middle Ages to the present day.

scholarly journals First report of Plesiochelys etalloni and Tropidemys langii from the Late Jurassic of the UK and the palaeobiogeography of plesiochelyid turtles

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 150470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémy Anquetin ◽  
Sandra D. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Late Jurassic ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Jura Mountains ◽  
Marine Turtles ◽  
Coastal Marine ◽  
French Jura ◽  
Specific Variation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Clay Formation ◽  
First Time

Plesiochelyidae is a clade of relatively large coastal marine turtles that inhabited the shallow epicontinental seas that covered western Europe during the Late Jurassic. Although the group has been reported from many deposits, the material is rarely identified at the species level. Here, we describe historical plesiochelyid material from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation of England and compare it with contemporaneous localities from the continent. An isolated basicranium is referred to the plesiochelyid Plesiochelys etalloni based notably on the presence of a fully ossified pila prootica. This specimen represents the largest individual known so far for this species and is characterized by remarkably robust features. It is, however, uncertain whether this represents an ontogenetic trend towards robustness in this species, some kind of specific variation (temporal, geographical or sexual), or an abnormal condition of this particular specimen. Four other specimens from the Kimmeridge Clay are referred to the plesiochelyid Tropidemys langii . This contradicts a recent study that failed to identify this species in this formation. This is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that the presence of Plesiochelys etalloni and Tropidemys langii is confirmed outside the Swiss and French Jura Mountains. Our results indicate that some plesiochelyids had a wide palaeobiogeographic distribution during the Kimmeridgian.

scholarly journals An investigation of the genusMesacanthus(Chordata: Acanthodii) from the Orcadian Basin and Midland Valley areas of Northern and Central Scotland using traditional morphometrics

PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew G. Baron
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Middle Devonian ◽  
Lower Devonian ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Red Sandstone ◽  
Morphometric Analyses ◽  
Orcadian Basin ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

Mesacanthusis a common and speciose genus of acanthodian fish from Lower Old Red Sandstone and Middle Old Red Sandstone assemblages (representing the Lower Devonian and Middle Devonian respectively) and is well represented in many palaeoichthyology collections in the UK. Based upon descriptions given during the 19th century, specimens of the genusMesacanthusfrom the Orcadian Basin and Midland Valley areas of Northern and Central Scotland have historically been referred to a number of different species; of these, the most frequently discussed in the literature areM. mitchelli,M. peachiandM. pusillus. In order to test the validity of these three species, traditional morphometric analyses were carried out on over 100 specimens ofMesacanthus, from both the Lower Devonian and the Middle Devonian, that cover the full range of known localities for these taxa in Northern and Central Scotland. Based upon morphological and morphometric comparisons, this investigation has found that at least two species ofMesacanthusare valid (M. mitchelliandM. pusillus) as specimens from the Lower Devonian and Middle Devonian have been shown to differ significantly in a number of important ways. However, no evidence has been found for the validity of the second and distinct Middle Devonian species,M. peachi.

scholarly journals Transfers and Implementations of a Swedish Manual Work Program: Sloyd and Entrepreneurial Power

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Martin Lawn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Manual Work ◽  
Work Program ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Roll Out

Sloyd, a Swedish handwork programme for schools, beginning in the late years of the 19th century, was influential in Sweden but almost immediately it began to influence teachers and educators from other countries. This influence is explored in this paper. Using transnational historiography, the sites of influence, and the flow of people and texts, is explored. The focus here is on the circulations of ideas and practices between states, and in particular, between Sweden, the US, the UK and India, and the particular ways in which this flow and embedding of Sloyd occurred.The paper is about Sloyd and about the conditions underlying its influence in other countries, broadly from the 1890s to the 1930s, although its effects continued to roll out across the world after this period.

Tobacco

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-589
Author(s):  
ARNOLD BURGEN
Keyword(s):  
Lung Cancer ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Tobacco Use ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

Tobacco use was well established among the inhabitants of the Americas when Columbus made his epic voyage. They smoked it in pipes and as cigars and also used it as snuff; it played an important role in social and religious practices. By 1550 pipe smoking was well established in Europe, to be largely supplanted by snuff in the 18th century and by cigarettes in the latter part of the 19th century. It was only proven in the 1950s that smoking was the major cause of lung cancer, which in turn, was responsible for an increasing proportion of deaths. Efforts to reduce smoking have had a limited success so far, but the overall incidence of lung cancer in the UK is now falling. Patterns across Europe are generally similar.

Hunting for Previous Coronavirus Pandemics Using Corpus Linguistic Analysis of 19th Century British Newspapers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosita Solovejute ◽  
Derek Gatherer
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Molecular Phylogenetic ◽  
Pandemic Strains ◽  
Human Coronaviruses ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century

COVID-19 is the first known coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, the seasonal circulation of the four milder coronaviruses of humans – OC43, NL63, 229E and HKU1 – raises the possibility that these viruses are the descendants of more ancient coronavirus pandemics. This proposal arises by analogy to the observed descent of seasonal influenza subtypes H2N2 (now extinct), H3N2 and H1H1 from the pandemic strains of 1957, 1968 and 2009, respectively. Recent historical revisionist speculation has focussed on the influenza pandemic of 1889-1892, based on molecular phylogenetic reconstructions that show the emergence of human coronavirus OC43 around that time, probably by zoonosis from cattle. If the “Russian influenza”, as The Times named it in early 1890, was not influenza but caused by a coronavirus, the origins of the other three milder human coronaviruses may also have left a residue of clinical evidence in the 19th century medical literature and popular press. In this paper, we search digitised 19th century British newspapers for evidence of previously unsuspected coronavirus pandemics. We conclude that there is little or no corpus linguistic signal in the UK national press for large-scale outbreaks of unidentified respiratory disease for the period 1785 to 1890.

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