Harlan's Ground Sloth Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths, mammals in the edentate superorder Xenarthra. They may have died out as recently as 1550 in Hispaniola and Cuba (Nowak, 1999), but had long since been extinct on the mainland. Four of the many named species found in the United States are Harlan's Ground Sloth (Paramylodon harlani), Jefferson's Ground Sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii), Laurillard's Ground Sloth (Eremotherium laurillardi), and the Shasta Ground Sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis). All four were massive animals with large claws, and all are thought to have been herbivores. Three species of ground sloths (P. harlani, M. jeffersoni, and N. shastensis) have been found in the assemblage at the La Brea Tar Pits. Harlan's ground sloth was six feet tall when standing. The most common Paramylodon fossil found at La Brea are dermal ossicles: small, oblong spheroids of bone. These small bones were embedded deep in the skin around the neck, shoulders and back of the sloth, and may have served as armor against attacking predators. The smaller ground sloth, less common at the La Brea lagerstätte is the Shasta Ground Sloth. Cryptozoologists often identify the mapinguari, a mythical forest creature of the upper Amazon basin, with a surviving tropical ground sloth or folk memory of these animals. Families[1] Paleontologists divide the more than 80 genera of ground sloths in multiple families. Note that ground sloths do not form a monophyletic group - megalonychid ground sloths are more related to today's living two-toed sloths - than to any other ground sloths. An additional family Rathymotheriidae, containing only the genus Rathymotherium, is sometimes listed, but these taxa are nomina oblita and no longer valid.[verification needed] [edit] Megalonychidae Megalonyx means "giant claw". The megalonychid ground sloths first appeared in the early Oligocene, about 35 million years ago, in southern Argentina (Patagonia). With the rise of the land bridge at Panama, these ground sloths began to migrate north as part of the Great American Interchange. Some lineages of megalonychids increased in size as time progressed. The first species of these were small and may have been partly tree-dwelling, whereas the Pliocene (about 5 to 2 million years ago) species were already approximately half the size of the huge Late Pleistocene Megalonyx jeffersonii from the last ice age. Some West Indian island species were as small as a large cat; their dwarf condition typified both tropical adaptation and their restricted island environment. Megalonyx, a widespread North American genus, lived past the close of the last (Wisconsinan) glaciation, when so many large mammals died out. Remains have been found as far north as Alaska.[2] The earliest known North American megalonychid, Pliometanastes protistus, lived in Florida about 8 million years ago. Several species of Megalonyx have been named; in fact it has been stated[attribution needed] that "nearly every good specimen has been described as a different species".[2] A broader perspective on the group, accounting for age, sex, individual and geographic differences, indicates that only three species are valid (M. leptostomus, M. wheatleyi, and M. jeffersonii) in the late Pliocene and Pleistocene of North America.[3] Jefferson's ground sloth has a special place in modern paleontology, for Thomas Jefferson's letter on Megalonyx, read before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, in August 1796, marked the beginning of vertebrate paleontology in North America.[2] When Lewis and Clark set out, Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis to keep an eye out for ground sloths. He was hoping they would find some living in the Western range. Megalonyx jeffersonii was appropriately named after Thomas Jefferson.[2]

Unknown hammerhead salamanders are reported in cryptozoology from time to time. In 1992, a Japanese artist made a small diplocaulus model which he photographed in a pan on a lawn. The photo looked quite realistic and was circulated in 2004 and 2005 on forums where many thought it was a real salamander. Diplocaulus lived from the late Carboniferous to the late Permian period (roughly 270 million years ago) I had seen the picture of it in the pan with water in a few diffrent videos and so I did some research and found out it was a fake picture and had been extinct for a long time. There are no other videos on youtube that explain this and that is why I made this video. The hammerhead salamander "Diplocaulus" is in fact extinct. [Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] "Diplocaulus in popular culture" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplocaulus Info on a study done in 1980. http://www.jstor.org/pss/35462 When you get there it says "You are not currently authorized to access this article." Dont worry about that I accessed it just fine. Two major subclasses of extinct amphibians are found in the fossil record. They are the Labyrinthodontia and the Lepospondyli. The amphibians of the Labyrinthodontia, which lived during the late Devonian through Triassic periods (345 to 190 million years ago), include the most primitive amphibians represented by the genus Ichthyostega. They were fresh-water carnivorous animals, with tail fins, small scales, and a fishlike vertebral column. Their skulls had many bones, as did those of their presumed crossopterygian ancestor. The Labyrinthodontia, according to the U.S. paleontologist Alfred S. Romer, include three extinct orders: the Ichthyostegalia, the Temnospondyli, and the Anthracosauria. The Anthracosauria are thought to be the ancestors of reptiles and hence of modern birds and mammals. The Temnospondyli are thought by some scientists to be the ancestors of the modern frogs. The amphibians of the subclass Lepospondyli, which lived during the Mississippian through lower Permian periods (340 to 270 million years ago), include the extinct orders Nectridea, Aistopoda, and Microsauria. Members of the latter two orders were elongate. Some had limbs, some had reduced limbs, and some had no limbs. Many scientists suggest that the ancestors of modern salamanders and caecilians are among the lepospondyl. (Lepospondyli Classification) All Lepospondyls are most notably characterised by having simple, spool-shaped vertebra, which were not preformed as cartilage but rather grew as bony cylinders around the notochord. Usually also the upper portion of the vertebra, the neural arch, is fused to the centra (the main body of the vertebra) (Colbert 1969). No clear common ancestors are known, since each of the known clades are already highly specialised when they first appear in the fossil record. It is not known whether the Lepospondyls are an artificial (polyphyletic) group which independently evolved similar characteristics of the vertebra, or whether they descended from a single common ancestor. At one time it was thought that some Lepospondyls are related or perhaps ancestral to modern Urodela, although this view is no longer held. For a long time they were considered one of the three subclasses of amphibians (Romer 1966, Colbert 1969, Carroll 1988) More recently it has been suggested that the Lepospondyls may be related or ancestral to modern amphibians as well as to amniotes (reptiles etc) (Laurin 1996) , that they are an artificial grouping with some members related to both extinct and living amphibians (Batrachomorpha) but not amniotes (Benton 2000), or alternatively are a monophyletic group closely related to the ancestry of amniotes but not to recent amphibians (Benton 2004). Apart from the Nectridea, Lepospondyls are limited in distribution to Europe and North America (Carroll 1988).

Tool & DJ Sakin - Monophyletic Label: Liquid Rec. Catalog#: LQ 0096 Format: Vinyl, 12" Country: Germany Released: 1994 Genre: Electronic Style: Trance, Acid Producer, Recorded By - Ace Cozmic

A day on the Upper Yough with Jeff Snyder. As opposed to "fowl", "poultry" is a term for any kind of domesticated bird or bird captive-raised for meat or eggs; ostriches for example are sometimes kept as poultry, but are neither gamefowl nor waterfowl. In colloquial speech, the term "fowl" is however often used near-synonymously with "poultry" or even "bird", and many languages do not distinguish between "poultry" and "fowl". Nonetheless, the fact that Galliformes and Anseriformes most likely form a monophyletic group makes a distinction between "fowl" and "poultry" warranted.