Neontology in the context of Mollusc

The Hominidae (/hɒˈmɪnɪdiː/; hominids /ˈhɒmɪnɪdz/), whose members are known as the great apes, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); Gorilla (the eastern and western gorilla); Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and Homo, of which only modern humans (Homo sapiens) remain.

Numerous revisions in classifying the great apes have caused the use of the term hominid to change over time. The original meaning of "hominid" referred only to humans (Homo) and their closest extinct relatives. However, by the 1990s humans and other apes were considered to be "hominids".

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is a subject of active research. They became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates after the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event 201.3 mya and their dominance continued throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The fossil record shows that birds are feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier theropods during the Late Jurassic epoch, and are the only dinosaur lineage known to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event approximately 66 mya. Dinosaurs can therefore be divided into avian dinosaurs—birds—and the extinct non-avian dinosaurs, which are all dinosaurs other than birds.

Dinosaurs are varied from taxonomic, morphological and ecological standpoints. Birds, at over 11,000 living species, are among the most diverse groups of vertebrates. Using fossil evidence, paleontologists have identified over 900 distinct genera and more than 1,000 different species of non-avian dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are represented on every continent by both extant species (birds) and fossil remains. Through most of the 20th century, before birds were recognized as dinosaurs, most of the scientific community believed dinosaurs to have been sluggish and cold-blooded. Most research conducted since the 1970s, however, has indicated that dinosaurs were active animals with elevated metabolisms and numerous adaptations for social interaction. Some were herbivorous, others carnivorous. Evidence suggests that all dinosaurs were egg-laying, and that nest-building was a trait shared by many dinosaurs, both avian and non-avian.

The wolf (Canis lupus; pl.: wolves), also known as the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, including the dog and dingo, though grey wolves, as popularly understood, include only naturally-occurring wild subspecies. The wolf is the largest wild extant member of the family Canidae, and is further distinguished from other Canis species by its less pointed ears and muzzle, as well as a shorter torso and a longer tail. The wolf is nonetheless related closely enough to smaller Canis species, such as the coyote and the golden jackal, to produce fertile hybrids with them. The wolf's fur is usually mottled white, brown, grey, and black, although subspecies in the arctic region may be nearly all white.

Of all members of the genus Canis, the wolf is most specialized for cooperative game hunting, as demonstrated by its physical adaptations to tackling large prey, its more social nature, and its highly advanced expressive behaviour, including individual or group howling. It travels in nuclear families, consisting of a mated pair accompanied by their offspring. Offspring may leave to form their own packs on the onset of sexual maturity and in response to competition for food within the pack. Wolves are also territorial, and fights over territory are among the principal causes of mortality. The wolf is mainly a carnivore and feeds on large wild hooved mammals as well as smaller animals, livestock, carrion, and garbage. Single wolves or mated pairs typically have higher success rates in hunting than do large packs. Pathogens and parasites, notably the rabies virus, may infect wolves.

Conifers (/ˈkɒnɪfər/) are a group of seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. They are mainly evergreen trees with a regular branching pattern, reproducing with male and female cones, usually on the same tree. They are wind-pollinated and the seeds are usually dispersed by the wind. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta, also known as Coniferae. All extant conifers except for the Gnetophytes are perennial woody plants with secondary growth. There are over 600 living species.

Conifers first appear in the fossil record over 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous. They became dominant land plants in the Mesozoic, until flowering plants took over many ecosystems in the Cretaceous. Many conifers today are relict species, surviving in a small part of their former ranges. Such relicts include Wollemia, known only from a small area of Australia, and Metasequoia glyptostroboides, known from Cretaceous fossils and surviving in a small area of China.

A mammal (from Latin mamma 'breast') is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia (/məˈmeɪli.ə/). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles and birds, from which their ancestors diverged in the Carboniferous Period over 300 million years ago. Around 6,640 extant species of mammals have been described and divided into 27 orders. The study of mammals is called mammalogy.

The largest orders of mammals, by number of species, are the rodents, bats, and eulipotyphlans (including hedgehogs, moles and shrews). The next three are the primates (including humans, monkeys and lemurs), the even-toed ungulates (including pigs, bovids and whales), and the Carnivora (including cats, dogs, and seals).

Apes, collectively Hominoidea (/ˌhɒmɪˈnɔɪdi.ə/; hominoids), are a superfamily of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. They were more widespread in Africa, Asia, and Europe in prehistory, and, including humans, are found globally. Apes are more closely related to Old World monkeys (family Cercopithecidae) than to the New World monkeys (Platyrrhini), with both Old World monkeys and apes placed in the clade Catarrhini. Apes do not have tails due to a mutation of the TBXT gene. In traditional and non-scientific use, the term ape can include tailless primates taxonomically considered Cercopithecidae (such as the Barbary ape and black ape), and is thus not equivalent to the scientific taxon Hominoidea. There are two extant branches of the superfamily Hominoidea: the gibbons, or lesser apes; and the hominids, or great apes.

• The family Hylobatidae, the lesser apes, include four genera and a total of 20 species of gibbon, including the lar gibbon and the siamang, all native to Asia. They are highly arboreal and bipedal on the ground. They have lighter bodies and smaller social groups than great apes.
• The family Hominidae (hominids), the great apes, includes four genera comprising three extant species of orangutans, two extant species of gorillas, two extant species of chimpanzees, and humans.

Except for gorillas and humans, hominoids are agile climbers of trees. Apes eat a variety of plants and animals. Plants, which can include fruits, leaves, stalks, roots, nuts, and seeds, make up the bulk of their diet. Human diets are sometimes substantially different from that of other hominoids, due in part to the development of technology and a wide range of habitation.

Gorillas are large, primarily herbivorous, great apes that live in the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus Gorilla is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or five subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 96 to 99% depending on what is included, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the bonobos and chimpanzees.

Gorillas are the largest living primates, reaching heights between 1.25 and 1.8 m (4 ft 1 in and 5 ft 11 in), weights between 100 and 270 kg (220 and 600 lb), and arm spans up to 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in), depending on species and sex. They tend to live in troops, with the leader being called a silverback. The eastern gorilla is distinguished from the western by darker fur colour and some other minor morphological differences. Gorillas tend to live 35–40 years in the wild.

Pangolins, sometimes known as scaly anteaters, are mammals of the order Pholidota (/fɒlɪˈdoʊtə/). The one extant family, the Manidae, has three genera: Manis, Phataginus, and Smutsia. Manis comprises four species found in Asia, while Phataginus and Smutsia include two species each, all found in sub-Saharan Africa. These species range in size from 30 to 100 cm (12 to 39 in). Several extinct pangolin species are also known. In September 2023, nine species were reported.

Pangolins have large, protective keratin scales, similar in material to fingernails and toenails, covering their skin; they are the only known mammals with this feature. Depending on the species, they live in hollow trees or burrows. Pangolins are nocturnal, and their diet consists of mainly ants and termites, which they capture using their long tongues. They tend to be solitary animals, meeting only to mate and produce a litter of one to three offspring, which they raise for about two years. Pangolins superficially resemble armadillos, though the two are not closely related; they have undergone convergent evolution.

The American bison (Bison bison; pl.: bison), commonly known as the American buffalo, or simply buffalo (not to be confused with true buffalo), is a species of bison that is endemic (or native) to North America. It is one of two extant species of bison, along with the European bison. Its historical range circa 9000 BC is referred to as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland spanning from Alaska south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Seaboard (nearly to the Atlantic tidewater in some areas), as far north as New York, south to Georgia, and according to some sources, further south to northern Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750.

Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described: the plains bison (B. b. bison), smaller and with a more rounded hump; and the wood bison (B. b. athabascae), the larger of the two and having a taller, square hump. Furthermore, the plains bison has been suggested to consist of a northern plains (B. b. montanae) and a southern plains (B. b. bison) subspecies, bringing the total to three. However, this is generally not supported. The wood bison is one of the largest wild species of extant bovid in the world, surpassed only by the Asian gaur. Among extant land animals in North America, the bison is the heaviest and the longest, and the second tallest after the moose.

Pinus, the pines, is a genus of approximately 110–120 extant tree and shrub species. The genus is currently split into two subgenera, subgenus Pinus (hard pines), and subgenus Strobus (soft pines). Each of the subgenera have been further divided into sections and subsections based in the past on morphology, ecology and biogeography, and more recently increasingly from chloroplast DNA sequencing and whole plastid genomic analysis. While the genetic analysis has given robust results at the higher levels, they often give conflicting results lower in the phylogenetic trees, with species allocated to different subsections (and sometimes different sections) by different studies or even within a study. Within subsections, the genetic relationships between species can be even more complex and conflicting; in one study, three samples of the very distinctive and morphologically constant Pinus lambertiana were placed in three different clades of the subsection Strobus, and similar problems with many other species with widespread nonmonophyly.

Several features are used to distinguish the subgenera, sections, and subsections of pines; the number of leaves (needles) per fascicle, whether the fascicle sheaths are deciduous or persistent, the number of fibrovascular bundles per needle (two in Pinus, one in Strobus), the position of the resin ducts in the needles (internal or external), the presence or shape of the seed wings (rudimentary or effective, articulate or adnate), and the position of the umbo (dorsal or terminal) and presence of a prickle on the scales of the seed cones.

The Great American Biotic Interchange (commonly abbreviated as GABI), also known as the Great American Interchange and the Great American Faunal Interchange, was an important late Cenozoic paleozoogeographic biotic interchange event in which land and freshwater fauna migrated from North America to South America via Central America and vice versa, as the volcanic Isthmus of Panama rose up from the sea floor, forming a land bridge between the previously separated continents. Although earlier dispersals had occurred, probably over water, the migration accelerated dramatically about 2.7 million years (Ma) ago during the Piacenzian age. It resulted from the joining of the Neotropic (roughly South American) and Nearctic (roughly North American) biogeographic realms definitively to form the Americas. The interchange is visible from observation of both biostratigraphy and nature (neontology). Its most dramatic effect is on the zoogeography of mammals, but it also gave an opportunity for reptiles, amphibians, arthropods, weak-flying or flightless birds, and even freshwater fish to migrate. Coastal and marine biota were affected in the opposite manner; the formation of the Central American Isthmus caused what has been termed the Great American Schism, with significant diversification and extinction occurring as a result of the isolation of the Caribbean from the Pacific.

The occurrence of the interchange was first discussed in 1876 by the "father of biogeography", Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace had spent five years exploring and collecting specimens in the Amazon basin. Others who made significant contributions to understanding the event in the century that followed include Florentino Ameghino, W. D. Matthew, W. B. Scott, Bryan Patterson, George Gaylord Simpson and S. David Webb. The Pliocene timing of the formation of the connection between North and South America was discussed in 1910 by Henry Fairfield Osborn.

Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have had their last common ancestor around 34 million years ago. Mysticetes include four extant (living) families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), and Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale). Odontocetes include the Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales), as well as the six families of dolphins and porpoises which are not considered whales in the informal sense.

Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the largest known animal that has ever lived. The sperm whale is the largest toothed predator on Earth. Several whale species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the females are larger than males.

A tetrapod (/ˈtɛtrəˌpɒd/; from Ancient Greek τετρα- (tetra-) 'four' and πούς (poús) 'foot') is any vertebrate animal of the clade Tetrapoda (/tɛˈtræpədə/). Tetrapods include all extant and extinct amphibians and amniotes, with the latter in turn evolving into two major clades, the sauropsids (reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (extinct "pelycosaurs", therapsids and all extant mammals, including humans). Hox gene mutations have resulted in some tetrapods becoming limbless (snakes, legless lizards, and caecilians) or two-limbed (cetaceans, sirenians, some lizards, kiwis, and the extinct moa and elephant birds). Nevertheless, they still qualify as tetrapods through their ancestry, and some retain a pair of vestigial spurs that are remnants of the hindlimbs.

Tetrapods evolved from a group of semiaquatic animals within the tetrapodomorphs which, in turn, evolved from ancient lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) around 390 million years ago in the Middle Devonian period. Early tetrapodomorphs were transitional between lobe-finned fishes and true four-limbed tetrapods, though most still fit the body plan expected of other lobe-finned fishes. The oldest fossils of four-limbed vertebrates (tetrapods in the broad sense of the word) are trackways from the Middle Devonian, and body fossils became common near the end of the Late Devonian, around 370–360 million years ago. These Devonian species all belonged to the tetrapod stem group, meaning that they did not belong to any modern tetrapod group.

The Oligocene is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period that extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present (33.9±0.1 to 23.04±0.05 Ma). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the exact dates of the start and end of the epoch are slightly uncertain. The name Oligocene was coined in 1854 by the German paleontologist Heinrich Ernst Beyrich from his studies of marine beds in Belgium and Germany. The name comes from Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning "few", and καινός (kainós), meaning "new", and refers to the sparsity of extant forms of molluscs. The Oligocene is preceded by the Eocene Epoch and is followed by the Miocene Epoch. The Oligocene is the third and final epoch of the Paleogene Period.

The Oligocene is often considered an important time of transition, a link between the archaic world of the tropical Eocene and the more modern ecosystems of the Miocene. Major changes during the Oligocene included a global expansion of grasslands, and a regression of tropical broad leaf forests to the equatorial belt.

Bovidae is the biological family of cloven-hoofed, ruminant mammals that includes cattle, bison, buffalo, antelopes, and goat-antelopes such as sheep and goats. There are 143 extant species and 300 known extinct species of bovids, which are divided into either 11 major subfamilies, or two subfamilies with thirteen tribes. The earliest known bovid had evolved by 20 million years ago, in the early Miocene.

The bovids show great variation in size and colouration of their fur. With exceptions in some domesticated forms, all male bovids have two or more horns, and in many species, females possess horns too. The size and shape of the horns vary greatly, but the basic structure is always one or more pairs of simple, unbranched, bony protrusions of the skull covered in a permanent sheath of keratin, and often with a spiral, twisted, or fluted shape, Most bovids bear 30 to 32 teeth.