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Tardigrades are among the most resilient animals known, [11] [12] with individual species able to survive extreme conditions – such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation – that would quickly kill most other known forms of life. [13]
[53] [54] They were originally in the genus Lactobacillus (making their names only 30 letters long), but were transferred to Companilactobacillus after a 2020 taxonomic revision of the former genus which redistributed its species among 25 genera. [28] † Diandongpetalichthys liaojiaoshanensis P'an & Wang, 1978 - order Petalichthyida.
At long irregular intervals, Earth's biosphere suffers a catastrophic die-off, a mass extinction, [9] often comprising an accumulation of smaller extinction events over a relatively brief period. [10] The first known mass extinction was the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, which killed most of the planet's obligate anaerobes.
Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there are over 7 million in total. Animals range in size from 8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long and have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs.
The evolution of tetrapods began about 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period with the earliest tetrapods evolved from lobe-finned fishes. [1] Tetrapods (under the apomorphy-based definition used on this page) are categorized as animals in the biological superclass Tetrapoda, which includes all living and extinct amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
Sloths can be 60 to 80 cm (24 to 31 in) long and, depending on the species, weigh from 3.6 to 7.7 kg (7.9 to 17.0 lb). Two-toed sloths are slightly larger than three-toed sloths. [22] Sloths have long limbs and rounded heads with tiny ears. Three-toed sloths also have stubby tails about 5 to 6 cm (2.0 to 2.4 in) long.
One of the best known early reptiles is Mesosaurus, a genus from the Early Permian that had returned to water, feeding on fish. The earliest reptiles were largely overshadowed by bigger labyrinthodont amphibians, such as Cochleosaurus, and remained a small, inconspicuous part of the fauna until after the small ice age at the end of the ...
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans, an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners. [1]