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solenodon

(Encyclopedia)solenodon sōlēˈnədŏn [key], venomous insectivorous mammal, genus Solenodon, found in the West Indies. Related to moles and shrews, the solenodon resembles a rat with an elongated snout and coarse...

Zamojski, Jan

(Encyclopedia)Zamojski or Zamoyski, Jan both: yän zämoiˈskē [key], 1542–1605, Polish statesman, general, and author. He championed the rights of the lesser nobility; after the extinction (1572) of the Jagiell...

Athabascan

(Encyclopedia)Athabascan both: –păsˈ– [key], group of related Native American languages forming a branch of the Nadene linguistic family or stock. In the preconquest period, Athabascan was a large and extensi...

hartebeest

(Encyclopedia)hartebeest härˈtĭbēstˌ [key], large African antelope, Alcelaphus bucelaphus. The hartebeest resembles a horse with horns. It has a very long face and a small hump between the shoulders; its coat ...

Alvarez, Luis Walter

(Encyclopedia)Alvarez, Luis Walter, 1911–88, American physicist, b. San Francisco, grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1932, Ph.D. 1936. He was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of a large number of r...

Cro-Magnon man

(Encyclopedia)Cro-Magnon man krō-măgˈnən, –mănˈyən [key], an early Homo sapiens (the species to which modern humans belong) that lived about 40,000 years ago. Skeletal remains and associated artifacts of t...

thylacine

(Encyclopedia)thylacine thīˈləsīnˌ [key] or Tasmanian wolf, carnivorous marsupial, or pouched mammal, of New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania, presumed extinct since 1936. The thylacine is often cited as an exa...

Berg

(Encyclopedia)Berg bĕrk [key], former duchy, W Germany, along the right bank of the Rhine River between the Ruhr and Sieg rivers. Düsseldorf was its chief city. A county in the 12th cent., Berg passed (1348) to t...

biological diversity

(Encyclopedia)biological diversity or biodiversity, the number of species in a given habitat. Scientists have variously estimated that there are from 3 to 30 million extant species, of which 2.5 million have been c...

ivory-billed woodpecker

(Encyclopedia)ivory-billed woodpecker, common name for the largest of the North American woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis. Once plentiful in Southern hardwood forests, it was believed to be extinct or nearing e...