title: Basal ganglia

text: Two models have been proposed for the basal ganglia, one being that actions are generated by a "critic" in the ventral striatum and estimates value, and the actions are carried out by an "actor" in the dorsal striatum. Another model proposes the basal ganglia acts as a selection mechanism, where actions are generated in the cortex and are selected based on context by the basal ganglia. The CBGTC loop is also involved in reward discounting, with firing increasing with an unexpected or greater than expected reward. One review supported the idea that the cortex was involved in learning actions regardless of their outcome, while the basal ganglia was involved in selecting appropriate actions based on associative reward based trial and error learning.


title: Basal ganglia

text: The basal ganglia has been proposed to gate what enters and what doesn't enter working memory. One hypothesis proposes that the direct pathway (Go, or excitatory) allows information into the PFC, where it stays independent of the pathway, however another theory proposes that in order for information to stay in the PFC the direct pathway needs to continue reverberating. The short indirect pathway has been proposed to, in a direct push pull antagonism with the direct pathway, close the gate to the PFC. Together these mechanisms regulate working memory focus.


title: Basal ganglia

text: Basal ganglia disease is a group of movement disorders that result from either excessive output from the basal ganglia to the thalamus – hypokinetic disorders, or from insufficient output – hyperkinetic disorders. Hypokinetic disorders arise from an excessive output from the basal ganglia, which inhibits the output from the thalamus to the cortex, and thus limits voluntary movement. Hyperkinetic disorders result from a low output from the basal ganglia to the thalamus which gives not enough inhibition to the thalamic projections to the cortex and thus gives uncontrolled/involuntary movements. Dysfunction of the basal ganglia circuitry can also lead to other disorders.


title: Basal ganglia

text: The acceptance that the basal ganglia system constitutes one major cerebral system took time to arise. The first anatomical identification of distinct subcortical structures was published by Thomas Willis in 1664. For many years, the term corpus striatum was used to describe a large group of subcortical elements, some of which were later discovered to be functionally unrelated. For many years, the putamen and the caudate nucleus were not associated with each other. Instead, the putamen was associated with the pallidum in what was called the nucleus lenticularis or nucleus lentiformis.


title: Basal ganglia

text: A thorough reconsideration by Cécile and Oskar Vogt (1941) simplified the description of the basal ganglia by proposing the term striatum to describe the group of structures consisting of the caudate nucleus, the putamen, and the mass linking them ventrally, the nucleus accumbens. The striatum was named on the basis of the striated (striped) appearance created by radiating dense bundles of striato-pallido-nigral axons, described by anatomist Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson (1912) as "pencil-like".


title: Basal ganglia

text: The anatomical link of the striatum with its primary targets, the pallidum and the substantia nigra, was discovered later. The name "globus pallidus" was attributed by Déjerine to Burdach (1822). For this, the Vogts proposed the simpler "pallidum". The term "locus niger" was introduced by Félix Vicq-d'Azyr as "tache noire" in (1786), though that structure has since become known as the substantia nigra, due to contributions by Von Sömmering in 1788. The structural similarity between the substantia nigra and globus pallidus was noted by Mirto in 1896. Together, the two are known as the pallidonigral ensemble, which represents the core of the basal ganglia. Altogether, the main structures of the basal ganglia are linked to each other by the striato-pallido-nigral bundle, which passes through the pallidum, crosses the internal capsule as the "comb bundle of Edinger", and finally reaches the substantia nigra.


title: Basal ganglia

text: Additional structures that later became associated with the basal ganglia are the "body of Luys" (1865) (nucleus of Luys on the figure) or subthalamic nucleus, whose lesion was known to produce movement disorders. More recently, other areas such as the centromedian nucleus and the pedunculopontine complex have been thought to be regulators of the basal ganglia.


title: Basal ganglia

text: Near the beginning of the 20th century, the basal ganglia system was first associated with motor functions, as lesions of these areas would often result in disordered movement in humans (chorea, athetosis, Parkinson's disease).


title: Basal ganglia

text: The nomenclature of the basal ganglia system and its components has always been problematic. Early anatomists, seeing the macroscopic anatomical structure but knowing nothing of the cellular architecture or neurochemistry, grouped together components that are now believed to have distinct functions (such as the internal and external segments of the globus pallidus), and gave distinct names to components that are now thought to be functionally parts of a single structure (such as the caudate nucleus and putamen).


title: Basal ganglia

text: The term "basal" comes from the fact that most of its elements are located in the basal part of the forebrain. The term ganglia is a misnomer: In modern usage, neural clusters are called "ganglia" only in the peripheral nervous system; in the central nervous system they are called "nuclei". For this reason, the basal ganglia are also occasionally known as the "basal nuclei". Terminologia anatomica (1998), the international authority for anatomical naming, retained "nuclei basales", but this is not commonly used.


title: Basal ganglia

text: The International Basal Ganglia Society (IBAGS) informally considers the basal ganglia to be made up of the striatum, the pallidum (with two nuclei), the substantia nigra (with its two distinct parts), and the subthalamic nucleus, whereas Terminologia anatomica excludes the last two. Some neurologists have included the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus as part of the basal ganglia, and some have also included the pedunculopontine nucleus.


title: Basal ganglia

text: The basal ganglia form one of the basic components of the forebrain, and can be recognized in all species of vertebrates. Even in the lamprey (generally considered one of the most primitive of vertebrates), striatal, pallidal, and nigral elements can be identified on the basis of anatomy and histochemistry.


title: Basal ganglia

text: The names given to the various nuclei of the basal ganglia are different in different species. In cats and rodents the internal globus pallidus is known as the "entopeduncular nucleus". In birds the striatum is called the "paleostriatum augmentatum" and the external globus pallidus is called the "paleostriatum primitivum".


title: Basal ganglia

text: A clear emergent issue in comparative anatomy of the basal ganglia is the development of this system through phylogeny as a convergent cortically re-entrant loop in conjunction with the development and expansion of the cortical mantle. There is controversy, however, regarding the extent to which convergent selective processing occurs versus segregated parallel processing within re-entrant closed loops of the basal ganglia. Regardless, the transformation of the basal ganglia into a cortically re-entrant system in mammalian evolution occurs through a re-direction of pallidal (or "paleostriatum primitivum") output from midbrain targets such as the superior colliculus, as occurs in sauropsid brain, to specific regions of the ventral thalamus and from there back to specified regions of the cerebral cortex that form a subset of those cortical regions projecting into the striatum. The abrupt rostral re-direction of the pathway from the internal segment of the globus pallidus into the ventral thalamus—via the path of the ansa lenticularis—could be viewed as a footprint of this evolutionary transformation of basal ganglia outflow and targeted influence.


title: Euphoria (Israeli TV series)

text: Euphoria (, "Oforia") is an Israeli teen drama television miniseries created and written by Ron Leshem and directed by Dafna Levin, broadcast on Hot 3 from 30 November 2012 to 1 February 2013. The series follows a group of 17-year-olds who spend their time carelessly having sex and taking drugs, with seemingly no parental authority. Adults appear in the series only rarely, and are always filmed at an angle that obscures their faces. Some of the series plot is based on a true story. "Skins" has been named as an influence on the creators of the series.


title: Euphoria (Israeli TV series)

text: In 2019, "Euphoria" was adapted into an American television series of the same title, which premiered on HBO on 16 June 2019.


title: Polynesians

text: Polynesians form an ethnolinguistic group of closely related people who are native to Polynesia (islands in the Polynesian Triangle), an expansive region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Southeast Asia and form part of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group with an Urheimat in Taiwan. They speak the Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic subfamily of the Austronesian language family.


title: Polynesians

text: Polynesians have acquired a reputation as great navigators—their canoes reached the most remote corners of the Pacific, allowing the settlement of islands as far apart as Hawaii, Rapanui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa (New Zealand). The people of Polynesia accomplished this voyaging using ancient navigation skills of reading stars, currents, clouds and bird movements—skills passed to successive generations down to the present day.


title: Polynesians

text: Polynesians, including Samoans, Tongans, Niueans, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian Mā'ohi, Hawaiian Māoli, Marquesans and New Zealand Māori, are a subset of the Austronesian peoples. They share the same origins as the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia), Micronesia, and Madagascar. This is supported by genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence.


title: Polynesians

text: There are multiple hypotheses on the ultimate origin and mode of dispersal of the Austronesian peoples, but the most widely accepted theory is that modern Austronesians originated from migrations out of Taiwan between 3000 and 1000 BC. Using relatively advanced maritime innovations like the catamaran, outrigger boats, and crab claw sails, they rapidly colonized the islands of both the Indian and the Pacific oceans. They were the first humans to cross vast distances of water on ocean-going boats. Polynesians are known to have definitely originated from a branch of the Austronesian migrations in Island Melanesia, despite the popularity of rejected hypotheses like Thor Heyerdahl's belief that Polynesians are descendants of "bearded white men" who sailed on primitive rafts from South America.


title: Polynesians

text: The direct ancestors of the Polynesians were the Neolithic Lapita culture, which emerged in Island Melanesia and Micronesia at around 1500 BC from a convergence of migration waves of Austronesians originating from both Island Southeast Asia to the west and an earlier Austronesian migration to Micronesia to the north. The culture was distinguished by distinct dentate-stamped pottery. However, their eastward expansion stopped when they reached the western Polynesian islands of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga by around 900 BC. This remained the furthest extent of the Austronesian expansion in the Pacific for around 1,500 years, during which the Lapita culture in these islands abruptly lost the technology of making pottery for unknown reasons. They resumed their eastward migrations by around 700 AD, spreading to the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and the Marquesas. From here, they spread further to Hawaii by 900 AD, Easter Island by 1000 AD, and finally New Zealand by 1200 AD.


title: Polynesians

text: Analysis by Kayser "et al." (2008) discovered that only 21% of the Polynesian autosomal gene pool is of Australo-Melanesian origin, with the rest (79%) being of Austronesian origin. Another study by Friedlaender "et al." (2008) also confirmed that Polynesians are closer genetically to Micronesians, Taiwanese Aborigines, and Islander Southeast Asians than to Papuans. The study concluded that Polynesians moved through Melanesia fairly rapidly, allowing only limited admixture between Austronesians and Papuans. Polynesians belong almost entirely to the Haplogroup B (mtDNA) especially to mtDNA B4a1a1 (Polynesian motif), and thus the high frequencies of mtDNA B4 in the Polynesians are the result of drift and represent the descendants of a few Austronesian females who mixed with Papuan males. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift due to the ancestors of Polynesian being very few in numbers. As a result of founder effect, the Polynesian are distinctively different both genotypically and phenotypically from the parent population from which it is derived. This is due to new population being established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population which also causes a loss of genetic variation.


title: Polynesians

text: Soares "et al." (2008) have argued for an older pre-Holocene Sundaland origin in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) based on mitochondrial DNA. The "out of Taiwan model" was challenged by a study from Leeds University and published in "Molecular Biology and Evolution". Examination of mitochondrial DNA lineages shows that they have been evolving in ISEA for longer than previously believed. Ancestors of the Polynesians arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea at least 6,000 to 8,000 years ago.


title: Polynesians

text: A 2014 study by Lipson "et al." using whole genome data supports the findings of Kayser "et al." Modern Polynesians were shown to have lower levels of admixture with Australo-Melanesians than Austronesians in Island Melanesia. Regardless, both show admixture, along with other Austronesian populations outside of Taiwan, indicating varying degrees of intermarriage between the incoming Neolithic Austronesian settlers and the preexisting Paleolithic Australo-Melanesian populations of Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia.


title: Polynesians

text: Other studies in 2016 and 2017 also support the implications that the earliest Lapita settlers mostly bypassed New Guinea, coming directly from Taiwan or the northern Philippines. The intermarriage and admixture with Australo-Melanesian Papuans evident in the genetics of modern Polynesians (as well as Islander Melanesians) occurred after the settlement of Tonga and Vanuatu.


title: Polynesians

text: A 2020 study found that the Polynesians and the Indigenous peoples of South America, came in contact around 1200, centuries before Europeans interacted with either group.


title: Polynesians

text: There are an estimated 2 million ethnic Polynesians and many of partial Polynesian descent worldwide, the majority of whom live in Polynesia, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The Polynesian peoples are shown below in their distinctive ethnic and cultural groupings (estimates of the larger groups are shown):


title: Fossil

text: A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the "fossil record".


title: Fossil

text: Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure the absolute ages of rocks and the fossils they host.


title: Fossil

text: There are many processes that lead to fossilization, including permineralization, casts and molds, authigenic mineralization, replacement and recrystallization, adpression, carbonization, and bioimmuration.


title: Fossil

text: Fossils vary in size from one-micrometre (1 µm) bacteria to dinosaurs and trees, many meters long and weighing many tons. A fossil normally preserves only a portion of the deceased organism, usually that portion that was partially mineralized during life, such as the bones and teeth of vertebrates, or the chitinous or calcareous exoskeletons of invertebrates. Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces (coprolites). These types of fossil are called trace fossils or "ichnofossils", as opposed to "body fossils". Some fossils are biochemical and are called "chemofossils" or biosignatures.


title: Fossil

text: Though the fossil record is incomplete, numerous studies have demonstrated that there is enough information available to give us a good understanding of the pattern of diversification of life on Earth. In addition, the record can predict and fill gaps such as the discovery of Tiktaalik in the arctic of Canada.


title: Fossil

text: Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried. The empty spaces within an organism (spaces filled with liquid or gas during life) become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces. This process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils. For permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death, otherwise the remains are destroyed by scavengers or decomposition. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil. Some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth; other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis.


title: Fossil

text: In some cases, the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an "external mold". If this void is later filled with sediment, the resulting "cast" resembles what the organism looked like. An endocast, or "internal mold", is the result of sediments filling an organism's interior, such as the inside of a bivalve or snail or the hollow of a skull. Endocasts are sometimes termed , especially when bivalves are preserved this way.


title: Fossil

text: This is a special form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism (or fragment of organism) can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, resulting in a nodule forming around it. If this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented examples of such mineralization.


title: Fossil

text: Replacement occurs when the shell, bone, or other tissue is replaced with another mineral. In some cases mineral replacement of the original shell occurs so gradually and at such fine scales that microstructural features are preserved despite the total loss of original material. A shell is said to be "recrystallized" when the original skeletal compounds are still present but in a different crystal form, as from aragonite to calcite.


title: Fossil

text: Compression fossils, such as those of fossil ferns, are the result of chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules composing the organism's tissues. In this case the fossil consists of original material, albeit in a geochemically altered state. This chemical change is an expression of diagenesis. Often what remains is a carbonaceous film known as a phytoleim, in which case the fossil is known as a compression. Often, however, the phytoleim is lost and all that remains is an impression of the organism in the rock—an impression fossil. In many cases, however, compressions and impressions occur together. For instance, when the rock is broken open, the phytoleim will often be attached to one part (compression), whereas the counterpart will just be an impression. For this reason, one term covers the two modes of preservation: "adpression".


title: Fossil

text: Because of their antiquity, an unexpected exception to the alteration of an organism's tissues by chemical reduction of the complex organic molecules during fossilization has been the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, including blood vessels, and the isolation of proteins and evidence for DNA fragments. In 2014, Mary Schweitzer and her colleagues reported the presence of iron particles (goethite-aFeO(OH)) associated with soft tissues recovered from dinosaur fossils. Based on various experiments that studied the interaction of iron in haemoglobin with blood vessel tissue they proposed that solution hypoxia coupled with iron chelation enhances the stability and preservation of soft tissue and provides the basis for an explanation for the unforeseen preservation of fossil soft tissues. However, a slightly older study based on eight taxa ranging in time from the Devonian to the Jurassic found that reasonably well-preserved fibrils that probably represent collagen were preserved in all these fossils and that the quality of preservation depended mostly on the arrangement of the collagen fibers, with tight packing favoring good preservation. There seemed to be no correlation between geological age and quality of preservation, within that timeframe.


title: Fossil

text: Fossils that are carbonized or coalified consist of the organic remains which have been reduced primarily to the chemical element carbon. Carbonized fossils consist of a thin film which forms a silhouette of the original organism, and the original organic remains were typically soft tissues. Coalified fossils consist primarily of coal, and the original organic remains were typically woody in composition.


title: Fossil

text: Bioimmuration occurs when a skeletal organism overgrows or otherwise subsumes another organism, preserving the latter, or an impression of it, within the skeleton. Usually it is a sessile skeletal organism, such as a bryozoan or an oyster, which grows along a substrate, covering other sessile sclerobionts. Sometimes the bioimmured organism is soft-bodied and is then preserved in negative relief as a kind of external mold. There are also cases where an organism settles on top of a living skeletal organism that grows upwards, preserving the settler in its skeleton. Bioimmuration is known in the fossil record from the Ordovician to the Recent.


title: Fossil

text: Index fossils (also known as guide fossils, indicator fossils or zone fossils) are fossils used to define and identify geologic periods (or faunal stages). They work on the premise that, although different sediments may look different depending on the conditions under which they were deposited, they may include the remains of the same species of fossil. The shorter the species' time range, the more precisely different sediments can be correlated, and so rapidly evolving species' fossils are particularly valuable. The best index fossils are common, easy to identify at species level and have a broad distribution—otherwise the likelihood of finding and recognizing one in the two sediments is poor.


title: Fossil

text: Trace fossils consist mainly of tracks and burrows, but also include coprolites (fossil feces) and marks left by feeding. Trace fossils are particularly significant because they represent a data source that is not limited to animals with easily fossilized hard parts, and they reflect animal behaviours. Many traces date from significantly earlier than the body fossils of animals that are thought to have been capable of making them. Whilst exact assignment of trace fossils to their makers is generally impossible, traces may for example provide the earliest physical evidence of the appearance of moderately complex animals (comparable to earthworms).


title: Fossil

text: Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Prior to this they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones." They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms. Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to over 60 centimetres.


title: Fossil

text: A "transitional fossil" is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode of living from the ancestral group. Because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there is usually no way to know exactly how close a transitional fossil is to the point of divergence. These fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human constructs that have been imposed in hindsight on a continuum of variation.


title: Fossil

text: Microfossil is a descriptive term applied to fossilized plants and animals whose size is just at or below the level at which the fossil can be analyzed by the naked eye. A commonly applied cutoff point between "micro" and "macro" fossils is 1 mm. Microfossils may either be complete (or near-complete) organisms in themselves (such as the marine plankters foraminifera and coccolithophores) or component parts (such as small teeth or spores) of larger animals or plants. Microfossils are of critical importance as a reservoir of paleoclimate information, and are also commonly used by biostratigraphers to assist in the correlation of rock units.


title: Fossil

text: Fossil resin (colloquially called amber) is a natural polymer found in many types of strata throughout the world, even the Arctic. The oldest fossil resin dates to the Triassic, though most dates to the Cenozoic. The excretion of the resin by certain plants is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation for protection from insects and to seal wounds. Fossil resin often contains other fossils called inclusions that were captured by the sticky resin. These include bacteria, fungi, other plants, and animals. Animal inclusions are usually small invertebrates, predominantly arthropods such as insects and spiders, and only extremely rarely a vertebrate such as a small lizard. Preservation of inclusions can be exquisite, including small fragments of DNA.


title: Fossil

text: A "derived", "reworked" or is a fossil found in rock that accumulated significantly later than when the fossilized animal or plant died. Reworked fossils are created by erosion exhuming (freeing) fossils from the rock formation in which they were originally deposited and their redeposition in a younger sedimentary deposit.


title: Fossil

text: Fossil wood is wood that is preserved in the fossil record. Wood is usually the part of a plant that is best preserved (and most easily found). Fossil wood may or may not be petrified. The fossil wood may be the only part of the plant that has been preserved: therefore such wood may get a special kind of botanical name. This will usually include "xylon" and a term indicating its presumed affinity, such as "Araucarioxylon" (wood of "Araucaria" or some related genus), "Palmoxylon" (wood of an indeterminate palm), or "Castanoxylon" (wood of an indeterminate chinkapin).


title: Fossil

text: The term subfossil can be used to refer to remains, such as bones, nests, or fecal deposits, whose fossilization process is not complete, either because the length of time since the animal involved was living is too short (less than 10,000 years) or because the conditions in which the remains were buried were not optimal for fossilization. Subfossils are often found in caves or other shelters where they can be preserved for thousands of years. The main importance of subfossil vs. fossil remains is that the former contain organic material, which can be used for radiocarbon dating or extraction and sequencing of DNA, protein, or other biomolecules. Additionally, isotope ratios can provide much information about the ecological conditions under which extinct animals lived. Subfossils are useful for studying the evolutionary history of an environment and can be important to studies in paleoclimatology.


title: Fossil

text: Subfossils are often found in depositionary environments, such as lake sediments, oceanic sediments, and soils. Once deposited, physical and chemical weathering can alter the state of preservation, and small subfossils can also be ingested by living organisms. Subfossil remains that date from the Mesozoic are exceptionally rare, are usually in an advanced state of decay, and are consequently much disputed. The vast bulk of subfossil material comes from Quaternary sediments, including many subfossilized chironomid head capsules, ostracod carapaces, diatoms, and foraminifera.


title: Fossil

text: For remains such as molluscan seashells, which frequently do not change their chemical composition over geological time, and may occasionally even retain such features as the original color markings for millions of years, the label 'subfossil' is applied to shells that are understood to be thousands of years old, but are of Holocene age, and therefore are not old enough to be from the Pleistocene epoch.


title: Fossil

text: Chemical fossils, or chemofossils, are chemicals found in rocks and fossil fuels (petroleum, coal, and natural gas) that provide an organic signature for ancient life. Molecular fossils and isotope ratios represent two types of chemical fossils. The oldest traces of life on Earth are fossils of this type, including carbon isotope anomalies found in zircons that imply the existence of life as early as 4.1 billion years ago.


title: Fossil

text: Paleontology seeks to map out how life evolved across geologic time. A substantial hurdle is the difficulty of working out fossil ages. Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating. This technique is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age, and can be accurate to within 0.5% or better. Although radiometric dating requires careful laboratory work, its basic principle is simple: the rates at which various radioactive elements decay are known, and so the ratio of the radioactive element to its decay products shows how long ago the radioactive element was incorporated into the rock. Radioactive elements are common only in rocks with a volcanic origin, and so the only fossil-bearing rocks that can be dated radiometrically are volcanic ash layers, which may provide termini for the intervening sediments.


title: Fossil

text: Consequently, palaeontologists rely on stratigraphy to date fossils. Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the "layer-cake" that is the sedimentary record. Rocks normally form relatively horizontal layers, with each layer younger than the one underneath it. If a fossil is found between two layers whose ages are known, the fossil's age is claimed to lie between the two known ages. Because rock sequences are not continuous, but may be broken up by faults or periods of erosion, it is very difficult to match up rock beds that are not directly adjacent. However, fossils of species that survived for a relatively short time can be used to match isolated rocks: this technique is called "biostratigraphy". For instance, the conodont "Eoplacognathus pseudoplanus" has a short range in the Middle Ordovician period. If rocks of unknown age have traces of "E. pseudoplanus", they have a mid-Ordovician age. Such index fossils must be distinctive, be globally distributed and occupy a short time range to be useful. Misleading results are produced if the index fossils are incorrectly dated. Stratigraphy and biostratigraphy can in general provide only relative dating ("A" was before "B"), which is often sufficient for studying evolution. However, this is difficult for some time periods, because of the problems involved in matching rocks of the same age across continents. Family-tree relationships also help to narrow down the date when lineages first appeared. For instance, if fossils of B or C date to X million years ago and the calculated "family tree" says A was an ancestor of B and C, then A must have evolved earlier.


title: Fossil

text: It is also possible to estimate how long ago two living clades diverged, in other words approximately how long ago their last common ancestor must have lived, by assuming that DNA mutations accumulate at a constant rate. These "molecular clocks", however, are fallible, and provide only approximate timing: for example, they are not sufficiently precise and reliable for estimating when the groups that feature in the Cambrian explosion first evolved, and estimates produced by different techniques may vary by a factor of two.


title: Fossil

text: Organisms are only rarely preserved as fossils in the best of circumstances, and only a fraction of such fossils have been discovered. This is illustrated by the fact that the number of species known through the fossil record is less than 5% of the number of known living species, suggesting that the number of species known through fossils must be far less than 1% of all the species that have ever lived. Because of the specialized and rare circumstances required for a biological structure to fossilize, only a small percentage of life-forms can be expected to be represented in discoveries, and each discovery represents only a snapshot of the process of evolution. The transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, which will never demonstrate an exact half-way point.


title: Fossil

text: The fossil record is strongly biased toward organisms with hard-parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little to no role. It is replete with the mollusks, the vertebrates, the echinoderms, the brachiopods and some groups of arthropods.


title: Fossil

text: Fossil sites with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues—are known as Lagerstätten—German for "storage places". These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus slowing decomposition. Lagerstätten span geological time from the Cambrian period to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates, the Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, and the Carboniferous Mazon Creek localities.


title: Fossil

text: Stromatolites are layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria. Stromatolites provide some of the most ancient fossil records of life on Earth, dating back more than 3.5 billion years ago.


title: Fossil

text: Stromatolites were much more abundant in Precambrian times. While older, Archean fossil remains are presumed to be colonies of cyanobacteria, younger (that is, Proterozoic) fossils may be primordial forms of the eukaryote chlorophytes (that is, green algae). One genus of stromatolite very common in the geologic record is "Collenia". The earliest stromatolite of confirmed microbial origin dates to 2.724 billion years ago.


title: Fossil

text: A 2009 discovery provides strong evidence of microbial stromatolites extending as far back as 3.45 billion years ago.


title: Fossil

text: Stromatolites are a major constituent of the fossil record for life's first 3.5 billion years, peaking about 1.25 billion years ago. They subsequently declined in abundance and diversity, which by the start of the Cambrian had fallen to 20% of their peak. The most widely supported explanation is that stromatolite builders fell victims to grazing creatures (the Cambrian substrate revolution), implying that sufficiently complex organisms were common over 1 billion years ago.


title: Fossil

text: The connection between grazer and stromatolite abundance is well documented in the younger Ordovician evolutionary radiation; stromatolite abundance also increased after the end-Ordovician and end-Permian extinctions decimated marine animals, falling back to earlier levels as marine animals recovered. Fluctuations in metazoan population and diversity may not have been the only factor in the reduction in stromatolite abundance. Factors such as the chemistry of the environment may have been responsible for changes.


title: Fossil

text: While prokaryotic cyanobacteria themselves reproduce asexually through cell division, they were instrumental in priming the environment for the evolutionary development of more complex eukaryotic organisms. Cyanobacteria (as well as extremophile Gammaproteobacteria) are thought to be largely responsible for increasing the amount of oxygen in the primeval earth's atmosphere through their continuing photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to create their food. A layer of mucus often forms over mats of cyanobacterial cells. In modern microbial mats, debris from the surrounding habitat can become trapped within the mucus, which can be cemented by the calcium carbonate to grow thin laminations of limestone. These laminations can accrete over time, resulting in the banded pattern common to stromatolites. The domal morphology of biological stromatolites is the result of the vertical growth necessary for the continued infiltration of sunlight to the organisms for photosynthesis. Layered spherical growth structures termed oncolites are similar to stromatolites and are also known from the fossil record. Thrombolites are poorly laminated or non-laminated clotted structures formed by cyanobacteria common in the fossil record and in modern sediments.


title: Fossil

text: The Zebra River Canyon area of the Kubis platform in the deeply dissected Zaris Mountains of southwestern Namibia provides an extremely well exposed example of the thrombolite-stromatolite-metazoan reefs that developed during the Proterozoic period, the stromatolites here being better developed in updip locations under conditions of higher current velocities and greater sediment influx.


title: Fossil

text: It has been suggested that biominerals could be important indicators of extraterrestrial life and thus could play an important role in the search for past or present life on the planet Mars. Furthermore, organic components (biosignatures) that are often associated with biominerals are believed to play crucial roles in both pre-biotic and biotic reactions.


title: Fossil

text: On 24 January 2014, NASA reported that current studies by the "Curiosity" and "Opportunity" rovers on Mars will now be searching for evidence of ancient life, including a biosphere based on autotrophic, chemotrophic and/or chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, as well as ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments (plains related to ancient rivers or lakes) that may have been habitable. The search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic carbon on the planet Mars is now a primary NASA objective.


title: Fossil

text: "Pseudofossils" are visual patterns in rocks that are produced by geologic processes rather than biologic processes. They can easily be mistaken for real fossils. Some pseudofossils, such as geological dendrite crystals, are formed by naturally occurring fissures in the rock that get filled up by percolating minerals. Other types of pseudofossils are kidney ore (round shapes in iron ore) and moss agates, which look like moss or plant leaves. Concretions, spherical or ovoid-shaped nodules found in some sedimentary strata, were once thought to be dinosaur eggs, and are often mistaken for fossils as well.


title: Fossil

text: Gathering fossils dates at least to the beginning of recorded history. The fossils themselves are referred to as the fossil record. The fossil record was one of the early sources of data underlying the study of evolution and continues to be relevant to the history of life on Earth. Paleontologists examine the fossil record to understand the process of evolution and the way particular species have evolved.


title: Fossil

text: Fossils have been visible and common throughout most of natural history, and so documented human interaction with them goes back as far as recorded history, or earlier.


title: Fossil

text: There are many examples of paleolithic stone knives in Europe, with fossil echinoderms set precisely at the hand grip, going all the way back to "Homo heidelbergensis" and Neanderthals. These ancient peoples also drilled holes through the center of those round fossil shells, apparently using them as beads for necklaces.


title: Fossil

text: The ancient Egyptians gathered fossils of species that resembled the bones of modern species they worshipped. The god Set was associated with the hippopotamus, therefore fossilized bones of hippo-like species were kept in that deity's temples. Five-rayed fossil sea urchin shells were associated with the deity Sopdu, the Morning Star, equivalent of Venus in Roman mythology.


title: Fossil

text: Fossils appear to have directly contributed to the mythology of many civilizations, including the ancient Greeks. Classical Greek historian Herodotos wrote of an area near Hyperborea where gryphons protected golden treasure. There was indeed gold mining in that approximate region, where beaked "Protoceratops" skulls were common as fossils.


title: Fossil

text: A later Greek scholar, Aristotle, eventually realized that fossil seashells from rocks were similar to those found on the beach, indicating the fossils were once living animals. He had previously explained them in terms of vaporous exhalations, which Persian polymath Avicenna modified into the theory of petrifying fluids (). Recognition of fossil seashells as originating in the sea was built upon in the 14th century by Albert of Saxony, and accepted in some form by most naturalists by the 16th century.


title: Fossil

text: Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote of "tongue stones", which he called glossopetra. These were fossil shark teeth, thought by some classical cultures to look like the tongues of people or snakes. He also wrote about the horns of Ammon, which are fossil ammonites, from whence the group of shelled octopus-cousins ultimately draws its modern name. Pliny also makes one of the earlier known references to toadstones, thought until the 18th century to be a magical cure for poison originating in the heads of toads, but which are fossil teeth from "Lepidotes", a Cretaceous ray-finned fish.


title: Fossil

text: The Plains tribes of North America are thought to have similarly associated fossils, such as the many intact pterosaur fossils naturally exposed in the region, with their own mythology of the thunderbird.


title: Fossil

text: There is no such direct mythological connection known from prehistoric Africa, but there is considerable evidence of tribes there excavating and moving fossils to ceremonial sites, apparently treating them with some reverence.


title: Fossil

text: In Japan, fossil shark teeth were associated with the mythical tengu, thought to be the razor-sharp claws of the creature, documented some time after the 8th century AD.


title: Fossil

text: In medieval China, the fossil bones of ancient mammals including "Homo erectus" were often mistaken for "dragon bones" and used as medicine and aphrodisiacs. In addition, some of these fossil bones are collected as "art" by scholars, who left scripts on various artifacts, indicating the time they were added to a collection. One good example is the famous scholar Huang Tingjian of the Song Dynasty during the 11th century, who kept a specific seashell fossil with his own poem engraved on it. In his "Dream Pool Essays" published in 1088, Song dynasty Chinese scholar-official Shen Kuo hypothesized that marine fossils found in a geological stratum of mountains located hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean was evidence that a prehistoric seashore had once existed there and shifted over centuries of time. His observation of petrified bamboos in the dry northern climate zone of what is now Yan'an, Shaanxi province, China, led him to advance early ideas of gradual climate change due to bamboo naturally growing in wetter climate areas.


title: Fossil

text: In medieval Christendom, fossilized sea creatures on mountainsides were seen as proof of the biblical deluge of Noah's Ark. After observing the existence of seashells in mountains, the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (c. 570 – 478 BC) speculated that the world was once inundated in a great flood that buried living creatures in drying mud.


title: Fossil

text: From the 13th century to the present day, scholars pointed out that the fossil skulls of Deinotherium giganteum, found in Crete and Greece, might have been interpreted as being the skulls of the Cyclopes of Greek mythology, and are possibly the origin of that Greek myth. Their skulls appear to have a single eye-hole in the front, just like their modern elephant cousins, though in fact it's actually the opening for their trunk.


title: Fossil

text: In Norse mythology, echinoderm shells (the round five-part button left over from a sea urchin) were associated with the god Thor, not only being incorporated in thunderstones, representations of Thor's hammer and subsequent hammer-shaped crosses as Christianity was adopted, but also kept in houses to garner Thor's protection.


title: Fossil

text: These grew into the shepherd's crowns of English folklore, used for decoration and as good luck charms, placed by the doorway of homes and churches. In Suffolk, a different species was used as a good-luck charm by bakers, who referred to them as fairy loaves, associating them with the similarly shaped loaves of bread they baked.


title: Fossil

text: More scientific views of fossils emerged during the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci concurred with Aristotle's view that fossils were the remains of ancient life. For example, Leonardo noticed discrepancies with the biblical flood narrative as an explanation for fossil origins:


title: Fossil

text: In 1666, Nicholas Steno examined a shark, and made the association of its teeth with the "tongue stones" of ancient Greco-Roman mythology, concluding that those were not in fact the tongues of venomous snakes, but the teeth of some long-extinct species of shark.


title: Fossil

text: Robert Hooke (1635–1703) included micrographs of fossils in his "Micrographia" and was among the first to observe fossil forams. His observations on fossils, which he stated to be the petrified remains of creatures some of which no longer existed, were published posthumously in 1705.


title: Fossil

text: William Smith (1769–1839), an English canal engineer, observed that rocks of different ages (based on the law of superposition) preserved different assemblages of fossils, and that these assemblages succeeded one another in a regular and determinable order. He observed that rocks from distant locations could be correlated based on the fossils they contained. He termed this the principle of "faunal succession". This principle became one of Darwin's chief pieces of evidence that biological evolution was real.


title: Fossil

text: Georges Cuvier came to believe that most if not all the animal fossils he examined were remains of extinct species. This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants he said:


title: Fossil

text: Interest in fossils, and geology more generally, expanded during the early nineteenth century. In Britain, Mary Anning's discoveries of fossils, including the first complete ichthyosaur and a complete plesiosaurus skeleton, sparked both public and scholarly interest.


title: Fossil

text: Early naturalists well understood the similarities and differences of living species leading Linnaeus to develop a hierarchical classification system still in use today. Darwin and his contemporaries first linked the hierarchical structure of the tree of life with the then very sparse fossil record. Darwin eloquently described a process of descent with modification, or evolution, whereby organisms either adapt to natural and changing environmental pressures, or they perish.


title: Fossil

text: When Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", the oldest animal fossils were those from the Cambrian Period, now known to be about 540 million years old. He worried about the absence of older fossils because of the implications on the validity of his theories, but he expressed hope that such fossils would be found, noting that: "only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy." Darwin also pondered the sudden appearance of many groups (i.e. phyla) in the oldest known Cambrian fossiliferous strata.


title: Fossil

text: Since Darwin's time, the fossil record has been extended to between 2.3 and 3.5 billion years. Most of these Precambrian fossils are microscopic bacteria or microfossils. However, macroscopic fossils are now known from the late Proterozoic. The Ediacara biota (also called Vendian biota) dating from 575 million years ago collectively constitutes a richly diverse assembly of early multicellular eukaryotes.


title: Fossil

text: The fossil record and faunal succession form the basis of the science of biostratigraphy or determining the age of rocks based on embedded fossils. For the first 150 years of geology, biostratigraphy and superposition were the only means for determining the relative age of rocks. The geologic time scale was developed based on the relative ages of rock strata as determined by the early paleontologists and stratigraphers.


title: Fossil

text: Since the early years of the twentieth century, absolute dating methods, such as radiometric dating (including potassium/argon, argon/argon, uranium series, and, for very recent fossils, radiocarbon dating) have been used to verify the relative ages obtained by fossils and to provide absolute ages for many fossils. Radiometric dating has shown that the earliest known stromatolites are over 3.4 billion years old.


title: Fossil

text: Paleontology has joined with evolutionary biology to share the interdisciplinary task of outlining the tree of life, which inevitably leads backwards in time to Precambrian microscopic life when cell structure and functions evolved. Earth's deep time in the Proterozoic and deeper still in the Archean is only "recounted by microscopic fossils and subtle chemical signals." Molecular biologists, using phylogenetics, can compare protein amino acid or nucleotide sequence homology (i.e., similarity) to evaluate taxonomy and evolutionary distances among organisms, with limited statistical confidence. The study of fossils, on the other hand, can more specifically pinpoint when and in what organism a mutation first appeared. Phylogenetics and paleontology work together in the clarification of science's still dim view of the appearance of life and its evolution.


title: Fossil

text: Niles Eldredge's study of the "Phacops" trilobite genus supported the hypothesis that modifications to the arrangement of the trilobite's eye lenses proceeded by fits and starts over millions of years during the Devonian. Eldredge's interpretation of the "Phacops" fossil record was that the aftermaths of the lens changes, but not the rapidly occurring evolutionary process, were fossilized. This and other data led Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to publish their seminal paper on punctuated equilibrium in 1971.


title: Fossil

text: Synchrotron X-ray tomographic analysis of early Cambrian bilaterian embryonic microfossils yielded new insights of metazoan evolution at its earliest stages. The tomography technique provides previously unattainable three-dimensional resolution at the limits of fossilization. Fossils of two enigmatic bilaterians, the worm-like "Markuelia" and a putative, primitive protostome, "Pseudooides", provide a peek at germ layer embryonic development. These 543-million-year-old embryos support the emergence of some aspects of arthropod development earlier than previously thought in the late Proterozoic. The preserved embryos from China and Siberia underwent rapid diagenetic phosphatization resulting in exquisite preservation, including cell structures. This research is a notable example of how knowledge encoded by the fossil record continues to contribute otherwise unattainable information on the emergence and development of life on Earth. For example, the research suggests "Markuelia" has closest affinity to priapulid worms, and is adjacent to the evolutionary branching of Priapulida, Nematoda and Arthropoda.


title: Fossil

text: Despite significant advances in uncovering and identifying paleontological specimens, it is generally accepted that the fossil record is vastly incomplete. Approaches for measuring the completeness of the fossil record have been developed for numerous subsets of species, including those grouped taxonomically, temporally, environmentally/geographically, or in sum. This encompasses the subfield of taphonomy and the study of biases in the paleontological record.


title: Fossil

text: According to one hypothesis, a Corinthian vase from the 6th century B.C. C. is the oldest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil, perhaps a Miocene giraffe combined with elements from other species. However, a subsequent study using artificial intelligence and expert evaluations reject this idea, because mammals do not have the eye bones shown in the painted monster. Morphologically, the vase painting correspond to a carnivorous reptile of the Varanidae family that still lives in regions occupied by the ancient Greek.


title: Fossil

text: Fossil trading is the practice of buying and selling fossils. This is many times done illegally with artifacts stolen from research sites, costing many important scientific specimens each year. The problem is quite pronounced in China, where many specimens have been stolen.


title: Fossil

text: Fossil collecting (sometimes, in a non-scientific sense, fossil hunting) is the collection of fossils for scientific study, hobby, or profit. Fossil collecting, as practiced by amateurs, is the predecessor of modern paleontology and many still collect fossils and study fossils as amateurs. Professionals and amateurs alike collect fossils for their scientific value.


title: Fossil

text: The use of fossils to address health issues is rooted in traditional medicine and include the use of fossils as talismans. The specific fossil to use to alleviate or cure an illness is often based on its resemblance to the symptoms or affected organ. The usefulness of fossils as medicine is almost entirely a placebo effect, though fossil material might conceivably have some antacid activity or supply some essential minerals. The use of dinosaur bones as "dragon bones" has persisted in Traditional Chinese medicine into modern times, with mid-Cretaceous dinosaur bones being used for the purpose in Ruyang County during the early 21st century.


title: United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

text: The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (the January 6th Committee) is a bipartisan select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives established to investigate the January 6 United States Capitol attack perpetrated by a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Trump summoned the mob to the United States Capitol after refusing to concede losing the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Trump and his supporters perpetuated false and disproven claims of widespread voter fraud, in an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election.


text: The Committee was formed through a largely party-line vote on July 1, 2021. Its membership was a point of significant political contention. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who both voted in favor of impeaching Trump, are the only Republicans serving on the committee, and the Republican National Committee censured them for their participation.


text: On December 19, 2022, the Committee voted unanimously to refer Trump and some of his allies to the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecution. Recommended charges included obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement; and attempts to "incite," "assist" or "aid or comfort" an insurrection. The Committee, having received sworn testimony that Trump knew he did not win the election, had subpoenaed his testimony, identifying him as "the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. President to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power"; he had responded by suing to block the subpoena.


text: Some members of Trump's inner circle had cooperated with the committee, while others defied it. For refusing to testify, Steve Bannon was sentenced to prison but remains free on appeal; Peter Navarro was indicted; and Congress held Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino in criminal contempt (though the Justice Department said it would not prosecute them).


text: The Committee interviewed over a thousand people and reviewed over a million documents. On December 19, 2022, the Committee released a 154-page executive summary of its findings; its final report was expected to be published on December 21.


text: On May 19th, 2021, in the aftermath of the January 6 United States Capitol attack, the House voted to form an independent 9/11-style bicameral commission to investigate the attack. The bipartisan Bill passed the House 252-175, with thirty-five Republicans voting in favor. The large number of defections was considered a rebuke of Minority Leader McCarthy, who reversed course and whipped against the proposal, after initially deputizing Rep. John Katko to negotiate for Republicans. The proposal was defeated by a filibuster from Republicans in the Senate. In late May, when it had become apparent that the filibuster would not be overcome, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that she would appoint a select committee to investigate the events as a fallback option.


text: On June 30, 2021, the resolution, "H.Res.503 – Establishing the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol", passed on the House floor by a vote of 222 to 190, with all Democratic members and two Republican members, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, voting in favor. Sixteen Republican members did not vote. The resolution empowered Pelosi to appoint eight members to the committee, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy could appoint five members "in consultation" with the Speaker. Pelosi indicated that she would name a Republican as one of her eight appointees.


text: On July 1, Pelosi appointed eight members, seven Democrats and one Republican, Liz Cheney (R-WY). Bennie Thompson (D-MS) was appointed committee chairman.


text: On July 19, McCarthy announced his five selections, recommending Jim Banks (R-IN) serve as Ranking Member, along with Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), and Troy Nehls (R-TX). Banks, Jordan, and Nehls had voted to overturn the Electoral College results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Banks and Jordan had also signed onto the Supreme Court case "Texas v. Pennsylvania" to invalidate the ballots of voters in four states.


text: On July 21, Thompson announced that he would investigate Trump as part of the inquiry into Capitol attack. Hours later, Pelosi announced that she had informed McCarthy that she was rejecting Jordan and Banks, citing concerns for the investigation's integrity and relevant actions and statements made by the two members. She approved the recommendations of the other three. In retaliation, McCarthy pulled all of his picks and insisted he would not appoint anyone on the committee unless all five of his choices were approved. This would prove a costly political miscalculation by McCarthy. Pulling all of his picks rather than selecting two alternates, cleared the field for Pelosi to control the entire make up and workings of the Committee, and left Trump no defenders on the Committee to try and find plausible evidence of any possible innocence on his part.


text: On July 25, after McCarthy rescinded all of his selections, Pelosi announced that she had appointed Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the ten House Republicans who voted for Trump's second impeachment, to the Committee. Pelosi also hired a Republican, former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), as an outside committee staffer or advisor. Cheney voiced her support and pushed for both of their involvement.


text: On February 4, 2022, the Republican National Committee voted to censure Cheney and Kinzinger, which it had never before done to any sitting congressional Republican. The resolution formally dropped "all support of them as members of the Republican Party", arguing that their work on the January 6 House Committee was hurting Republican prospects in the midterm elections. Kinzinger had already announced on October 29, 2021 that he would not run for reelection. Cheney lost the primary for her reelection on August 16, 2022.


text: The committee's chair is Bennie Thompson, and the vice chair is Liz Cheney. Seven Democrats and two Republicans sit on the committee.


text: In November 2022, Thompson disclosed the existence of a subcommittee to handle "outstanding issues" including unanswered subpoenas and whether to send transcripts of interviews to the DOJ. The subcommittee had been established about one month earlier with Raskin as chair, along with Cheney, Lofgren, and Schiff. Thompson said he selected them because "They're all lawyers," Thompson said of his selection criteria.


text: The investigation commenced with a public hearing on July 27, 2021, at which four police officers testified. As of the end of 2021, it had interviewed more than 300 witnesses and obtained more than 35,000 documents, and those totals continued to rise. By May 2022, it had interviewed over 1,000 witnesses (and it recorded some of those interviews). By October 2022, it had obtained over 1,000,000 documents and reviewed hundreds of hours of videos (security camera footage, documentary footage, etc.). While the investigation is ongoing, the select committee publicly communicates some of its information.


text: The select committee has split their multi-pronged investigation into multiple color-coded teams, each focusing on a specific topic like funding, individuals' motivations, organizational coalitions, and how Trump may have pressured other politicians. These are:


text: Ultimately, the select committee's investigation and their findings are multi-faceted. A couple of examples are: A historical recount of the attack itself and the events leading up to the attack, inform new legislation to prevent another attack similar to the January 6th insurrection. For example, in October 2021, committee members were already collaborating to draft a bill that would clarify the procedures for certifying presidential elections. Election certification is governed by the 1887 Electoral Count Act.


text: The select committee's findings may also be used in arguments to hold individuals, notably Donald Trump, legally accountable. Possible criminal charges for Trump are obstruction of the electoral certification proceedings, which could carry a maximum sentence of 20 years; "dereliction of duty" in not stopping the riot, especially given testimony from his inner circle who say he was repeatedly advised to stop it; and seditious conspiracy. Other Republicans could face charges of wire fraud for telling lies in their fundraising efforts.


text: A conviction, in turn, may be used to bar individuals from running for office in the future, as insurrectionists are constitutionally ineligible to hold public office. It is, however, unclear who enforces that. In January 2022, lawyers challenged Representative Madison Cawthorn's eligibility to run for reelection, and, in March 2022, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's eligibility was similarly challenged. The first elected official to be removed from office for participating in the Capitol attack was Couy Griffin, a county commissioner from New Mexico. A judge removed him from office on September 6, 2022, citing the 14th Amendment and ruling that Griffin had participated in an "insurrection". On December 15, 2022, House Democrats introduced a bill that would prevent Trump specifically from running for office again.


text: The select committee's work may also aid the multiple criminal investigations into the attack at both the state and federal levels. For example, the State of Georgia's investigation into allegations of Trump's for solicitation of election fraud and other violations of state and federal election laws. On May 2, 2022, Fulton County's District Attorney Fani Willis opened a special grand jury to consider criminal charges.


text: The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is probing the months-long efforts to falsely declare that the election was rigged, including pressure on the DOJ, the fake-electors scheme, and the events of January 6 itself. Potential charges against Trump include seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct a government proceeding.


text: The judicial branch has also made related observations and rulings. In March 2022, federal judge David Carter said it was "more likely than not" that Trump, along with John Eastman, had committed federal crimes, and described their attempt as "a coup in search of a legal theory".


text: On November 18, 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of John L. "Jack" Smith as the Special Counsel to oversee the DOJ's ongoing investigations into the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's handling of government documents as well the January 6 investigation. Garland praised Smith's experience and said: "I am confident that this appointment will not slow the completion of these investigations." Smith promised to investigate "independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice ... to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”


text: The select committee is sharing certain information with the DOJ but, as of November 2022, has not yet fulfilled the DOJ's request that it turn over all its interview transcripts. The DOJ had sent a letter on April 20, 2022, asking for transcripts of past and future interviews. Thompson, the committee chair, told reporters he did not intend to give the DOJ "full access to our product" especially when "we haven't completed our own work." Instead, the select committee negotiated for a partial information exchange. On June 15, the DOJ repeated its request. They gave an example of a problem they had encountered: The trial of the five Proud Boys indicted for seditious conspiracy had been rescheduled for the end of 2022 because the prosecutors and the defendants' counsel did not want to start the trial without the relevant interview transcripts. On July 12, 2022, the committee announced it was negotiating with the DOJ about the procedure for information-sharing and that the committee had "started producing information" related to the DOJ's request for transcripts. Representative Thompson told CNN that they would likely "establish a procedure to look at some of the material" later that month.


text: On December 19, 2022, the House select committee will publicly vote on whether to recommend that the DOJ bring criminal charges against certain individuals, a long-anticipated move. Three days in advance of the vote, it was reported that they would recommend charging Donald Trump with insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the United States government. They also planned to vote on criminal charges for Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani, and possibly others.


text: Some have argued against making criminal referrals, since such a recommendation by a congressional committee has no legal force and might appear to politically taint the DOJ's investigation. Schiff acknowledged on December 11 that any referral would be "symbolic" but was nevertheless "important", while Representative Raskin said on December 13: "Everybody has made his or her own bed in terms of their conduct or misconduct."


text: A committee spokesperson had said on December 6 that criminal referrals would be "a final part" of the committee's investigative work. Representative Schiff had said in September that he favored a criminal referral for Trump and hoped the committee would do so unanimously.


text: In September 2021, the select committee subpoenaed former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Meadows initially cooperated but ultimately did not provide a complete set of requested documents and sued to block the two congressional subpoenas. (Meadows did comply with a DOJ subpoena, also January 6-related, in 2022.) On December 14, 2021, the full House voted to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress. The DOJ decided not to criminally charge him, though it said (in a July 15, 2022 amicus brief filed at the request of U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols) that the House subpoena was justified and that Meadows had only "qualified" immunity given that Trump was no longer in office. On October 31, 2022, the judge ruled that the congressional subpoenas were "protected legislative acts" that were "legitimately tied to Congress's legislative functions'."


text: In late 2021, before Meadows stopped cooperating, he provided thousands of emails and text messages that revealed efforts to overturn the election results:


text: Meadows also participated in a call with a Freedom Caucus group including Rudy Giuliani, Representative Jim Jordan, and Representative Scott Perry during which they planned to encourage Trump supporters to march to the Capitol on January 6.


text: Meadows also exchanged post-election text messages with Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in which they expressed support of Trump's claims of election fraud. On November 5, in the first of 29 text messages, Ginni Thomas sent to Meadows a link to a YouTube video about the election. She emailed Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers on November 9 to encourage them to choose different electors, exchanged emails with John Eastman, and attended the rally on January 6.


text: Some of the communications revealed Trump allies who privately expressed disagreement with the events of January 6 while defending Trump in public:


text: In mid-2022, CNN spoke to over a dozen people who had texted Meadows that day, and all of them said they believed that Trump should have tried to stop the attack.


text: One of the most revealing documents provided by Meadows was a PowerPoint presentation describing a strategy for overturning the election results. The presentation had been distributed by Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel (now owning a bar in Texas) who specialized in psychological operations and who later became a Trump campaign associate. A 36-page version appeared to have been created on January 5,<ref name="Lowell_12/10/2021"></ref> and Meadows received a version that day. He eventually provided a 38-page version to the committee. It recommended that Trump declare a national security emergency to delay the January 6 electoral certification, invalidate all ballots cast by machine, and order the military to seize and recount all paper ballots. (Meadows claims he personally did not act on this plan.) Waldron was associated with former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn and other military-intelligence veterans who played key roles in spreading false information to allege the election had been stolen from Trump. "Politico" reported in January 2022 that Bernard Kerik had testified to the committee that Waldron also originated the idea of a military seizure of voting machines, which was included in a draft executive order dated December 16. The next month, "Politico" published emails between Waldron, Flynn, Kerik, Washington attorney Katherine Friess and Texas entrepreneur Russell Ramsland that included another draft executive order dated December 16. That draft was nearly identical to the draft "Politico" had previously released and embedded metadata indicated it had been created by One America News anchor Christina Bobb. An attorney, Bobb had also been present at the Willard Hotel command center.


text: One of the main challenges to the committee's investigation was Trump's use of legal tactics to try to block the release of the White House communication records held at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). He succeeded in delaying the release of the documents for about five months. The committee received the documents on January 20, 2022.


text: Some of the documents had been previously torn up by Trump and taped back together by NARA staff. Trump is said to have routinely shredded and flushed records by his own hand, as well as to have asked staff to place them in burn bags, throughout his presidency. Additionally, as the presidential diarist testified to the committee in March 2022, the Oval Office did not send the diarist detailed information about Trump's daily activities on January 5 and 6, 2021.


text: Trump's phone records from the day of the attack, as provided by NARA to the committee, did not log any calls during the seven-and-a-half hours that the Capitol was under siege, suggesting he was using a "burner" cell phone during that time. He is said to have routinely used burner phones during his presidency. When the committee subpoenaed his personal communication records, his lawyers claimed he had no such records.


text: The committee began its request for the NARA records in August 2021. Trump asserted executive privilege over the documents. Current president Joe Biden rejected that claim, as did a federal judge (who noted that Trump was no longer president), the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. While the request for NARA documents was being litigated, the committee agreed to a Biden administration request that they forgo obtaining certain documents from NARA relating to sensitive national security matters that had no bearing on events of January 6.


text: From the beginning of the investigation, Trump told Republican leaders not to cooperate with the committee. While many have testified voluntarily, the committee has also had to issue subpoenas to legally compel certain uncooperative individuals to testify. Some people who were subpoenaed nevertheless refused to testify: Roger Stone and John Eastman pleaded their Fifth Amendment rights, while Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows were found in contempt of Congress. In December 2021, Michael Flynn sued to block a subpoena for his phone records and to delay his testimony, though a federal judge dismissed his suit within a day.


text: Bill Stepien, Trump's final campaign manager, was subpoenaed and planned to testify live for the second public hearing on June 13, 2022. However, he canceled his appearance an hour before the hearing started, as his wife went into labor. The select committee instead aired clips of Stepien's previously recorded deposition; the scramble to rearrange the presentation delayed the start of the nationally televised hearing by 45 minutes.


text: On October 21, 2022, the committee subpoenaed Trump for documents and testimony. They requested all his communications on the day of the Capitol attack and many of his political communications in the preceding months. On November 9, Trump's lawyers wrote to the committee saying he possessed "no documents" relevant to the subpoena. On November 11, they sued to block the subpoena, arguing that the committee could obtain the information from sources other than Trump.


text: Pence chose not to speak to the select committee, though the committee had long deliberated calling him. On January 4, 2022, Chair Thompson told reporters that Pence should "do the right thing and come forward and voluntarily talk to the committee." While acknowledging that the committee had not formally invited Pence to speak to them, Thompson suggested: "if he offered, we'd gladly accept." The committee reportedly considered Pence's testimony particularly important, though, in April, Thompson told reporters they would not bother calling him, especially having already confirmed important information through his former aides Marc Short and Greg Jacob. On August 17, Pence told an audience at Saint Anselm College that he was waiting for the committee to invite him: "If there was an invitation to participate, I'd consider it." He described his experience of the attack on the Capitol in his autobiography, which was scheduled to be published a week after the November 2022 midterm elections. As of late November, Pence was reportedly more interested in testifying before the DOJ. "I think it’s sad that he didn’t want to come to us", Representative Pete Aguilar told CNN in early December 2022.


text: Soon after the attack on the Capitol, the Secret Service assigned new phones. In February 2021, the office of Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, a Trump appointee, learned that text messages of Secret Service agents had been lost. He considered sending data specialists to attempt to retrieve the messages, but a decision was made against it. In June 2021, DHS asked for text messages from 24 individuals—including the heads for Trump and Pence security, Robert Engel and Tim Giebels—and did not receive them. In October 2021, DHS considered publicizing the Secret Service's delays. On July 26, 2022, Chairman Thompson, in his capacity as Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Carolyn Maloney, Chair of the House Oversight & Reforms Committee, jointly wrote to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency about Cuffari's failure to report the lost text messages and asked CIGIE chair Allison Lerner to replace Cuffari with a new Inspector General who could investigate the matter. Additionally, renewed calls to have President Biden dismiss Cuffari have started gaining traction, with Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee requesting Attorney General Garland to investigate the missing text messages. However, as of July 2022, it is unknown if President Biden will fire Cuffari as he made a campaign promise to never fire an inspector general during his tenure as POTUS.


text: On August 1, 2022, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson reiterated calls for Cuffari to step down due to a "lack of transparency" that could be "jeopardizing the integrity" of crucial investigations regarding the missing Secret Service text messages. That same day, an official inside the DHS inspector general's office told "Politico" that Cuffari and his staff are "uniquely unqualified to lead an Inspector General's office, and ... The crucial oversight mission of the DHS OIG has been compromised." Congress also obtained a July 2021 e-mail, from deputy inspector general Thomas Kait, who told senior DHS officials there was no longer a need for any Secret Service phone records or text messages. Efforts to collect communications related to Jan. 6 were therefore shutdown by Kait just six weeks after the internal DHS investigation began. "The Guardian" wrote that "Taken together, the new revelations appear to show that the chief watchdog for the Secret Service and the DHS took deliberate steps to stop the retrieval of texts it knew were missing, and then sought to hide the fact that it had decided not to pursue that evidence."


text: On August 2, 2022, "CNN" reported that relevant text messages from January 6, 2021, were also deleted from the phones of Trump-appointed officials at the Pentagon, despite the fact that FOIA requests were filed days after the attack on the Capitol. The Secret Service was later reported to have been aware of online threats against lawmakers before the attack on the Capitol, according to documents obtained by the House select committee.


text: Trump's Save America PAC has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawyers representing over a dozen witnesses called by the committee. It is not illegal to pay someone else's legal fees, but it raises the question of why Trump would do so and what kind of influence he might have over those people's testimony. On September 1, 2022, Trump said on a right-wing radio show that he had recently met supporters in his office. He said he was "financially supporting" them, adding: "It's a disgrace what they've done to them."


text: The American Conservative Union is providing legal defense funds for some people who resist the committee. The organization says it only assists people who do not cooperate with the committee and who oppose its mission, according to chairman Matt Schlapp.


text: Though the Republican National Committee had long insisted that the committee is invalid and should not be allowed to investigate, a federal judge found on May 1, 2022, that the committee's power is legitimate. On November 30, 2022, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote a letter warning the committee that the incoming Republican-majority House of Representatives planned to investigate the committee's work in 2023.


text: The House select committee began its investigation with a preliminary public hearing on July 27, 2021, called "The Law Enforcement Experience on January 6th". Capitol and District of Columbia police testified, describing their personal experiences on the day of the attack, and graphic video footage was shown.


text: On December 19, 2022, the committee published an "Executive Summary" as an introduction to its final report. It criminally referred Trump to the DOJ for four suspected crimes.I.   Obstruction of an Official Proceeding (18 U.S.C. § 1512(c))


text: IV. “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection  (18 U.S.C. § 2383)The committee suggested that the DOJ look into two additional charges: conspiracy to prevent someone from holding office or performing the duties of their office, and seditious conspiracy. It noted that convictions on both of these charges had recently been delivered in the high-profile Oath Keepers trial.V.  Other Conspiracy Statutes (18 U.S.C. §§ 372 and 2384)As the committee wrapped up its work in late 2022, the writers of the final report were directed to focus more on Trump's alleged crimes (as researched by the "Gold Team" and revealed in the public hearings) and less on law enforcement's failure to address radicalization, armed groups, and violent threats. Some committee staff expressed concerns that Vice Chair Liz Cheney wanted an anti-Trump report to bolster her own political future. Another person quoted by "The Washington Post" anonymously rebutted that notion, saying that Cheney intended to produce a compelling narrative and thereby avoid "a worse version of the Mueller report, which nobody read". On November 27, 2022, Representative Schiff said the committee members hadn't yet reached consensus on the report's focus but also were "close to the putting down the pen".


text: The report will also discuss others' responsibility for events between the election on November 3, 2020 and the electoral vote count on January 6, 2021. Topics will include RNC fundraising, what the Secret Service knew, and how the National Guard responded.


text: In October 2022, Representative Lofgren told Nicole Wallace on "Deadline: White House" that the DOJ will receive the select committee's final report at the same time the public receives it, though the DOJ's version will likely be unredacted. On December 7, 2022, Representative Schiff told NPR that the committee would make its evidence "accessible to everyone", including the public and the DOJ, so that when the Republican-majority House of Representatives is sworn in for the 118th Congress, "they can't cherry-pick certain evidence and mislead the country with some false narrative."


text: Though the committee held public hearings before the November 2022 midterm elections, it did not release any written report by that time. The December 21, 2022 report is considered final because the committee itself will expire when the 117th Congress ends.


text: The committee sought to identify whether the White House was involved in planning the Capitol attack and whether Trump personally had advance knowledge of it. The committee considered issuing subpoenas for call records or testimony of senior Trump administration officials including Meadows, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.


text: The Select Committee's subpoena power comes pursuant to House Resolution 503, Section 5: Procedures:"(c) Applicability of Rules Governing Procedures of Committees. – Rule XI of the Rules of Representatives shall apply to the Select Committee except as follows:


text: According to the Congressional Research Service, the chair (or a person they designate) can initiate and authorize subpoenas without consulting the vice-chair or other committee members.


text: In the January 6th investigation, some people testified and provided documents voluntarily, while others were legally compelled by subpoenas. The committee did not always publicly announce the subpoenas it issued.


text: According to several reports, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had warned Republican members that if they allowed Speaker Pelosi to appoint them to the select committee, they would be stripped of all their other committee assignments and should not expect to receive any future ones from Pelosi. In an interview with "Forbes", Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said "Who gives a shit?" and added, "When you've got people who say crazy stuff and you're not gonna make that threat, but you make that threat to truth-tellers, you've lost any credibility."


text: House Leader McCarthy called the rejection of his initial recommendations "unprecedented" in a phone call with Pelosi. In a press conference, he labeled her a "lame duck speaker" out to destroy the institution. The Freedom Caucus pushed for McCarthy to file a motion to vacate the speakership, and punish Cheney and Kinzinger for accepting their appointments to the committee. McCarthy later dubbed them "Pelosi Republicans". Republicans also stated that if they won the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections, they would come after Democratic committee assignments, targeting Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar. Steve Scalise stated that Pelosi had removed any credibility from the committee for rejecting their recommended members and opted instead for a political narrative. Republicans Scott Perry, Chip Roy, and Kelly Armstrong expressed their disdain for both Cheney and Kinzinger and questioned their loyalty to the House Republican Conference, pushing for them to be stripped of their committee assignments. Jim Banks and Mike Rogers stated that the two GOP committee members would be stuck to Pelosi's narrative of events. Cheney and Kinzinger both dismissed comments from their colleagues.


text: After Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's picks for the committee and appointed Adam Schiff, "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board criticized her; while acknowledging that McCarthy's picks were partisan, it claimed that Schiff had "lied repeatedly about the evidence concerning the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia." The editorial board posited, "if Mrs. Pelosi thinks the evidence for her conclusion is persuasive, why would she not want to have it tested against the most aggressive critics?" On the other hand, the "San Francisco Chronicle" editorial board said: "Pelosi's chief mistake was not also rejecting Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas, who, like Jordan, Banks and a majority of House Republicans, voted to overturn the election on the day of the insurrection. No serious investigation of the riot can be undertaken by those who shared the goals of the rioters." It added that "McCarthy and company killed an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the attack even though the Republicans' top negotiator agreed to the terms."


text: Some House Republicans—including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Representative Jim Jordan—said they did not watch the committee's first hearing on July 27, 2021. Representative Matthew M. Rosendale said he watched Representative Liz Cheney speak (and was "quite disappointed") but did not watch the police officers' testimony. Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik would not say whether she watched.


text: In late August 2021, after the committee asked telecommunications and social media companies to retain certain records, McCarthy declared that if the companies "turn over private information" to the House committee, then the companies are "in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States", and that a future Republican legislative majority will hold the companies "fully accountable". In response to McCarthy's comment, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint on September 3 with the chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics. CREW noted that the subpoena was legally valid and claimed that McCarthy was illegally obstructing the investigation insofar as he was "threatening retaliation" against the telecommunications companies. Eleven House Republicans who were associated with the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally sent a September 3 letter to thirteen telecommunications companies stating they "do not consent to the release of confidential call records or data" and threatened legal action against what they asserted were unconstitutional subpoenas.


text: During a September 2 television interview, McCarthy was asked about "how deeply [Trump] was involved", to which he replied that the FBI and Senate committees had found "no involvement". He and other Republicans had cited an exclusive Reuters report that unnamed current and former law enforcement officials said the FBI had found "scant evidence" of an organized plot to overturn the election. In a September 4 statement, Thompson and Cheney said the committee had queried executive branch agencies and congressional committees investigating the matter and "it's been made clear to us that reports of such a conclusion are baseless."


text: On October 16, The Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson criticized the committee's glacial progress, stating that "I don't believe that they're pursuing this with the degree of vigor that merits the type of targets they're talking about. We're dealing with people like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone and Ali Alexander ... They've had three months, they've done almost nothing."


text: Representative Scott Perry said on December 21 that he would not cooperate with the committee because, in his view, the committee itself was "illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives." Similarly, on January 23, 2022, Newt Gingrich said on Fox News that he believed the committee was breaking laws, but he did not specify which laws.


text: On December 23, Laurence Tribe, American legal scholar and University Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, and colleagues published in "The New York Times" about Attorney General Merrick Garland: "Only by holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrection – all of them – to account can he secure the future and teach the next generation that no one is above the law. If he has not done so already, we implore the attorney general to step up to that task."


text: In June 2022, Fox News announced that it would not carry live coverage of the hearings, relegating it to its sister channel Fox Business and local Fox network affiliates. Fox News instead carried special editions of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" and "Hannity" (the former notably airing commercial-free) that largely featured criticism of the hearing, with Carlson deeming it "propaganda", and lower thirds describing it as a "sham", "show trial" and "political theater". "The Washington Post" reported that members of the committee were given increased security due to greater threats made against them.


text: According to a poll conducted in July 2021 by "Politico", a majority of Americans support the January 6 investigation, with 58% overall supporting and 29% opposing; 52% of Republicans polled opposed it. When "Politico" repeated the poll in December 2021, again, three-fifths supported the committee, including 82% of Democrats, 58% of independents, and 40% of Republicans.


text: In an August 2021 Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, 58% of American voters said they thought the committee was biased, while 42% thought it was fair. In September 2021, a Pew Research poll found that only 11% of American adults said they were very confident the committee would be fair and reasonable while another 34% were somewhat confident, while a 54% majority said they were not too confident (32%) or not at all confident (22%). Confidence was highly partisan: Nearly two-thirds of Democrats and less than a quarter of Republicans said they were at least somewhat confident.


text: Just greater than half of Americans polled believe that Trump should face criminal charges for his role in the attack. A "Washington Post"–ABC News poll taken a week after the attack found 54% giving this response, and over a year later, it had not changed substantially, as 52% gave the same response to the same organization's poll conducted April 24–28, 2022. The division is partisan: five out of six Democrats support charging Trump, while five out of six Republicans oppose doing so.


text: NBC News found that the percentage of Americans who believe that Trump was solely or mainly responsible for the January 6 attack dropped from 52% in January 2021 to 45% in May 2022. A decrease was found within all subgroups: Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Opinions changed after the committee began public hearings. An Ipsos poll conducted June 17–18, 2022, found that 58% of Americans believe Trump is significantly responsible for the attack on the Capitol. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted June 23–27, 2022, found that 48% of Americans believe Trump should be charged with a crime.


text: The same Ipsos poll on June 17–18, 2022, also found that 60% of Americans believe the committee's investigation is fair and impartial. Similarly, an "Economist"/YouGov poll conducted June 18–21, 2022, found that 78% of Democrats, but only 15% of Republicans and 37% of independents, believe the committee's investigation is "legitimate". 78% of Democrats, but only 22% of Republicans and 41% of independents, said they "strongly" or "somewhat" approved of the committee's work.


title: Surya

text: Surya (;, ) is the sun as well as the solar deity in Hinduism. He is traditionally one of the major five deities in the Smarta tradition, all of whom are considered as equivalent deities in the Panchayatana puja and a means to realise Brahman. Other names of Surya in ancient Indian literature include Aditya, Arka, Bhanu, Savitr, Pushan, Ravi, Martanda, Mitra, Bhaskara, Prabhakara, Kathiravan, and Vivasvan.


title: Surya

text: The iconography of Surya is often depicted riding a chariot harnessed by horses, often seven in number which represent the seven colours of visible light, and the seven days of the week. During the medieval period, Surya was worshipped in tandem with Brahma during the day, Shiva at noon, and Vishnu in the evening. In some ancient texts and art, Surya is presented syncretically with Indra, Ganesha, and others. Surya as a deity is also found in the arts and literature of Buddhism and Jainism. In the Mahabharata and Ramayana, Surya is represented as the spiritual father of Rama and Karna (protagonists of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, respectively). Surya was a primary deity in veneration by the characters of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, along with Shiva.


title: Surya

text: Surya is depicted with a "Chakra," also interpreted as "Dharmachakra". Surya is the lord of Simha (Leo), one of the twelve constellations in the zodiac system of Hindu astrology. Surya or Ravi is the basis of "Ravivara", or Sunday, in the Hindu calendar. Major festivals and pilgrimages in reverence for Surya include Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Samba Dashami, Ratha Saptami, Chath puja, and Kumbha Mela.


title: Surya

text: He is particularly venerated in the Saura tradition found in Indian states such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Odisha.


title: Surya

text: Having survived as a primary deity in Hinduism longer than any most of the original Vedic deities, the worship of Surya declined greatly around the 13th century, perhaps as a result of the Muslim destruction of Sun temples in North India. New Sun temples virtually ceased to be built, and some were later repurposed to a different deity. A number of important Surya temples remain, but most are no longer in worship. In certain aspects, Surya has tended to be merged with the prominent deities of Vishnu or Shiva, or seen as subsidiary to them.


title: Surya

text: The oldest surviving Vedic hymns, such as the hymn 1.115 of the Rigveda, mention "Sūrya" with particular reverence for the "rising sun" and its symbolism as dispeller of darkness, one who empowers knowledge, the good and all life. However, the usage is context specific. In some hymns, the word Surya simply means sun as an inanimate object, a stone or a gem in the sky (Rigvedic hymns 5.47, 6.51 and 7.63); while in others it refers to a personified deity.


title: Surya

text: Surya is prominently associated with the dawn goddess Ushas and sometimes, he is mentioned as her son or her husband.