title: Tetrapod

text: Tetrapoda includes four living classes: amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds. Overall, the biodiversity of lissamphibians, as well as of tetrapods generally, has grown exponentially over time; the more than 30,000 species living today are descended from a single amphibian group in the Early to Middle Devonian. However, that diversification process was interrupted at least a few times by major biological crises, such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event, which at least affected amniotes. The overall composition of biodiversity was driven primarily by amphibians in the Palaeozoic, dominated by reptiles in the Mesozoic and expanded by the explosive growth of birds and mammals in the Cenozoic. As biodiversity has grown, so has the number of species and the number of niches that tetrapods have occupied. The first tetrapods were aquatic and fed primarily on fish. Today, the Earth supports a great diversity of tetrapods that live in many habitats and subsist on a variety of diets. The following table shows summary estimates for each tetrapod class from the "IUCN Red List of Threatened Species", 2014.3, for the number of extant species that have been described in the literature, as well as the number of threatened species.


title: Tetrapod

text: The classification of tetrapods has a long history. Traditionally, tetrapods are divided into four classes based on gross anatomical and physiological traits. Snakes and other legless reptiles are considered tetrapods because they are sufficiently like other reptiles that have a full complement of limbs. Similar considerations apply to caecilians and aquatic mammals. Newer taxonomy is frequently based on cladistics instead, giving a variable number of major "branches" (clades) of the tetrapod family tree.


title: Tetrapod

text: As is the case throughout evolutionary biology today, there is debate over how to properly classify the groups within Tetrapoda. Traditional biological classification sometimes fails to recognize evolutionary transitions between older groups and descendant groups with markedly different characteristics. For example, the birds, which evolved from the dinosaurs, are defined as a separate group from them, because they represent a distinct new type of physical form and functionality. In phylogenetic nomenclature, in contrast, the newer group is always included in the old. For this school of taxonomy, dinosaurs and birds are not groups in contrast to each other, but rather birds are a sub-type "of" dinosaurs.


title: Tetrapod

text: The tetrapods, including all large- and medium-sized land animals, have been among the best understood animals since earliest times. By Aristotle's time, the basic division between mammals, birds and egg-laying tetrapods (the "herptiles") was well known, and the inclusion of the legless snakes into this group was likewise recognized. With the birth of modern biological classification in the 18th century, Linnaeus used the same division, with the tetrapods occupying the first three of his six classes of animals. While reptiles and amphibians can be quite similar externally, the French zoologist Pierre André Latreille recognized the large physiological differences at the beginning of the 19th century and split the herptiles into two classes, giving the four familiar classes of tetrapods: amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.


title: Tetrapod

text: With the basic classification of tetrapods settled, a half a century followed where the classification of living and fossil groups was predominantly done by experts working within classes. In the early 1930s, American vertebrate palaeontologist Alfred Romer (1894–1973) produced an overview, drawing together taxonomic work from the various subfields to create an orderly taxonomy in his "Vertebrate Paleontology". This classical scheme with minor variations is still used in works where systematic overview is essential, e.g. Benton (1998) and Knobill and Neill (2006). While mostly seen in general works, it is also still used in some specialist works like Fortuny et al. (2011). The taxonomy down to subclass level shown here is from Hildebrand and Goslow (2001):


title: Tetrapod

text: This classification is the one most commonly encountered in school textbooks and popular works. While orderly and easy to use, it has come under critique from cladistics. The earliest tetrapods are grouped under class Amphibia, although several of the groups are more closely related to amniotes than to modern day amphibians. Traditionally, birds are not considered a type of reptile, but crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to other reptiles, such as lizards. Birds themselves are thought to be descendants of theropod dinosaurs. Basal non-mammalian synapsids ("mammal-like reptiles") traditionally also sort under class Reptilia as a separate subclass, but they are more closely related to mammals than to living reptiles. Considerations like these have led some authors to argue for a new classification based purely on phylogeny, disregarding the anatomy and physiology.


title: Tetrapod

text: Tetrapods evolved from early bony fishes (Osteichthyes), specifically from the tetrapodomorph branch of lobe-finned fishes (Sarcopterygii), living in the early to middle Devonian period.


title: Tetrapod

text: The first tetrapods probably evolved in the Emsian stage of the Early Devonian from Tetrapodomorph fish living in shallow water environments.


title: Tetrapod

text: The very earliest tetrapods would have been animals similar to "Acanthostega", with legs and lungs as well as gills, but still primarily aquatic and unsuited to life on land.


title: Tetrapod

text: The earliest tetrapods inhabited saltwater, brackish-water, and freshwater environments, as well as environments of highly variable salinity. These traits were shared with many early lobed-finned fishes. As early tetrapods are found on two Devonian continents, Laurussia (Euramerica) and Gondwana, as well as the island of North China, it is widely supposed that early tetrapods were capable of swimming across the shallow (and relatively narrow) continental-shelf seas that separated these landmasses.


title: Tetrapod

text: Since the early 20th century, several families of tetrapodomorph fishes have been proposed as the nearest relatives of tetrapods, among them the rhizodonts (notably "Sauripterus"), the osteolepidids, the tristichopterids (notably "Eusthenopteron"), and more recently the elpistostegalians (also known as Panderichthyida) notably the genus "Tiktaalik".


title: Tetrapod

text: A notable feature of "Tiktaalik" is the absence of bones covering the gills. These bones would otherwise connect the shoulder girdle with skull, making the shoulder girdle part of the skull. With the loss of the gill-covering bones, the shoulder girdle is separated from the skull, connected to the torso by muscle and other soft-tissue connections. The result is the appearance of the neck. This feature appears only in tetrapods and "Tiktaalik", not other tetrapodomorph fishes. "Tiktaalik" also had a pattern of bones in the skull roof (upper half of the skull) that is similar to the end-Devonian tetrapod "Ichthyostega". The two also shared a semi-rigid ribcage of overlapping ribs, which may have substituted for a rigid spine. In conjunction with robust forelimbs and shoulder girdle, both "Tiktaalik" and "Ichthyostega" may have had the ability to locomote on land in the manner of a seal, with the forward portion of the torso elevated, the hind part dragging behind. Finally, "Tiktaalik" fin bones are somewhat similar to the limb bones of tetrapods.


title: Tetrapod

text: However, there are issues with positing "Tiktaalik" as a tetrapod ancestor. For example, it had a long spine with far more vertebrae than any known tetrapod or other tetrapodomorph fish. Also the oldest tetrapod trace fossils (tracks and trackways) predate it by a considerable margin. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this date discrepancy: 1) The nearest common ancestor of tetrapods and "Tiktaalik" dates to the Early Devonian. By this hypothesis, the lineage is the closest to tetrapods, but "Tiktaalik" itself was a late-surviving relic. 2) "Tiktaalik" represents a case of parallel evolution. 3) Tetrapods evolved more than once.


title: Tetrapod

text: The oldest evidence for the existence of tetrapods comes from trace fossils: tracks (footprints) and trackways found in Zachełmie, Poland, dated to the Eifelian stage of the Middle Devonian, , although these traces have also been interpreted as the ichnogenus "Piscichnus" (fish nests/feeding traces). The adult tetrapods had an estimated length of 2.5 m (8 feet), and lived in a lagoon with an average depth of 1–2 m, although it is not known at what depth the underwater tracks were made. The lagoon was inhabited by a variety of marine organisms and was apparently salt water. The average water temperature was 30 degrees C (86 F). The second oldest evidence for tetrapods, also tracks and trackways, date from ca. 385 Mya (Valentia Island, Ireland).


title: Tetrapod

text: The oldest partial fossils of tetrapods date from the Frasnian beginning ≈380 mya. These include "Elginerpeton" and "Obruchevichthys". Some paleontologists dispute their status as true (digit-bearing) tetrapods.


title: Tetrapod

text: All known forms of Frasnian tetrapods became extinct in the Late Devonian extinction, also known as the end-Frasnian extinction. This marked the beginning of a gap in the tetrapod fossil record known as the Famennian gap, occupying roughly the first half of the Famennian stage.


title: Tetrapod

text: The oldest near-complete tetrapod fossils, "Acanthostega" and "Ichthyostega", date from the second half of the Fammennian. Although both were essentially four-footed fish, "Ichthyostega" is the earliest known tetrapod that may have had the ability to pull itself onto land and drag itself forward with its forelimbs. There is no evidence that it did so, only that it may have been anatomically capable of doing so.


title: Tetrapod

text: The publication in 2018 of "Tutusius umlambo" and "Umzantsia amazana" from high latitude Gondwana setting indicate that the tetrapods enjoyed a global distribution by the end of the Devonian and even extend into the high latitudes.


title: Tetrapod

text: The end-Fammenian marked another extinction, known as the end-Fammenian extinction or the Hangenberg event, which is followed by another gap in the tetrapod fossil record, Romer's gap, also known as the Tournaisian gap. This gap, which was initially 30 million years, but has been gradually reduced over time, currently occupies much of the 13.9-million year Tournaisian, the first stage of the Carboniferous period.


title: Tetrapod

text: Tetrapod-like vertebrates first appeared in the early Devonian period. These early "stem-tetrapods" would have been animals similar to "Ichthyostega", with legs and lungs as well as gills, but still primarily aquatic and unsuited to life on land. The Devonian stem-tetrapods went through two major bottlenecks during the Late Devonian extinctions, also known as the end-Frasnian and end-Fammenian extinctions. These extinction events led to the disappearance of stem-tetrapods with fish-like features. When stem-tetrapods reappear in the fossil record in early Carboniferous deposits, some 10 million years later, the adult forms of some are somewhat adapted to a terrestrial existence. Why they went to land in the first place is still debated.


title: Tetrapod

text: During the early Carboniferous, the number of digits on hands and feet of stem-tetrapods became standardized at no more than five, as lineages with more digits died out (exceptions within crown-group tetrapods arose among some secondarily aquatic members). By mid-Carboniferous times, the stem-tetrapods had radiated into two branches of true ("crown group") tetrapods. Modern amphibians are derived from either the temnospondyls or the lepospondyls (or possibly both), whereas the anthracosaurs were the relatives and ancestors of the amniotes (reptiles, mammals, and kin). The first amniotes are known from the early part of the Late Carboniferous. All basal amniotes, like basal batrachomorphs and reptiliomorphs, had a small body size. Amphibians must return to water to lay eggs; in contrast, amniote eggs have a membrane ensuring gas exchange out of water and can therefore be laid on land.


title: Tetrapod

text: Amphibians and amniotes were affected by the Carboniferous rainforest collapse (CRC), an extinction event that occurred ≈300 million years ago. The sudden collapse of a vital ecosystem shifted the diversity and abundance of major groups. Amniotes were more suited to the new conditions. They invaded new ecological niches and began diversifying their diets to include plants and other tetrapods, previously having been limited to insects and fish.


title: Tetrapod

text: In the Permian period, in addition to temnospondyl and anthracosaur clades, there were two important clades of amniote tetrapods, the sauropsids and the synapsids. The latter were the most important and successful Permian animals.


title: Tetrapod

text: The end of the Permian saw a major turnover in fauna during the Permian–Triassic extinction event. There was a protracted loss of species, due to multiple extinction pulses. Many of the once large and diverse groups died out or were greatly reduced.


title: Tetrapod

text: The diapsids (a subgroup of the sauropsids) began to diversify during the Triassic, giving rise to the turtles, crocodiles, and dinosaurs and lepidosaurs. In the Jurassic, lizards developed from some lepidosaurs. In the Cretaceous, snakes developed from lizards and modern birds branched from a group of theropod dinosaurs.


title: Tetrapod

text: By the late Mesozoic, the groups of large, primitive tetrapod that first appeared during the Paleozoic such as temnospondyls and amniote-like tetrapods had gone extinct. Many groups of synapsids, such as anomodonts and therocephalians, that once comprised the dominant terrestrial fauna of the Permian, also became extinct during the Mesozoic; however, during the Jurassic, one synapsid group (Cynodontia) gave rise to the modern mammals, which survived through the Mesozoic to later diversify during the Cenozoic. Also, the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event killed off many organisms, including all dinosaurs except neornithes, which later diversified during the Cenozoic.


title: Tetrapod

text: Following the great faunal turnover at the end of the Mesozoic, representatives of seven major groups of tetrapods persisted into the Cenozoic era. One of them, the Choristodera, became extinct 11 million years ago for unknown reasons. The surviving six are:


title: Tetrapod

text: Stem tetrapods are all animals more closely related to tetrapods than to lungfish, but excluding the tetrapod crown group. The cladogram below illustrates the relationships of stem-tetrapods. All these lineages are extinct except for Dipnomorpha and Tetrapoda; from Swartz, 2012:


title: Tetrapod

text: Crown tetrapods are defined as the nearest common ancestor of all living tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) along with all of the descendants of that ancestor.


title: Tetrapod

text: The inclusion of certain extinct groups in the crown Tetrapoda depends on the relationships of modern amphibians, or lissamphibians. There are currently three major hypotheses on the origins of lissamphibians. In the temnospondyl hypothesis (TH), lissamphibians are most closely related to dissorophoid temnospondyls, which would make temnospondyls tetrapods. In the lepospondyl hypothesis (LH), lissamphibians are the sister taxon of lysorophian lepospondyls, making lepospondyls tetrapods and temnospondyls stem-tetrapods. In the polyphyletic hypothesis (PH), frogs and salamanders evolved from dissorophoid temnospondyls while caecilians come out of microsaur lepospondyls, making both lepospondyls and temnospondyls true tetrapods.


title: Tetrapod

text: This hypothesis comes in a number of variants, most of which have lissamphibians coming out of the dissorophoid temnospondyls, usually with the focus on amphibamids and branchiosaurids.


title: Tetrapod

text: The Temnospondyl Hypothesis is the currently favored or majority view, supported by Ruta "et al" (2003a,b), Ruta and Coates (2007), Coates "et al" (2008), Sigurdsen and Green (2011), and Schoch (2013, 2014).


title: Tetrapod

text: This hypothesis has batrachians (frogs and salamander) coming out of dissorophoid temnospondyls, with caecilians out of microsaur lepospondyls. There are two variants, one developed by Carroll, the other by Anderson.


title: Tetrapod

text: The tetrapod's ancestral fish, tetrapodomorph, possessed similar traits to those inherited by the early tetrapods, including internal nostrils and a large fleshy fin built on bones that could give rise to the tetrapod limb. To propagate in the terrestrial environment, animals had to overcome certain challenges. Their bodies needed additional support, because buoyancy was no longer a factor. Water retention was now important, since it was no longer the living matrix, and could be lost easily to the environment. Finally, animals needed new sensory input systems to have any ability to function reasonably on land.


title: Tetrapod

text: The brain only filled half of the skull in the early tetrapods. The rest was filled with fatty tissue or fluid, which gave the brain space for growth as they adapted to a life on land. Their palatal and jaw structures of tetramorphs were similar to those of early tetrapods, and their dentition was similar too, with labyrinthine teeth fitting in a pit-and-tooth arrangement on the palate. A major difference between early tetrapodomorph fishes and early tetrapods was in the relative development of the front and back skull portions; the snout is much less developed than in most early tetrapods and the post-orbital skull is exceptionally longer than an amphibian's. A notable characteristic that make a tetrapod's skull different from a fish's are the relative frontal and rear portion lengths. The fish had a long rear portion while the front was short; the orbital vacuities were thus located towards the anterior end. In the tetrapod, the front of the skull lengthened, positioning the orbits farther back on the skull.


title: Tetrapod

text: In tetrapodomorph fishes such as "Eusthenopteron", the part of the body that would later become the neck was covered by a number of gill-covering bones known as the opercular series. These bones functioned as part of pump mechanism for forcing water through the mouth and past the gills. When the mouth opened to take in water, the gill flaps closed (including the gill-covering bones), thus ensuring that water entered only through the mouth. When the mouth closed, the gill flaps opened and water was forced through the gills.


title: Tetrapod

text: In "Acanthostega", a basal tetrapod, the gill-covering bones have disappeared, although the underlying gill arches are still present. Besides the opercular series, "Acanthostega" also lost the throat-covering bones (gular series). The opercular series and gular series combined are sometimes known as the operculo-gular or operculogular series. Other bones in the neck region lost in "Acanthostega" (and later tetrapods) include the extrascapular series and the supracleithral series. Both sets of bones connect the shoulder girdle to the skull. With the loss of these bones, tetrapods acquired a neck, allowing the head to rotate somewhat independently of the torso. This, in turn, required stronger soft-tissue connections between head and torso, including muscles and ligaments connecting the skull with the spine and shoulder girdle. Bones and groups of bones were also consolidated and strengthened.


title: Tetrapod

text: In Carboniferous tetrapods, the neck joint (occiput) provided a pivot point for the spine against the back of the skull. In tetrapodomorph fishes such as "Eusthenopteron", no such neck joint existed. Instead, the notochord (a rod made of proto-cartilage) entered a hole in the back of the braincase and continued to the middle of the braincase. "Acanthostega" had the same arrangement as "Eusthenopteron", and thus no neck joint. The neck joint evolved independently in different lineages of early tetrapods.


title: Tetrapod

text: All tetrapods appear to hold their necks at the maximum possible vertical extension when in a normal, alert posture.


title: Tetrapod

text: Tetrapods had a tooth structure known as "plicidentine" characterized by infolding of the enamel as seen in cross-section. The more extreme version found in early tetrapods is known as "labyrinthodont" or "labyrinthodont plicidentine". This type of tooth structure has evolved independently in several types of bony fishes, both ray-finned and lobe finned, some modern lizards, and in a number of tetrapodomorph fishes. The infolding appears to evolve when a fang or large tooth grows in a small jaw, erupting when it still weak and immature. The infolding provides added strength to the young tooth, but offers little advantage when the tooth is mature. Such teeth are associated with feeding on soft prey in juveniles.


title: Tetrapod

text: With the move from water to land, the spine had to resist the bending caused by body weight and had to provide mobility where needed. Previously, it could bend along its entire length. Likewise, the paired appendages had not been formerly connected to the spine, but the slowly strengthening limbs now transmitted their support to the axis of the body.


title: Tetrapod

text: The shoulder girdle was disconnected from the skull, resulting in improved terrestrial locomotion. The early sarcopterygians' cleithrum was retained as the clavicle, and the interclavicle was well-developed, lying on the underside of the chest. In primitive forms, the two clavicles and the interclavical could have grown ventrally in such a way as to form a broad chest plate. The upper portion of the girdle had a flat, scapular blade (shoulder bone), with the glenoid cavity situated below performing as the articulation surface for the humerus, while ventrally there was a large, flat coracoid plate turning in toward the midline.


title: Tetrapod

text: The pelvic girdle also was much larger than the simple plate found in fishes, accommodating more muscles. It extended far dorsally and was joined to the backbone by one or more specialized sacral ribs. The hind legs were somewhat specialized in that they not only supported weight, but also provided propulsion. The dorsal extension of the pelvis was the ilium, while the broad ventral plate was composed of the pubis in front and the ischium in behind. The three bones met at a single point in the center of the pelvic triangle called the acetabulum, providing a surface of articulation for the femur.


title: Tetrapod

text: Fleshy lobe-fins supported on bones seem to have been an ancestral trait of all bony fishes (Osteichthyes). The ancestors of the ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) evolved their fins in a different direction. The Tetrapodomorph ancestors of the Tetrapods further developed their lobe fins. The paired fins had bones distinctly homologous to the humerus, ulna, and radius in the fore-fins and to the femur, tibia, and fibula in the pelvic fins.


title: Tetrapod

text: The paired fins of the early sarcopterygians were smaller than tetrapod limbs, but the skeletal structure was very similar in that the early sarcopterygians had a single proximal bone (analogous to the humerus or femur), two bones in the next segment (forearm or lower leg), and an irregular subdivision of the fin, roughly comparable to the structure of the carpus / tarsus and phalanges of a hand.


title: Tetrapod

text: In typical early tetrapod posture, the upper arm and upper leg extended nearly straight horizontal from its body, and the forearm and the lower leg extended downward from the upper segment at a near right angle. The body weight was not centered over the limbs, but was rather transferred 90 degrees outward and down through the lower limbs, which touched the ground. Most of the animal's strength was used to just lift its body off the ground for walking, which was probably slow and difficult. With this sort of posture, it could only make short broad strides. This has been confirmed by fossilized footprints found in Carboniferous rocks.


title: Tetrapod

text: Early tetrapods had a wide gaping jaw with weak muscles to open and close it. In the jaw were moderate-sized palatal and vomerine (upper) and coronoid (lower) fangs, as well rows of smaller teeth. This was in contrast to the larger fangs and small marginal teeth of earlier tetrapodomorph fishes such as "Eusthenopteron". Although this indicates a change in feeding habits, the exact nature of the change in unknown. Some scholars have suggested a change to bottom-feeding or feeding in shallower waters (Ahlberg and Milner 1994). Others have suggesting a mode of feeding comparable to that of the Japanese giant salamander, which uses both suction feeding and direct biting to eat small crustaceans and fish. A study of these jaws shows that they were used for feeding underwater, not on land.


title: Tetrapod

text: In later terrestrial tetrapods, two methods of jaw closure emerge: static and kinetic inertial (also known as snapping). In the static system, the jaw muscles are arranged in such a way that the jaws have maximum force when shut or nearly shut. In the kinetic inertial system, maximum force is applied when the jaws are wide open, resulting in the jaws snapping shut with great velocity and momentum. Although the kinetic inertial system is occasionally found in fish, it requires special adaptations (such as very narrow jaws) to deal with the high viscosity and density of water, which would otherwise impede rapid jaw closure.


title: Tetrapod

text: The tetrapod tongue is built from muscles that once controlled gill openings. The tongue is anchored to the hyoid bone, which was once the lower half of a pair of gill bars (the second pair after the ones that evolved into jaws). The tongue did not evolve until the gills began to disappear. "Acanthostega" still had gills, so this would have been a later development. In an aquatically feeding animals, the food is supported by water and can literally float (or get sucked in) to the mouth. On land, the tongue becomes important.


title: Tetrapod

text: The evolution of early tetrapod respiration was influenced by an event known as the "charcoal gap", a period of more than 20 million years, in the middle and late Devonian, when atmospheric oxygen levels were too low to sustain wildfires. During this time, fish inhabiting anoxic waters (very low in oxygen) would have been under evolutionary pressure to develop their air-breathing ability.


title: Tetrapod

text: Early tetrapods probably relied on four methods of respiration: with lungs, with gills, cutaneous respiration (skin breathing), and breathing through the lining of the digestive tract, especially the mouth.


title: Tetrapod

text: The early tetrapod "Acanthostega" had at least three and probably four pairs of gill bars, each containing deep grooves in the place where one would expect to find the afferent branchial artery. This strongly suggests that functional gills were present. Some aquatic temnospondyls retained internal gills at least into the early Jurassic. Evidence of clear fish-like internal gills is present in "Archegosaurus".


title: Tetrapod

text: Lungs originated as an extra pair of pouches in the throat, behind the gill pouches. They were probably present in the last common ancestor of bony fishes. In some fishes they evolved into swim bladders for maintaining buoyancy. Lungs and swim bladders are homologous (descended from a common ancestral form) as is the case for the pulmonary artery (which delivers de-oxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs) and the arteries that supply swim bladders. Air was introduced into the lungs by a process known as buccal pumping.


title: Tetrapod

text: In the earliest tetrapods, exhalation was probably accomplished with the aid of the muscles of the torso (the thoracoabdominal region). Inhaling with the ribs was either primitive for amniotes, or evolved independently in at least two different lineages of amniotes. It is not found in amphibians. The muscularized diaphragm is unique to mammals.


title: Tetrapod

text: Although tetrapods are widely thought to have inhaled through buccal pumping (mouth pumping), according to an alternative hypothesis, aspiration (inhalation) occurred through passive recoil of the exoskeleton in a manner similar to the contemporary primitive ray-finned fish "Polypterus". This fish inhales through its spiracle (blowhole), an anatomical feature present in early tetrapods. Exhalation is powered by muscles in the torso. During exhalation, the bony scales in the upper chest region become indented. When the muscles are relaxed, the bony scales spring back into position, generating considerable negative pressure within the torso, resulting in a very rapid intake of air through the spiracle.


title: Tetrapod

text: Skin breathing, known as cutaneous respiration, is common in fish and amphibians, and occur both in and out of water. In some animals waterproof barriers impede the exchange of gases through the skin. For example, keratin in human skin, the scales of reptiles, and modern proteinaceous fish scales impede the exchange of gases. However, early tetrapods had scales made of highly vascularized bone covered with skin. For this reason, it is thought that early tetrapods could engage some significant amount of skin breathing.


title: Tetrapod

text: Although air-breathing fish can absorb oxygen through their lungs, the lungs tend to be ineffective for discharging carbon dioxide. In tetrapods, the ability of lungs to discharge CO came about gradually, and was not fully attained until the evolution of amniotes. The same limitation applies to gut air breathing (GUT), i.e., breathing with the lining of the digestive tract. Tetrapod skin would have been effective for both absorbing oxygen and discharging CO, but only up to a point. For this reason, early tetrapods may have experienced chronic hypercapnia (high levels of blood CO). This is not uncommon in fish that inhabit waters high in CO.


title: Tetrapod

text: According to one hypothesis, the "sculpted" or "ornamented" dermal skull roof bones found in early tetrapods may have been related to a mechanism for relieving respiratory acidosis (acidic blood caused by excess CO) through compensatory metabolic alkalosis.


title: Tetrapod

text: Early tetrapods probably had a three-chambered heart, as do modern amphibians and lepidosaurian and chelonian reptiles, in which oxygenated blood from the lungs and de-oxygenated blood from the respiring tissues enters by separate atria, and is directed via a spiral valve to the appropriate vessel — aorta for oxygenated blood and pulmonary vein for deoxygenated blood. The spiral valve is essential to keeping the mixing of the two types of blood to a minimum, enabling the animal to have higher metabolic rates, and be more active than otherwise.


title: Tetrapod

text: The difference in density between air and water causes smells (certain chemical compounds detectable by chemoreceptors) to behave differently. An animal first venturing out onto land would have difficulty in locating such chemical signals if its sensory apparatus had evolved in the context of aquatic detection. The vomeronasal organ also evolved in the nasal cavity for the first time, for detecting pheromones from biological substrates on land, though it was subsequently lost or reduced to vestigial in some lineages, like archosaurs and catarrhines, but expanded in others like lepidosaurs.


title: Tetrapod

text: Fish have a lateral line system that detects pressure fluctuations in the water. Such pressure is non-detectable in air, but grooves for the lateral line sense organs were found on the skull of early tetrapods, suggesting either an aquatic or largely aquatic habitat. Modern amphibians, which are semi-aquatic, exhibit this feature whereas it has been retired by the higher vertebrates.


title: Tetrapod

text: Changes in the eye came about because the behavior of light at the surface of the eye differs between an air and water environment due to the difference in refractive index, so the focal length of the lens altered to function in air. The eye was now exposed to a relatively dry environment rather than being bathed by water, so eyelids developed and tear ducts evolved to produce a liquid to moisten the eyeball.


title: Tetrapod

text: A single rod opsin, rhodopsin, was present in the first jawed vertebrate, inherited from a jawless vertebrate ancestor:


title: Tetrapod

text: Air vibrations could not set up pulsations through the skull as in a proper auditory organ. The spiracle was retained as the otic notch, eventually closed in by the tympanum, a thin, tight membrane of connective tissue also called the eardrum (however this and the otic notch were lost in the ancestral amniotes, and later eardrums were obtained independently).


title: Tetrapod

text: The hyomandibula of fish migrated upwards from its jaw supporting position, and was reduced in size to form the columella. Situated between the tympanum and braincase in an air-filled cavity, the columella was now capable of transmitting vibrations from the exterior of the head to the interior. Thus the columella became an important element in an impedance matching system, coupling airborne sound waves to the receptor system of the inner ear. This system had evolved independently within several different amphibian lineages.


title: Tetrapod

text: The impedance matching ear had to meet certain conditions to work. The columella had to be perpendicular to the tympanum, small and light enough to reduce its inertia, and suspended in an air-filled cavity. In modern species that are sensitive to over 1 kHz frequencies, the footplate of the columella is 1/20th the area of the tympanum. However, in early amphibians the columella was too large, making the footplate area oversized, preventing the hearing of high frequencies. So it appears they could only hear high intensity, low frequency sounds—and the columella more probably just supported the brain case against the cheek.


title: Tetrapod

text: Only in the early Triassic, about a hundred million years after they conquered land, did the tympanic middle ear evolve (independently) in all the tetrapod lineages. About fifty million years later (late Triassic), in mammals, the columella was reduced even further to become the stapes.


title: NetEase

text: NetEase, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet technology company providing online services centered on content, community, communications, and commerce. The company was founded in 1997 by Ding Lei. NetEase develops and operates online PC and mobile games, advertising services, email services, and e-commerce platforms in China. It is one of the largest Internet and video game companies in the world. NetEase has an on-demand music-streaming service (NetEase Music). The company also owns several pig farms.


title: NetEase

text: NetEase video games include, the "Westward Journey" series, "Tianxia III", "Heroes of Tang Dynasty Zero", "Ghost II", Nostos and Onmyoji. NetEase also partnered with Blizzard to operate Chinese versions of their games, such as "World of Warcraft", "StarCraft II", and "Overwatch" from 2008 to 2023.


title: NetEase

text: The company was founded in June 1997 by Chinese entrepreneur Ding Lei, and grew rapidly due in part to its investment in search engine technology. In 2012 the company's official English name was changed from NetEase.com, Inc to NetEase, Inc.


title: NetEase

text: Early in the company's history, top executives quit amid possible ad revenue misreporting and buy-out talks with i-Cable Communications and others were reported.


title: NetEase

text: In 2008, the 163.com domain attracted at least 1.8 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey. In 2010 the site was the 28th most visited site in the world according to Alexa's internet rankings. NetEase's official website address is "163.com". This was attributed to the past when Chinese internet users had to dial "163" to connect to the internet, before the availability of broadband internet. NetEase is the largest provider of free e-mail services in China with more than 940 million users as of 2017. In addition to 163.com, the company also runs 188.com, 126.com and more.


title: NetEase

text: NetEase launched their first Western Headquarters in August 2014, bringing one of the largest tech companies in China to the US. In January 2020, NetEase discussed secondary listings with the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.


title: NetEase

text: In 2018 NetEase invested US$100 million into Bungie for a minority stake in the company and a seat on its board of directors. In December of the same year NetEase invested in New Zealand developer A44 (Formally known as Aurora 44), and it sold its comics business to Bilibili. In 2019 NetEase obtained a minority stake in Quantic Dream for an undisclosed investment.


title: NetEase

text: In June 2020 NetEase established a Japanese studio called "Sakura Studio" to develop next-generation console games.


title: NetEase

text: NetEase acquired Grasshopper Manufacture from GungHo Online Entertainment in October 2021, incorporating the developer within their NetEase Games division.


title: NetEase

text: In May 2022, NetEase opened its first US studio in Austin, Texas. It is called Jackalope Games, and is led by Jack Emmert, a veteran of massively multiplayer online role-playing games who worked on titles including City of Heroes, Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and DC Universe Online. They will work on PC and console games and operate independently from NetEase.


title: NetEase

text: Toshihiro Nagoshi, Daisuke Sato, along with their former Sega employees established a new studio called Nagoshi Studio, which will also be a part of their subsidiary.


title: NetEase

text: In August 2022, NetEase announced the acquisition of Quantic Dream after the 2019 minority investment done in the company. After this, the studio will become a subsidiary part of its parent company and will help NetEase objective to have more console game releases.


title: NetEase

text: In October 2022, NetEase announced the establishment of GPTRACK50 Studio, a development company focused on console releases and led by former Capcom producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi as the president.


title: NetEase

text: The company has a history of partnerships with other companies. In 2008, Blizzard Entertainment partnered with NetEase to bring some of their games to the Chinese market. Both NetEase and Blizzard announced the suspension of most game services within Mainland China by January 2023 due to the expiration of current licensing agreement. "According to NetEast's statement on November 17, 2022, Overwatch 2", "Diablo III", "World of Warcraft", "StarCraft", "Hearthstone", and "Heroes of the Storm" will no longer receive service in mainland China on January 23, 2023 and will not be renewed.


title: NetEase

text: In April 2012, NetEase began testing a restaurant recommendation mobile app called "Fan Fan". In 2017 NetEase made an agreement with the American company Marvel Comics to develop a comic based on a Chinese superhero. In addition 12 comic copies by Marvel would be released online, such as "The Amazing Spider-Man", "Captain America", and "Guardians of the Galaxy".


title: NetEase

text: The company collaborated with coursera.org to provide Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in China. In 2014, NetEase launched an online course platform with educational content.


title: NetEase

text: In October 2020, the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered NetEase to undergo "rectification" and temporarily suspended certain comment functions after censors found "inappropriate" comments on its news app.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Death Magnetic is the ninth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica, released on September 12, 2008, through Warner Bros. Records. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, marking the band's first album since "...And Justice for All" (1988) not to be produced by longtime collaborator Bob Rock and co-produced by Hetfield and Ulrich. It is also the first Metallica album with bassist Robert Trujillo, and the second to share writing credit to all of the band's members.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Metallica began writing music for a new album in 2006, later recording the album at different studios across Los Angeles County, California, from March 2007 to May 2008. Musically, "Death Magnetic" is a radical departure from Metallica's previous album, "St. Anger" (2003), and is considered a return to the band's thrash metal roots, with more complex compositions, standard guitar tuning on most songs and long guitar solos from Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield. It also includes the band's first instrumental piece, "Suicide & Redemption", since "To Live Is to Die" from "...And Justice for All".


title: Death Magnetic

text: "Death Magnetic" made Metallica the first band to achieve five consecutive number-one studio albums on the U.S. "Billboard" 200. The album received positive reviews, but its production was criticized as overcompressed and cited as a product of the loudness war. The album and its songs were nominated for six Grammy Awards (five in 2009 and one in 2010) and won three, including Best Metal Performance for "My Apocalypse". In support of the album, Metallica embarked on the World Magnetic Tour from October 2008 to November 2010. Four unreleased tracks from the album's recording sessions were later released as the "Beyond Magnetic" EP in December 2011.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Early in 2004, lead singer James Hetfield revealed that Metallica had been playing new material during studio sessions, but that there was no mention of plans for a ninth studio album at that time. Select music from the jam sessions may be used on the album, as Lars Ulrich stated, "I definitely look forward to sifting through some of that stuff when we get back to the studio in January." On that note, by October 2004, the band had already compiled nearly 50 hours of pre-set jamming, with hundreds of riffs, chord progressions and bass lines. On September 30, 2004, Launch Radio revealed from an interview with Hetfield that the band hoped to return to the studio in spring of 2005 to begin recording their ninth studio album for Warner Bros. Records.


title: Death Magnetic

text: On March 10, 2006, it was reported that Metallica was planning to use the following six months to write material for the album, in addition to the previous two months they had already been spending writing music. Ulrich also stated that the band was getting along much better in the studio than they did during the recording of "St. Anger". On April 6, he revealed that the band had composed "six to seven" songs (except for vocals) from their findings off the riff tapes recording during pre-sets of the Madly in Anger with the World Tour. He also said that by this point, the band's new material was reminiscent of "old school" Metallica works, and that it certainly did not feel like a "St. Anger" "part two".


title: Death Magnetic

text: On May 20, 2006, Kirk Hammett revealed that the band had fifteen songs written and were writing on average two to three songs per week. Hetfield also praised producer Rick Rubin for his production style in giving the band their own freedom and keeping the pressure at a minimum, despite the sessions becoming sometimes briefly unfocused. On May 27, Metallica updated their website with a video featuring information regarding the album.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Three studios were used to produce the album, those being Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, Shangri La Studios in Malibu, California, and HQ in San Rafael, California. On January 1, 2007, Ulrich stated in an interview with "Revolver" that the band would be conceiving the album much like they did their albums prior to working with ex-producer Bob Rock; they would sit down, write a select number of songs, then enter the studio to record them. He also quoted Rubin by saying "Rubin didn't want them to start the recording process until every song that they were going to record was as close to 100 percent as possible."


title: Death Magnetic

text: On March 5, Ulrich revealed that the band had narrowed a potential 25 songs down to 14, and that they would begin recording those fourteen on the following week. He also expanded on Rubin's style of production, saying,


title: Death Magnetic

text: On March 14, the band's official website issued a statement: "Metallica left the comfort of HQ this week to descend upon the greater Los Angeles area to begin recording their ninth original album. This is the first time they've recorded outside of the Bay Area since they spent time at One-on-One Studios recording their self-titled album in 1990 and '91." This was confirmed on July 24, 2008, on Mission: Metallica, as a video surfaced showing the crew moving into Sound City Studios of Nirvana fame.


title: Death Magnetic

text: On June 4, Robert Trujillo revealed that only select portions of the two new songs debuted in Berlin and Tokyo respectively would be featured on the album. The band hoped to have the album finished by October or November, when the album would be mixed. He predicted the album would be out in February 2008, and revealed that the songs they were working with were quite long.


title: Death Magnetic

text: On February 2, 2008, Sterlingsound.com revealed that Ted Jensen from Sterling Sound Studios would be mastering the new record. According to Blabbermouth.net and other sources, Greg Fidelman, who had served as a sound engineer, had also been tapped to mix the album.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Ulrich confirmed on May 15, 2008, that Metallica recorded eleven songs for "Death Magnetic", although only ten would appear on the album due to the constraints of the physical medium. The eleventh song, titled "Shine" (which was later retitled "Just a Bullet Away"), was a song Hetfield "based around a Layne Staley type, a rock & roll martyr magnetized by death."


title: Death Magnetic

text: A number of unreleased songs from "Death Magnetic", including the above-mentioned "Just a Bullet Away", but also "Hell and Back", "Hate Train" and "Rebel of Babylon" were left off the album, but were rumored to be released as B-sides or on the next album. The titles were confirmed by Hammett and Ulrich on the "MetOnTour" video from December 20, 2008. On December 5, 7, 9 and 10, 2011, the band played four new songs, "Hate Train", "Just a Bullet Away", "Hell and Back" and "Rebel of Babylon", at the band's 30th Anniversary concerts. The day after each concert, MetClub members were sent an e-mail with a code for a free download of a rough mix of the song played at the show. The songs were released officially on the "Beyond Magnetic" EP, released on December 13, 2011. Two other songs recorded during "Death Magnetic", based on "The New Song" (performed in 2006) and "The Other New Song" (performed in 2006 and 2007), have not been released, though parts of "The New Song" can be found in the recorded songs "The End of the Line" and "All Nightmare Long".


title: Death Magnetic

text: Kirk Hammett played a role in inspiring the album title by bringing a photograph of deceased Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley to the studio where Metallica was recording. "That picture was there for a long time", said Hammett, "I think it pervaded James' psyche." Wondering why someone with Staley's talent would choose to use drugs so heavily and die so young, Hetfield started writing a song based on his questions (the song "Rebel of Babylon").


title: Death Magnetic

text: The title is referenced in the track "My Apocalypse". According to Hammett, another title considered for the album was "Songs of Suicide and Forgiveness". "Death Magnetic" was eventually picked out of four working titles when Hetfield met with creative agency Turner Duckworth, who were brought to deal with the album's visual identity, and as he discussed the songs "it was clear that they were all linked to death, facing up to the nature of death, and the fear and attraction that surrounds death."


title: Death Magnetic

text: In January 2008, a statement was made by Stereo Warning that the album would be delayed until September 2008, The album, which was completed on August 10, 2008, was released on September 12 in the United States and issued in a variety of different packages.


title: Death Magnetic

text: On September 2, a French record store began selling copies of "Death Magnetic", nearly two weeks ahead of its scheduled worldwide release date, which resulted in the album being made prematurely available on peer-to-peer clients. This prompted the band's UK distributor, Vertigo Records, to officially release the album two days ahead of schedule, on September 12. Ulrich, who was questioned about the leak on a San Francisco radio station, responded,


title: Death Magnetic

text: During their Escape from the Studio '06 tour, Metallica debuted two songs. "The New Song" debuted on the European leg in Berlin, Germany on June 6, 2006. The song, as performed, is approximately eight minutes long. The title was rumored to be "Death Is Not the End" as Hetfield repeatedly sings the line throughout the song. This song would appear again in multiple "Fly on the Wall" videos on the "Mission: Metallica" website, showing the band partway through the song's recording, as noted by the slower tempo and lack of lyrics. "The Other New Song", (which was later named "Vulturous") debuted on August 12, 2006, in Tokyo, and is much shorter, taking just below four minutes to perform. To the surprise of fans, Metallica played "The Other New Song" once again on June 29, 2007, in Bilbao, Spain. Although neither of the "New Songs" appear on the album themselves, "The End of the Line" and "All Nightmare Long" both contain elements of "The New Song".


title: Death Magnetic

text: On August 9, 2008, Metallica debuted the first album track, "Cyanide", at Ozzfest, in Dallas, Texas and was performed again on August 20, 2008, in Dublin, Ireland. On August 22, at the Leeds Festival, they debuted the first single, "The Day That Never Comes".


title: Death Magnetic

text: On July 31, 2009, it was announced on Metallica.com that the band felt that the song "My Apocalypse" was in need of an introduction when played live to "set the mood". The statement on Metallica.com reads, "We've been enjoying playing 'My Apocalypse' out here on the road but felt like it could use something extra. We decided that it needed a cool intro to set the mood so James wrote one. Check out and enjoy this free download ... and make sure you learn it for singing along at a future show!" The approximately minute-long introduction is available as a free MP3 download. The song had originally been debuted live on March 25, 2009, at the LG Arena in Birmingham, UK.


title: Death Magnetic

text: On the day of the release FMQB radio broadcast "The World Premiere of Death Magnetic", which was heard on more than 175 stations across the US and Canada. The live program from Metallica HQ featured all four members of Metallica talking with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins. Originally scheduled for a 90-minute broadcast, the show ended after two hours.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Ulrich brought the agency Turner Duckworth, co-owned by his personal friend David Turner, as he wanted someone that "would bring fresh ideas", and commanded respect in branding but were not jaded by the music business". While Turner and his partner Bruce Duckworth played with the two elements from the title, they emerged with the cover that combined a white coffin, a grave, and a magnetic field, depicted by a model made and photographed by Andy Grimshaw. Turner added the image was "simple and literal but at the same time open to all sorts of interpretations", saying that Hetfield considered the coffin shaped as "a door, to another experience, or consciousness". Duckworth stated that the cover fit their intention of something that would also be recognizable in a digital format, "small icons that go on your phone or iPod".


title: Death Magnetic

text: Turner compared the Metallica project with a campaign they did for Coca-Cola, as both approaches went down to "stripping things back down to what the brand was originally and the other part was adding a fresh new approach." The original Metallica logo was brought back to demonstrate how the band was trying to restore their old identity, while the cover was primarily white to contrast how the color is hardly used in the metal genre. Given the band wanted the physical release to be memorable to ensure it still had value in an age where audiences were purchasing more digital music, the original digipak featuring a layered die cut, where each page of the booklet resembled a layer of dirt being thrown on the coffin. "Death Magnetic" was issued on vinyl in a special box set, and also had a deluxe edition shaped like a coffin, bundled along with an additional disc full of demos, a making-of DVD, an exclusive T-shirt, guitar picks, a flag and a fold-out poster.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Alongside the release of the album, it was released as downloadable content (DLC) for "". This content would later be optimized for external use in "Guitar Hero World Tour", "" (although "All Nightmare Long" was included on the in-game setlist), "Guitar Hero 5", "Band Hero", and "".


title: Death Magnetic

text: The "Guitar Hero" DLC had two versions of the instrumental track "Suicide & Redemption". The versions differed by the guitar solo performed on the song: one version had a solo performed by Hetfield, the other a solo by Hammett. The tracks were titled according to the solo they contained, with the Hetfield version named "Suicide & Redemption J.H." and the Hammett version named "Suicide & Redemption K.H."


title: Death Magnetic

text: Due to technical restrictions, the Wii version of "Guitar Hero: World Tour" only could hold the three shortest songs of the eleven: "Broken, Beat & Scarred", "Cyanide" and "My Apocalypse". These songs also appear on the Wii and PS2 versions of "Guitar Hero: Metallica" as bonus songs instead of DLC. The eight remaining tracks (including both versions of "Suicide & Redemption") were released on November 24, 2009, as DLC for "Guitar Hero 5" and "Band Hero" for Wii.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Metallica promoted "Death Magnetic" with the World Magnetic Tour, which started on October 21, 2008, in Phoenix, Arizona. The North American leg finished in February 2009 and was followed by European concerts, interrupted only by a surprise gig at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, to promote the video game "". A second North American leg, prioritizing markets missed by the original concerts, began in September. The tour returned to both continents while also extending to Latin America, Israel, Japan and Oceania in 2010, ending on November 21 in Melbourne, Australia. The 2010 Sonisphere Festival headlined by Metallica had them for the first time accompanied by the rest of the "Big Four of thrash metal", Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, and the concert where all bands played together for one song was released theatrically and on home video as "". Metallica also released in November 2009 two video albums out of World Magnetic Tour performances that year, "" featuring three Mexico City concerts in June, and "Français Pour une Nuit" with a concert in the French town of Nîmes in July.


title: Death Magnetic

text: In a 2007 interview with "Rolling Stone", ex-Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum described his impressions of the unfinished songs:


title: Death Magnetic

text: The album's first single, "The Day That Never Comes", was described by BBC Music as the closest thing to a ballad on the album. "Rock Sound" has also compared it to the likes of Thin Lizzy. The band has abandoned the solo-free approach that they followed on "St. Anger", returning to complex, multi-layered arrangements such as those typically found on the band's fourth album "...And Justice for All".


title: Death Magnetic

text: "Death Magnetic" has been praised by fans as well as critics as a comeback for Metallica after the widely panned "St. Anger". "Thrash Hits" was one of the first websites, along with The Quietus, to comment on "Death Magnetic", claiming "it is a vast improvement on 2003 album "St Anger"". "Metal Hammer" noted "Death Magnetic"s "sharp riffs" and "uncharacteristic bouncing grooves", and favorably compares the band's sound on the album to bands like Slayer, Led Zeppelin and Rage Against the Machine. Former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy has praised the album, saying ""Death Magnetic" is hands down the best Metallica album in 20 years. This is the CD I've been waiting for them to make since "...And Justice for All". And thumbs up to them for doing the first real Metallica instrumental in 20 years since 'To Live Is to Die'. Welcome back, boys."


title: Death Magnetic

text: While Metallica was on the first leg of their 2008 tour in Europe, a third party at their management Q Prime demanded that media impressions and blogs commenting on the album be taken down from their website for reasons that were not explained to the band. However, when the band learned of this, they were upset and Ulrich re-posted many of the links along with other reactions to the new album, along with an apology to those whose links had been removed from Metallica's website.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Reviews for the album have been mostly positive. Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated the album was like "hearing Metallica sound like Metallica again". Other positive reviews come from publications like "The Guardian", who say that the album is "the strongest material the band have written in 20 years", and "Uncut", declaring that "like all the best heavy rock albums, it suspends your disbelief, demands your attention and connects directly with your inner adolescent." BBC Music's Chris Jones felt that Hetfield's lyrics had become "the channel of his post-therapy angst". "The Observer" stated "it's a joy to have these gnarled veterans back to reinforce the sheer visceral thrill of timeless heavy metal".


title: Death Magnetic

text: On September 15, 2008, after a reviewer for Swedish daily "Sydsvenskan" admitted that he preferred a shortened mix of "Death Magnetic" to the official release, a scheduled interview was duly cancelled by Universal Music Sweden. Its president, Per Sundin said:


title: Death Magnetic

text: The album has been criticized for having compromised sound quality, due to an excessively compressed dynamic range, leading to audible distortion. Sean Michaels of "The Guardian" explains that this is "a result of the 'loudness war'—an ongoing industry effort to make recordings as loud as possible". A "Rolling Stone" article states that Rubin was "overseeing mixes in Los Angeles while the band is in Europe, headlining shows" and only communicated with him by conference calls.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Fans have noted that these sonic problems are not present in the "Guitar Hero" version of the album, where the guitars, bass, drums, and vocals are presented separately due to the mechanics of the game. The tracks were sent to the game publishers prior to being compressed. As a result, fans have shared "Guitar Hero" versions of the album. MusicRadar and "Rolling Stone" attribute a quote to the album's mastering engineer Ted Jensen in which he claims that "mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived" for mastering and cite a petition from fans to remix or remaster the album.


title: Death Magnetic

text: Metallica and Rubin initially declined to comment, while the band's co-manager Cliff Burnstein stated that complainers were in a minority and that response to the album had otherwise been "overwhelmingly positive". Ulrich later confirmed in an interview with "Blender", that some creative control regarding the album's production had been transferred to Rubin but also stressed his satisfaction with the final product.


title: Death Magnetic

text: In 2015, the album was re-released on iTunes with a new "Mastered for iTunes" mastering which features an improved dynamic range and lack of distortion. Digital downloads from Metallica's official website all use the "Mastered for iTunes" version.


title: Death Magnetic

text: "Death Magnetic" and its songs were nominated for five Grammy Awards at the 51st Grammy Awards on February 8, 2009, including Best Rock Album and Best Rock Instrumental Performance for "Suicide & Redemption", winning Best Metal Performance for "My Apocalypse". Rick Rubin also received the award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, and art directors Bruce Duckworth, David Turner & Sarah Moffat were awarded Best Recording Package. "The Unforgiven III" was also nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 52nd Grammy Awards. "Death Magnetic" was awarded Best Album in the 2009 "Kerrang!" Awards.


title: Death Magnetic

text: At the 2008 Metal Storm Awards, the album won Best Heavy Metal Album and Biggest Surprise. In January 2009, it won a Swedish Metal Award for Best International Album.


title: Death Magnetic

text: "Death Magnetic" debuted at #1 on the "Billboard" 200, selling 490,000 copies in just three days of availability. It is the band's fifth consecutive studio album to debut at #1, making Metallica the first band to have five consecutive studio album releases to do so. The album marked the highest first week sales for the group since 1996's "Load".


title: Death Magnetic

text: According to the September 27, 2008 issue of "Billboard", "Death Magnetic" landed at #1 on the following ten charts: "Billboard" 200, "Billboard" Comprehensive Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Hard Rock Albums, Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums, Top Digital Albums, Top Internet Albums, Top European Albums, Tastemakers. "The Day That Never Comes" topped the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The album stayed at #1 for three consecutive weeks on the "Billboard" 200, and spent 50 consecutive weeks on said chart. Internationally, it peaked at #1 in 34 countries, including Ireland, the UK, Canada and Australia.


title: Death Magnetic

text: In addition, nearly 60,000 copies were sold digitally, making it debut at #1 on the "Digital Album" chart. The album debuted at #1 on the UK albums chart after three days of availability, selling 75,164 copies. It remained at #1 for two weeks and has sold over 150,000 copies to date. In Canada, "Death Magnetic" debuted at #1 on the Canadian Albums Chart. It sold 81,000 copies in its first week, making it the second best-selling debut album of 2008 in Canada. It remained the #1 album for four consecutive weeks. The album was certified 4× platinum in Canada in October 2009.


title: Death Magnetic

text: In Australia, "Death Magnetic" was the fastest selling album of 2008, selling 55,877 copies in its first full week of release. "Death Magnetic" was Australia's highest-selling record in one week since "Australian Idol" winner Damien Leith's "The Winner's Journey", in December 2006. The same success was repeated in Germany, where "Death Magnetic" has become the fastest selling album of 2008. Within the first three days of the album's release, "Death Magnetic" sold over 100,000 copies and has been certified platinum. According to reports, "Death Magnetic" is outselling competitors in Russia and Turkey, two countries which do not have an official album chart.


title: Death Magnetic

text: In Finland, during the second week of January 2009, "Death Magnetic" jumped eighteen spots back up to #1 on that country's album charts within one week.


title: Death Magnetic

text: The deluxe edition of the album included a bonus CD titled "Demo Magnetic", which consisted of demo versions of the tracks on the album with working titles, and a bonus DVD depicting the making of the album.


title: Ficus

text: Ficus ( or ) is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes and hemiepiphytes in the family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few species extending into the semi-warm temperate zone. The common fig ("F. carica") is a temperate species native to southwest Asia and the Mediterranean region (from Afghanistan to Portugal), which has been widely cultivated from ancient times for its fruit, also referred to as figs. The fruit of most other species are also edible though they are usually of only local economic importance or eaten as bushfood. However, they are extremely important food resources for wildlife. Figs are also of considerable cultural importance throughout the tropics, both as objects of worship and for their many practical uses.


title: Ficus

text: "Ficus" is a pantropical genus of trees, shrubs, and vines occupying a wide variety of ecological niches; most are evergreen, but some deciduous species are found in areas outside of the tropics and to higher elevations. Fig species are characterized by their unique inflorescence and distinctive pollination syndrome, which uses wasp species belonging to the family Agaonidae for pollination.


title: Ficus

text: Specific identification of many of the species can be difficult, but members of the genus "Ficus" are relatively easy to recognize. Many have aerial roots and a distinctive shape or habit, and their fruits distinguish them from other plants. The fruit of "Ficus" is an inflorescence enclosed in an urn-like structure called a syconium, which is lined on the inside with the fig's tiny flowers that develop into multiple ovaries on the inside surface. In essence, the fig fruit is a fleshy stem with multiple tiny flowers that fruit and coalesce.


title: Ficus

text: The unique fig pollination system, involving tiny, highly specific wasps, known as fig wasps that enter via ostiole these subclosed inflorescences to both pollinate and lay their own eggs, has been a constant source of inspiration and wonder to biologists. Notably, three vegetative traits together are unique to figs. All figs present a white to yellowish latex, some in copious quantities; the twig shows paired stipules —or circular scars if the stipules have fallen off; the lateral veins at the base of the leaf are steep, forming a tighter angle with the midrib than the other lateral veins, a feature referred to as "triveined".


title: Ficus

text: No unambiguous older fossils of "Ficus" are known. However, current molecular clock estimates indicate that "Ficus" is a relatively ancient genus being at least 60 million years old, and possibly as old as 80 million years. The main radiation of extant species, however, may have taken place more recently, between 20 and 40 million years ago.


title: Ficus

text: Some better-known species that represent the diversity of the genus include the common fig, a small, temperate deciduous tree whose fingered fig leaf is well known in art and iconography; the weeping fig ("F. benjamina"), a hemiepiphyte with thin, tough leaves on pendulous stalks adapted to its rain forest habitat; the rough-leaved sandpaper figs from Australia; and the creeping fig ("F. pumila"), a vine whose small, hard leaves form a dense carpet of foliage over rocks or garden walls.


title: Ficus

text: Moreover, figs with different plant habits have undergone adaptive radiation in different biogeographic regions, leading to very high levels of alpha diversity. In the tropics, "Ficus" commonly is the most species-rich plant genus in a particular forest. In Asia, as many as 70 or more species can co-exist. "Ficus" species richness declines with an increase in latitude in both hemispheres.


title: Ficus

text: A description of fig tree cultivation is set out in Ibn al-'Awwam's 12th-century agricultural work entitled, "Book on Agriculture".


title: Ficus

text: Figs are keystone species in many tropical forest ecosystems. Their fruit are a key resource for some frugivores including fruit bats, and primates including: capuchin monkeys, langurs, gibbons and mangabeys. They are even more important for birds such as Asian barbets, pigeons, hornbills, fig-parrots and bulbuls, which may almost entirely subsist on figs when these are in plenty. Many Lepidoptera caterpillars feed on fig leaves, for example several "Euploea" species (crow butterflies), the plain tiger ("Danaus chrysippus"), the giant swallowtail ("Papilio cresphontes"), the brown awl ("Badamia exclamationis"), and "Chrysodeixis eriosoma", Choreutidae and Copromorphidae moths. The citrus long-horned beetle ("Anoplophora chinensis"), for example, has larvae that feed on wood, including that of fig trees; it can become a pest in fig plantations. Similarly, the sweet potato whitefly ("Bemisia tabaci") is frequently found as a pest on figs grown as potted plants and is spread through the export of these plants to other localities. For a list of other diseases common to fig trees, see List of foliage plant diseases (Moraceae).


title: Ficus

text: Many fig species are grown for their fruits, though only "Ficus carica" is cultivated to any extent for this purpose. A fig "fruit" is a type of multiple fruit known as a syconium, derived from an arrangement of many small flowers on an inverted, nearly closed receptacle. The many small flowers are unseen unless the fig is cut open.


title: Ficus

text: The fruit typically has a bulbous shape with a small opening (the ostiole) at the outward end that allows access to pollinators. The flowers are pollinated by very small wasps that crawl through the opening in search of a suitable place to lay eggs. Without this pollinator service fig trees could not reproduce by seed. In turn, the flowers provide a safe haven and nourishment for the next generation of wasps. This accounts for the frequent presence of wasp larvae in the fruit, and has led to a coevolutionary relationship. Technically, a fig fruit proper would be only one of the many tiny matured, seed-bearing gynoecia found inside one fig – if you cut open a fresh fig, individual fruit will appear as fleshy "threads", each bearing a single seed inside. The genus "Dorstenia", also in the fig family (Moraceae), exhibits similar tiny flowers arranged on a receptacle but in this case the receptacle is a more or less flat, open surface.


title: Ficus

text: Fig plants can be monoecious (hermaphrodite) or gynodioecious (hermaphrodite and female). Nearly half of fig species are gynodioecious, and therefore have some plants with inflorescences (syconium) with long styled pistillate flowers, and other plants with staminate flowers mixed with short styled pistillate flowers. The long-styled flowers tend to prevent wasps from laying their eggs within the ovules, while the short-styled flowers are accessible for egg laying.


title: Ficus

text: All the native fig trees of the American continent are hermaphrodites, as well as species like Indian banyan ("F. benghalensis"), weeping fig ("F. benjamina"), Indian rubber plant ("F. elastica"), fiddle-leaved fig ("F. lyrata"), Moreton Bay fig ("F. macrophylla"), Chinese banyan ("F. microcarpa"), sacred fig ("F. religiosa") and sycamore fig ("F. sycomorus"). The common fig ("Ficus carica") is a gynodioecious plant, as well as lofty fig or clown fig ("F. aspera"), Roxburgh fig ("F. auriculata"), mistletoe fig ("F. deltoidea"), "F. pseudopalma", creeping fig ("F. pumila") and related species. The hermaphrodite common figs are called "inedible figs" or "caprifigs"; in traditional culture in the Mediterranean region they were considered food for goats ("Capra aegagrus"). In the female fig trees, the male flower parts fail to develop; they produce the "'edible figs". Fig wasps grow in common fig caprifigs but not in the female syconiums because the female flower is too long for the wasp to successfully lay her eggs in them. Nonetheless, the wasp pollinates the flower with pollen from the caprifig it grew up in. When the wasp dies, it is broken down by enzymes (Ficain) inside the fig. Fig wasps are not known to transmit any diseases harmful to humans.


title: Ficus

text: When a caprifig ripens, another caprifig must be ready to be pollinated. In temperate climes, wasps hibernate in figs, and there are distinct crops. Caprifigs have three crops per year; common figs have two. The first crop (breba) is larger and juicier, and usually eaten fresh. In cold climates the breba crop is often destroyed by spring frosts. Some parthenocarpic cultivars of common figs do not require pollination at all, and will produce a crop of figs (albeit sterile) in the absence of caprifigs and fig wasps.


title: Ficus

text: Depending on the species, each fruit can contain hundreds or even thousand of seeds. Figs can be propagated by seeds, cuttings, air-layering or grafting. However, as with any plant, figs grown from seed are not necessarily genetically identical to the parent and are only propagated this way for breeding purposes.


title: Ficus

text: Each species of fig is pollinated by one or a few specialised wasp species, and therefore plantings of fig species outside of their native range results in effectively sterile individuals. For example, in Hawaii, some 60 species of figs have been introduced, but only four of the wasps that fertilize them, so only those species of figs produce viable seeds there and can become invasive species. This is an example of mutualism, in which each organism (fig plant and fig wasp) benefit each other, in this case reproductively.


title: Ficus

text: The intimate association between fig species and their wasp pollinators, along with the high incidence of a one-to-one plant-pollinator ratio have long led scientists to believe that figs and wasps are a clear example of coevolution. Morphological and reproductive behavior evidence, such as the correspondence between fig and wasp larvae maturation rates, have been cited as support for this hypothesis for many years. Additionally, recent genetic and molecular dating analyses have shown a very close correspondence in the character evolution and speciation phylogenies of these two clades.


title: Ficus

text: According to meta-analysis of molecular data for 119 fig species 35% (41) have multiple pollinator wasp species. The real proportion is higher because not all wasp species were detected. On the other hand, species of wasps pollinate multiple host fig species. Molecular techniques, like microsatellite markers and mitochondrial sequence analysis, allowed a discovery of multiple genetically distinct, cryptic wasp species. Not all these cryptic species are sister taxa and thus must have experienced a host fig shift at some point. These cryptic species lacked evidence of genetic introgression or backcrosses indicating limited fitness for hybrids and effective reproductive isolation and speciation.


title: Ficus

text: The existence of cryptic species suggests that neither the number of symbionts nor their evolutionary relationships are necessarily fixed ecologically. While the morphological characteristics that facilitate the fig-wasp mutualisms are likely to be shared more fully in closer relatives, the absence of unique pairings would make it impossible to do a one-to-one tree comparison and difficult to determine cospeciation.


title: Ficus

text: With 800 species, "Ficus" is by far the largest genus in the Moraceae, and is one of the largest genera of flowering plants currently described. The species currently classified within "Ficus" were originally split into several genera in the mid-1800s, providing the basis for a subgeneric classification when reunited into one genus in 1867. This classification put functionally dioecious species into four subgenera based on floral characters. In 1965, E. J. H. Corner reorganized the genus on the basis of breeding system, uniting these four dioecious subgenera into a single dioecious subgenus "Ficus". Monoecious figs were classified within the subgenera "Urostigma", "Pharmacosycea" and "Sycomorus".


title: Ficus

text: This traditional classification has been called into question by recent phylogenetic studies employing genetic methods to investigate the relationships between representative members of the various sections of each subgenus. Of Corner's original subgeneric divisions of the genus, only "Sycomorus" is supported as monophyletic in the majority of phylogenetic studies. Notably, there is no clear split between dioecious and monoecious lineages. One of the two sections of "Pharmacosycea", a monoecious group, form a monophyletic clade basal to the rest of the genus, which includes the other section of "Pharmacosycea", the rest of the monoecious species, and all of the dioecious species. These remaining species are divided into two main monophyletic lineages (though the statistical support for these lineages isn't as strong as for the monophyly of the more derived clades within them). One consists of all sections of "Urostigma" except for section "Urostigma s. s.". The other includes section "Urostigma s. s.", subgenus "Sycomorus", and the species of subgenus "Ficus", though the relationships of the sections of these groups to one another are not well resolved.


title: Ficus

text: The wood of fig trees is often soft and the latex precludes its use for many purposes. It was used to make mummy caskets in Ancient Egypt. Certain fig species (mainly "F. cotinifolia", "F. insipida" and "F. padifolia") are traditionally used in Mesoamerica to produce "papel amate" (Nahuatl: "āmatl"). "Mutuba" ("F. natalensis") is used to produce barkcloth in Uganda. "Pou" ("F. religiosa") leaves' shape inspired one of the standard "kbach rachana", decorative elements in Cambodian architecture. Indian banyan ("F. benghalensis") and the Indian rubber plant, as well as other species, have use in herbalism. The inner bark of an unknown type of wild fig, locally known as "urú", was once used by the of Bolivia to produce a fibrous cloth used for clothing.


title: Ficus

text: Figs have figured prominently in some human cultures. There is evidence that figs, specifically the common fig ("F. carica") and sycamore fig ("Ficus sycomorus"), were among the first – if not the very first – plant species that were deliberately bred for agriculture in the Middle East, starting more than 11,000 years ago. Nine subfossil "F. carica" figs dated to about 9400–9200 BCE were found in the early Neolithic village Gilgal I (in the Jordan Valley, 13 km, or 8.1 mi, north of Jericho). These were a parthenogenetic type and thus apparently an early cultivar. This find predates the first known cultivation of grain in the Middle East by many hundreds of years.


title: Ficus

text: Fig is a popular species in the practice of bonsai. It is particularly popular with beginners, as it is widely available and survives well as an indoor plant.


title: Ficus

text: Fig trees have profoundly influenced culture through several religious traditions. Among the more famous species are the sacred fig tree (Pipal, bodhi, bo, or po, "Ficus religiosa") and other banyan figs such as "Ficus benghalensis". The oldest living plant of known planting date is a "Ficus religiosa" tree known as the Sri Maha Bodhi planted in the temple at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka by King Tissa in 288 BCE. The common fig is one of two significant trees in Islam, and there is a sura in Quran named "The Fig" or At-Tin (سوره تین). In Asia, figs are important in Buddhism and Hinduism. In Jainism, the consumption of any fruit belonging to this genus is prohibited. The Buddha is traditionally held to have found "bodhi" (enlightenment) while meditating for 49 days under a sacred fig. The same species was "Ashvattha", the "world tree" of Hinduism. The "Plaksa Pra-sravana" was said to be a fig tree between the roots of which the Sarasvati River sprang forth; it is usually held to be a sacred fig but more probably is "Ficus virens". According to the Kikuyu people, sacrifices to Ngai were performed under a sycomore tree (Mũkũyũ) and if one was not available, a fig tree (Mũgumo) would be used. The common fig tree is cited in the Bible, where in Genesis 3:7, Adam and Eve cover their nakedness with fig leaves. The fig fruit is also one of the traditional crops of Israel, and is included in the list of food found in the Promised Land, according to the Torah (Deut. 8). Jesus cursed a fig tree for bearing no fruit (). The fig tree was sacred in ancient Greece and Cyprus, where it was a symbol of fertility.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: Leisure Suit Larry is an adult-themed sexual video game series created by Al Lowe. It was published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009, then by Codemasters starting in 2009. The first six "Leisure Suit Larry" titles, along with "" and "", were distributed by Vivendi Games (now Activision Blizzard), while "" and "" were distributed by Codemasters. Currently the games are being published and distributed by Assemble Entertainment.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: The games follow Larry Laffer, a balding, double entendre-speaking, leisure suit-wearing man in his 40s. The stories generally revolve around his attempting, usually unsuccessfully, to seduce attractive young women. , the series has sold copies.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: The series had its origins in Sierra's earlier "Softporn Adventure", a 1981 text adventure created by designer Chuck Benton; the story and basic structure from that game were reused for the first "Larry" game. The "Larry" games were one of Sierra's most popular game series during the genre's heyday, when it was first released in the mid-1980s. The series contains the only games produced by Sierra that contain significant sexual themes.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: In general, the games follow the escapades of Larry Laffer as he attempts to persuade a variety of nubile women to sleep with him. A common link between the games are Larry's explorations of luxurious and cosmopolitan hotels, ships, beaches, resorts, and casinos. The character of Larry Laffer was voiced by Jan Rabson.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: After the first game, the seriesdespite becoming known for its lewd contentgained a reputation for not featuring as much sexual material as expected; this was particularly true of the middle games in the series, which were released at the same time as more explicit games, like "Cobra Mission". At most, the raunchier moments were usually hidden as Easter eggs. Things became racier again toward the end of the series, particularly in the (original) final installment, "Love for Sail!".


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: "", a spin-off version of the series, featured a different protagonist and style of game play. It was developed by High Voltage Software and released by Sierra in 2004. In 2007, Vivendi Universal Games announced a mobile remake of "Love for Sail!" In 2008, Sierra Entertainment announced plans to release "". It was developed by Team17, and the publishing rights were offered to Codemasters, who published the game in 2009. Larry Lovage, the protagonist of "Magna Cum Laude" and "Box Office Bust", was voiced by Tim Dadabo. "Box Office Bust" was panned by critics, including Al Lowe himself, who thanked VU Games for keeping him away from developing the game.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: In June 2011, Replay Games announced on their blog that they had acquired a license for the "Leisure Suit Larry" series. Replay Games planned to re-release the titles it licensed. It was also announced that the series' creator, Al Lowe, would be involved with the development of the new releases. In April 2012, Replay Games initiated a Kickstarter project that finished funding on May 2, 2012, and secured a total of $674,598, for which the developers promised to add more story, additional dialogue, and one more character.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: The "HD" game, titled "" was originally announced to be released in late 2012, but it was delayed to mid-2013. In April 2013, Lowe said that early development had begun on a remake of "Larry 2"; Josh Mandel later confirmed the game's early development in a Kickstarter update.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: "Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies" is the name for a never-made fourth installment, often regarded as an in-joke. The name, used by official sources and fans, refers to rumors that the reason for the cancellation of the game was the losing of the game's original production floppies, after which the developers refused to remake the game from scratch. Other sources claim that it was nothing but an internal office prank. The franchise's installments were numbered as if this installment had been published; the actual fourth installment was "Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work".


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: Al Lowe gave two official reasons for the cancellation of "Leisure Suit Larry 4". The first was that Sierra had begun work on a multiplayer installment for The Sierra Network, but the project failed mostly due to technical reasons. The second was that the ending of "" was definitive and somehow metafictional, since it showed Larry and Patti coming to the Sierra studios to make games based on their adventures, as well as living happily in a mountain cabin in Coarsegold. This completed a relatively cohesive trilogy, and was a dead-end for a new story arc. In 2012, Lowe discussed what happened to the fourth installment in a video made for a Kickstarter project, in which he said that the idea for skipping "Larry 4" came as a flippant comment in the office, and became a "real marketing coup" when selling "Larry 5" because buyers would immediately ask what happened to the fourth. It became "one of software's big jokes".


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: According to production notes given by Lowe, the following events must be assumed to have happened between "Larry 3" and "Larry 5" to connect the two games: Larry and Patti plan to marry; Patti leaves him at a Yosemite church to pursue her career, but Larry is gone when she returns; The villain of "Larry 5", Julius Biggs, somehow steals the game disks and Larry suffers amnesia. The absence of the floppy disks was introduced as a plot element in the sequel to explain how Larry, as a computer generated character, came to suffer from amnesia. "Larry 4" appears in several of the other games in the series, including being played in "Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude". "Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sale Mobile" takes place during the "Larry 4" development years, and a subplot for the best ending requires finding the lost disks. A folder named LSL4 could be found on the CD of "Leisure Suit Larry Collection" in which Al Lowe left a note in a readme file referencing the game and concluding "who says sequels have to be done sequentially?".


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: "MAD Magazine" proposed what "Leisure Suit Larry 4" might have looked like in a 1990 issue spoofing video games. Their idea was "the after effect of Larry's screwing around with the time coming for Larry having to pay the piper." They proposed the idea of Larry in a maze game similar to "Berzerk", where he must steer clear of out-of-wedlock pregnancies he has caused, as well as private investigators, case workers and angry fathers wielding shotguns, making it extremely difficult for Larry to continue his infamous carefree attitude towards casual sex. On April 1, 2009, the abandonware site Abandonia released an alleged "leaked copy" for download. This turned out in fact to be an elaborate April Fools' Day prank: the screenshots were fakes, the review was fictional, and the "game" archive actually contained 55 identical copies of scanned front casing of "Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust".


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: The game is a part of the plot of "", another Sierra title. In the game, LSL4 is labeled as the cause of a supercomputer virus that crippled Roger's home planet Xenon.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: "Leisure Suit Larry 8", tentatively subtitled "Lust in Space" (as well as "Explores Uranus" in some references), was in full development in 1998 until funding was cut. Shortly afterwards, Sierra's adventure games department was disbanded, and Al Lowe left Sierra on February 22, 1999. Like the canned "Space Quest" sequel, "Larry 8" was to feature 3D computer graphics, but no more than a few test renders now survive. The game "Leisure Suit Larry: Explores Uranus", as well as its teaser, was referenced in "Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!" triggered with an Easter egg, as well as a teaser after completing the game. In 2013, Al Lowe pointed out that this title is still being considered, with support from series co-writer Josh Mandel. Lowe stated that even though he would like to complete the "Reloaded" series first, "Leisure Suit Larry 8" is "absolutely" still in the works.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: "Leisure Suit Larry: Pocket Party" was a canceled game meant to be released in the second half of 2005 for the N-Gage. The publishers were Vivendi and Nokia, while the developer was TKO-Software. In the game, players would explore a 3D college campus, while solving puzzles and engaging in risque activities. As they search for the ultimate good time, gamers bump into Rosie Palmer, the head cheerleader at Larry's college. Attempting to win over Rosie's heart, Larry is thoroughly embarrassed by her jock boyfriend Chuck Rockwell, but humiliation has never stopped Larry before and he is determined to do anything to be with Rosie. In addition to single-player game play, players could also wirelessly square off against an opponent in four different turn-based mini-games. Concept art and design document of the game are in hands of Jody Hicks, one of the game's developers. Also alive Alpha prototype was spotted at ObscureGamers forum in February 2021.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: In late 2005, Target department stores (through online vendor Amazon.com) began accepting pre-orders for a sequel to "Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude" titled "Leisure Suit Larry: Cocoa Butter". This new game was being developed for the PC, PS2, Xbox and PSP systems, but has since been canceled.


title: Leisure Suit Larry

text: The series was ranked as the 85th top game of all time by "Next Generation" in 1996, for how "the designers have managed to work in enough campy humor and bad puns to keep the game going through five more installments over nine years." The total sales of the first five "Leisure Suit Larry" games surpassed 2 million copies by 1996, as of "Love for Sail"s release. , the series has sold copies.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Fairfax County, officially the County of Fairfax, is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is part of Northern Virginia and borders both the city of Alexandria and Arlington County and forms part of the suburban ring of Washington, D.C. The county is predominantly suburban in character with some urban and rural pockets.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,150,309, making it Virginia's most populous jurisdiction, with around 13% of the Commonwealth's population. The county is also the most populous jurisdiction in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, with around 20% of the MSA population, as well as the larger Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area, with around 13% of the CSA population. The county seat is Fairfax, although because it is an independent city under Virginia law, the city of Fairfax is not part of Fairfax County.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Fairfax was the first U.S. county to reach a six-figure median household income and has the third-highest median household income of any county-level local jurisdiction in the U.S. Fairfax County, as part of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, is usually included atop or near the top of lists of the wealthiest areas in the United States.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: The county is home to the headquarters of several intelligence agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Counterterrorism Center, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as the headquarters of several aerospace manufacturing and defense industry giants. The county is also home to the flagship campus of George Mason University, and headquarters to seven "Fortune" 500 companies, including three in the Falls Church area, though not in the independent municipality of Falls Church.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: At the time of first European encounter, the inhabitants of what would become Fairfax County were an Algonquian-speaking subgroup called the "Taux", also known as the Doeg or Dogue. Their villages, as recorded by Captain John Smith in 1608, included "Namassingakent" and "Nemaroughquand" on the south bank of the Potomac River in what is now Fairfax County. Virginian colonists from the Northern Neck region drove the Doeg out of this area and into Maryland by 1670.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Fairfax County was formed in 1742 from the northern part of Prince William County. It was named after Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1693–1781), proprietor of the Northern Neck. The Fairfax family name is derived from the Old English phrase for "blond hair", "Fæger-feax".


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: The oldest settlements in Fairfax County were along the Potomac River. George Washington settled in Fairfax County and built his home, Mount Vernon, facing the river. Gunston Hall, the home of George Mason, is nearby. Modern Fort Belvoir is partly on the estate of Belvoir Manor, built along the Potomac by William Fairfax in 1741.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Thomas Fairfax, the only member of the British nobility ever to reside in the colonies, lived at Belvoir before moving to the Shenandoah Valley. The Belvoir mansion and several of its outbuildings were destroyed by fire immediately after the Revolutionary War in 1783, and George Washington noted the plantation complex deteriorated into ruins.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: In 1757, the northwestern two-thirds of Fairfax County became Loudoun County. In 1789, part of Fairfax County was ceded to the federal government to form Alexandria County of the District of Columbia. Alexandria County was returned to Virginia in 1846, reduced in size by the secession of the independent city of Alexandria in 1870, and renamed Arlington County in 1920. The Fairfax County town of Falls Church became an independent city in 1948. The Fairfax County town of Fairfax became an independent city in 1961.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Located near Washington, D.C., Fairfax County was an important region in the Civil War. The Battle of Chantilly or Ox Hill, during the same campaign as the second Battle of Bull Run, was fought within the county; Bull Run is the border between Fairfax and Prince William Counties. Other areas of activity included Minor's Hill, Munson's Hill, and Upton's Hill, on the county's eastern border, overlooking Washington, D.C.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: The federal government's growth during and after World War II spurred rapid growth in the county and made it increasingly suburban. Other large businesses continued to settle in Fairfax County and the opening of Tysons Corner Center spurred the rise of Tysons Corner. The technology boom and a steady government-driven economy also created rapid growth and an increasingly large and diverse population. The economy has also made Fairfax County one of the nation's wealthiest counties.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: A general aviation airport along U.S. Route 50 west of Seven Corners called the Falls Church Airpark operated in the county from 1948 to 1960. The facility's 2,650-foot unpaved runway was used extensively by private pilots and civil defense officials. Residential development, multiple accidents, and the demand for retail space led to its closure in 1960.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of , of which is land and (3.8%) is water.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Fairfax County is bounded on the north and southeast by the Potomac River. Across the river to the northeast is Washington, D.C., across the river to the north is Montgomery County, Maryland, and across the river to the southeast are Prince George's County, Maryland and Charles County, Maryland. The county is partially bounded on the north and east by Arlington County and the independent cities of Alexandria and Falls Church. It is bounded on the west by Loudoun County, and on the south by Prince William County.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Most of the county lies in the Piedmont region, with rolling hills and deep stream valleys such as Difficult Run and its tributaries. West of Route 28, the hills give way to a flat, gentle valley that stretches west to the Bull Run Mountains in Loudoun County. Elevations in the county range from near sea level along the tidal sections of the Potomac River in the southeast portion of the county to more than 500 feet (150 m) in the Tysons Corner area.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: The Piedmont hills in the central county are made up of ancient metamorphic rocks such as schist, the roots of several ancestral ranges of the Appalachians. The western valley is floored with more recent shale and sandstone. This geology is similar to adjacent bands of rocks in Maryland and further south in Virginia along the eastern front of the Appalachians.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: An area of of the county is known to be underlain with natural asbestos. Much of the asbestos is known to emanate from fibrous tremolite or actinolite. The threat was discovered in 1987, prompting the county to establish laws to monitor air quality at construction sites, control soil taken from affected areas, and require freshly developed sites to lay of clean, stable material over the ground.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: For instance, during the construction of Centreville High School a large amount of asbestos-laden soil was removed and then trucked to Vienna for the construction of the I-66/Nutley Street interchange. Fill dirt then had to be trucked in to make the site level. Marine clays can be found in widespread areas of the county east of Interstate 95, mostly in the Lee and Mount Vernon districts. These clays contribute to soil instability, leading to significant construction challenges for builders.


title: Fairfax County, Virginia

text: Fairfax County uses the urban county executive form of government, which county voters approved in a 1966 referendum.