Etymology.

The etymology of the name "Bern" is uncertain. According to the local legend, based on folk etymology, Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, the founder of the city of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt, and this turned out to be a bear. It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as "Bern" in Middle High German. As a result of the finding of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now more common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin, possibly "*berna" "cleft". The bear was the heraldic animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of live bears in the "Bärengraben" dates to the 1440s.

History.

Early history.

No archaeological evidence that indicates a settlement on the site of today′s city centre prior to the 12th century has been found so far. In antiquity, a Celtic "oppidum" stood on the "Engehalbinsel" (peninsula) north of Bern, fortified since the second century BC (late La Tène period), thought to be one of the 12 "oppida" of the Helvetii mentioned by Caesar. During the Roman era, a Gallo-Roman "vicus" was on the same site. The Bern zinc tablet has the name "Brenodor" ("dwelling of Breno"). In the Early Middle Ages, a settlement in Bümpliz, now a city district of Bern, was some from the medieval city.  The medieval city is a foundation of the Zähringer ruling family, which rose to power in Upper Burgundy in the 12th century. According to 14th-century historiography ("Cronica de Berno", 1309), Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen.  In 1218, after Berthold died without an heir, Bern was made a free imperial city by the "Goldene Handfeste" of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.

Old Swiss Confederacy.

In 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of the eight cantons of the formative period of 1353 to 1481.  Bern invaded and conquered Aargau in 1415 and Vaud in 1536, as well as other smaller territories, thereby becoming the largest city-state north of the Alps; by the 18th century, it comprised most of what is today the canton of Bern and the canton of Vaud.  The city grew out towards the west of the boundaries of the peninsula formed by the river Aare. The "Zytglogge" tower marked the western boundary of the city from 1191 until 1256, when the "Käfigturm" took over this role until 1345. It was, in turn, succeeded by the "Christoffelturm" (formerly located close to the site of the modern-day railway station) until 1622. During the time of the Thirty Years' War, two new fortifications – the so-called big and small "Schanze" (entrenchment) – were built to protect the whole area of the peninsula.  After a major blaze in 1405, the city's original wooden buildings were gradually replaced by half-timbered houses and subsequently the sandstone buildings which came to be characteristic for the Old Town. Despite the waves of pestilence that hit Europe in the 14th century, the city continued to grow, mainly due to immigration from the surrounding countryside.

Modern history.

Bern was occupied by French troops in 1798 during the French Revolutionary Wars, when it was stripped of parts of its territories. It regained control of the Bernese Oberland in 1802, and following the Congress of Vienna of 1814, it newly acquired the Bernese Jura. At this time, it once again became the largest canton of the Confederacy as it stood during the Restoration and until the secession of the canton of Jura in 1979. Bern was made the Federal City (seat of the Federal Assembly) within the new Swiss federal state in 1848.  A number of congresses of the socialist First and Second Internationals were held in Bern, particularly during World War I when Switzerland was neutral; see Bern International.  The city's population rose from about 5,000 in the 15th century to about 12,000 by 1800 and to above 60,000 by 1900, passing the 100,000 mark during the 1920s. Population peaked during the 1960s at 165,000 and has since decreased slightly, to below 130,000 by 2000. As of September 2017, the resident population stood at 142,349, of which 100,000 were Swiss citizens and 42,349 (31%) resident foreigners. A further estimated 350,000 people live in the immediate urban agglomeration.

Geography and climate.

Topography.

Bern lies on the Swiss plateau in the canton of Bern, slightly west of the centre of Switzerland and north of the Bernese Alps. The countryside around Bern was formed by glaciers during the most recent ice age. The two mountains closest to Bern are Gurten with a height of and Bantiger with a height of. The site of the old observatory in Bern is the point of origin of the CH1903 coordinate system at.  The city was originally built on a hilly peninsula surrounded by the river Aare, but outgrew natural boundaries by the 19th century. A number of bridges have been built to allow the city to expand beyond the Aare.  Bern is built on very uneven ground. An elevation difference of up to 60 metres exists between the inner city districts on the Aare (Matte, Marzili) and the higher ones (Kirchenfeld, Länggasse).  Bern has an area,, of. Of this area, or 19.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 33.6% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 45.0% is settled (buildings or roads), or 2.1% is either rivers or lakes, and or 0.3% is unproductive land.  Of the developed area of Bern, 3.6% consists of industrial buildings, 21.7% housing and other buildings, and 12.6% is devoted to transport infrastructure. Power and water infrastructure, as well as other special developed areas, made up 1.1% of the city, while another 6.0% consists of parks, green belts, and sports fields.  Of Bern's total land area, 32.8% is heavily forested. Of the agricultural land, 14.3% is used for growing crops and 4.0% is designated to be used as pasture. Local rivers and streams provide all the water in the municipality.

Climate.

According to the Köppen Climate Classification, Bern has a humid continental climate ("Dfb") closely bordering on an oceanic climate ("Cfb").  The closest weather station near Bern is located in the municipality of Zollikofen, about north of the city centre. The warmest month for Bern is July, with a daily mean temperature of, and a daily maximum temperature of. The highest temperature recorded at Bern / Zollikofen is, recorded in August 2003. On average, a temperature of or above is recorded 40.7 days per year, and 6 days per year with a temperature of or above at Zollikofen, and the warmest day reaches an average of.  There are 103.7 days of air frost, and 22.3 ice days per year at Bern (Zollikofen) for the period of 1981–2010, as well as 14.1 days of snowfall, 36.7 days of snow cover per year and the average amount of snow measured per year is. On average, January is the coldest month, with a daily mean temperature of, and a daily minimum temperature of. The lowest temperature ever recorded at Bern (Zollikofen) was, recorded in February 1929, and typically the coldest temperature of the year reaches an average of for the period of 1981–2010.

Politics.

Subdivisions.

The municipality is administratively subdivided into six districts ("Stadtteile"), each of which consists of several quarters ("Quartiere").

Government.

The Municipal Council (de: Gemeinderat, fr: conseil municipal) constitutes the executive government of the City of Bern and operates as a collegiate authority. It is composed of five councillors (, ), each presiding over a directorate (de: "Direktion", fr: "direction") comprising several departments and bureaus. The president of the executive department acts as mayor (de: "Stadtpräsident", fr: "Le Maire"). In the mandate period 2017–2020 ("Legislatur") the Municipal Council is presided by "Stadtpräsident" Alec von Graffenried. Departmental tasks, coordination measures and implementation of laws decreed by the City Council are carried by the Municipal Council. The regular election of the Municipal Council by any inhabitant valid to vote is held every four years. Any resident of Bern allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Municipal Council. Contrary to most other municipalities, the executive government in Berne is selected by means of a system of Proporz. The mayor is elected as such as well by public election while the heads of the other directorates are assigned by the collegiate. The executive body holds its meetings in the Erlacherhof, built by architect Albrecht Stürler after 1747. , Bern's Municipal Council is made up of two representatives of the SP (Social Democratic Party), and one each of CVP (Christian Democratic Party), GFL ("Grüne Freie Liste" a.k.a. Green Free List, who is the newly elected mayor since 2017), and GB (Green Alliance of Berne), giving the left parties a very strong majority of four out of five seats. The last regular election was held on 27 November 2016/15 January 2017.  Dr. Jürg Wichtermann is State Chronicler ("Staatsschreiber") since 2008. He has been elected by the collegiate.

Parliament.

The City Council (de: Stadtrat, fr: Conseil de ville) holds legislative power. It is made up of 80 members, with elections held every four years. The City Council decrees regulations and by-laws that are executed by the Municipal Council and the administration. The delegates are selected by means of a system of proportional representation.  The sessions of the City Council are public. Unlike members of the Municipal Council, members of the City Council are not politicians by profession, and they are paid a fee based on their attendance. Any resident of Bern allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the City Council. The parliament holds its meetings in the "Stadthaus" (Town Hall).  The last regular election of the City Council was held on 27 November 2016 for the mandate period (, ) from 2017 to 2020. Currently the City Council consist of 24 members of the Social Democratic Party (SP/PS) including 2 members of the junior party "JUSO", 9 Green Alliance of Berne (GB), 9 The Liberals (FDP/PLR), 9 Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), 8 "Grüne Freie Liste (GFL)" (Green Free List), 8 Green Liberal Party (glp/pvl) including one member of its junior party "jglp", 3 Conservative Democratic Party (BDP/PBD), 2 Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC), 2 Evangelical People's Party (EVP/PEV), 2 "Junge Alternative (JA!)" (or Young Alternatives), 2 Alternative Linke Bern (AL), 1 "Grüne Partei Bern – Demokratische Alternative (GPB-DA)" (or Green Party Bern – Democratic Alternative), and 1 Swiss Party of Labour (PdA).  The following parties combine their parliamentary power in parliamentary groups (): AL and GPB-DA and PdA (4), SP and JUSO (24), GB and JA! (11), GFL and EVP (10), glp und jglp (8), BDP and CVP (5), FDP (9), and SVP (9). This gives the left parties an absolute majority of 49 seats.

National elections.

National Council.

In the 2019 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 28.7% (-5.6) of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (25.2%, +7.9), the pvl (13.5%, +4.1), the UDC (9.5%, -2.9), PLR (4.2%, -2.8), and the BDP/PBD (7.0%). In the federal election a total of 49,030 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 56%.  In the 2015 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 34.3% of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (17.4%), the UDC (12.4%), and the FDP/PLR (9.9%), glp/pvl (9.4%), and the BDP/PBD (7.0%). In the federal election, a total of 48,556 voters were cast, and the voter turnout was 56.0%.

International relations.

Twin and sister cities.

The Municipal Council of the city of Bern decided against having twinned cities except for a temporary (during the UEFA Euro 2008) cooperation with the Austrian city Salzburg.

Demographics.

Population.

Bern has a population () of.. About 34% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the 10 years between 2000 and 2010, the population changed at a rate of 0.6%. Migration accounted for 1.3%, while births and deaths accounted for −2.1%.  Most of the population () speaks German (104,465 or 81.2%) as their first language, Italian is the second most common (5,062 or 3.9%) and French is the third (4,671 or 3.6%). There are 171 people who speak Romansh. , the population was 47.5% male and 52.5% female. The population was made up of 44,032 Swiss men (35.4% of the population) and 15,092 (12.1%) non-Swiss men. There were 51,531 Swiss women (41.4%) and 13,726 (11.0%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 39,008 or about 30.3% were born in Bern and lived there in 2000. There were 27,573 or 21.4% who were born in the same canton, while 25,818 or 20.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 27,812 or 21.6% were born outside of Switzerland. , children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 15.1% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 65% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 19.9%. , there were 59,948 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 49,873 married individuals, 9,345 widows or widowers and 9,468 individuals who are divorced. , there were 67,115 private households in the municipality, and an average of 1.8 persons per household. There were 34,981 households that consist of only one person and 1,592 households with five or more people., a total of 65,538 apartments (90.6% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 5,352 apartments (7.4%) were seasonally occupied and 1,444 apartments (2.0%) were empty., the construction rate of new housing units was 1.2 new units per 1000 residents.

Historic population.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Religion.

From the, 60,455 or 47.0% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church, while 31,510 or 24.5% were Roman Catholic. Of the rest of the population, there were 1,874 members of an Orthodox church (or about 1.46% of the population), there were 229 persons (or about 0.18% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 5,531 persons (or about 4.30% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 324 persons (or about 0.25% of the population) who were Jewish, and 4,907 (or about 3.81% of the population) who were Muslim. There were 629 persons who were Buddhist, 1,430 persons who were Hindu and 177 persons who belonged to another church. 16,363 (or about 12.72% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 7,855 persons (or about 6.11% of the population) did not answer the question. On 14 December 2014 the Haus der Religionen was inaugurated.

Main sights.

The structure of Bern's city centre is largely medieval and has been recognised by UNESCO as a Cultural World Heritage Site. Perhaps its most famous sight is the "Zytglogge" (Bernese German for "Time Bell"), an elaborate medieval clock tower with moving puppets. It also has an impressive 15th century Gothic cathedral, the "Münster", and a 15th-century town hall. Thanks to of arcades, the old town boasts one of the longest covered shopping promenades in Europe.  Since the 16th century, the city has had a bear pit, the "Bärengraben", at the far end of the Nydeggbrücke to house its heraldic animals. The currently four bears are now kept in an open-air enclosure nearby, and two other young bears, a present by the Russian president, are kept in Dählhölzli zoo.  The Federal Palace (Bundeshaus), built from 1857 to 1902, which houses the national parliament, government and part of the federal administration, can also be visited.  Albert Einstein lived in a flat at the Kramgasse 49, the site of the Einsteinhaus, from 1903 to 1905, the year in which the "Annus Mirabilis" papers were published.  The Rose Garden ("Rosengarten"), from which a scenic panoramic view of the medieval town centre can be enjoyed, is a well-kept Rosarium on a hill, converted into a park from a former cemetery in 1913.  There are eleven Renaissance allegorical statues on public fountains in the Old Town. Nearly all the 16th-century fountains, except the Zähringer fountain, which was created by Hans Hiltbrand, are the work of the Fribourg master Hans Gieng. One of the more interesting fountains is the Kindlifresserbrunnen (Bernese German: "Child Eater Fountain"), which is claimed to represent a Jew, the Greek god Chronos, or a Fastnacht figure meant to frighten disobedient children.  Bern's most recent sight is the set of fountains in front of the Federal Palace. It was inaugurated on 1 August 2004.  The Universal Postal Union is situated in Bern.

Heritage sites of national significance.

Bern is home to 114 Swiss heritage sites of national significance.  It includes the entire Old Town, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and many sites within and around it. Some of the most notable in the Old Town include the Cathedral which was started in 1421 and is the tallest cathedral in Switzerland, the Zytglogge and Käfigturm towers, which mark two successive expansions of the Old Town, and the Holy Ghost Church, which is one of the largest Swiss Reformed churches in Switzerland. Within the Old Town, there are eleven 16th-century fountains, most attributed to Hans Gieng, that are on the list.  Outside the Old Town the heritage sites include the Bärengraben, the Gewerbeschule Bern (1937), the Eidgenössisches Archiv für Denkmalpflege, the (after 1881), the Thunplatzbrunnen, the Federal Mint building, the Federal Archives, the Swiss National Library, the Historical Museum (1894), Alpine Museum, Museum of Communication and Natural History Museum.

Culture.

Cinemas.

Bern has several dozen cinemas. As is customary in German Switzerland, films are generally in German. Some films in select cinemas are shown in their original language with German and French subtitles.

Music events.

The "Musikpreis des Kantons Bern" is an annual musical event where "Outstanding musicians which styles shape the Bern music scene" are honored.

Sports.

Bern was the site of the 1954 Football (Soccer) World Cup Final, a huge upset for the Hungarian Golden Team, who were beaten 3–2 by West Germany. The football team BSC Young Boys is based in Bern at the Stade de Suisse Wankdorf, which also was one of the venues for the European football championship 2008 in which it hosted 3 matches.  FC Breitenrain Bern, founded in 1994, also play in Bern.  SC Bern is the major ice hockey team of Bern which plays in the PostFinance Arena. They compete in the National League (NL), the highest league in Switzerland. The team has ranked highest in attendance for a European hockey team for more than a decade. The PostFinance Arena was the main host of the 2009 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, including the opening game and the final of the tournament.  The PostFinance Arena was also the host of the 2011 European Figure Skate Championships.  Bern Cardinals is the baseball and softball team of Bern, which plays at the Allmend  Bern Grizzlies is the American football club in Bern and plays at Athletics Arena Wankdorf.  Bern was a candidate to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, but withdrew its bid in September 2002 after a referendum was passed that showed that the bid was not supported by locals. Those games were eventually awarded to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  RC Bern is the local rugby club (since 1972) and plays at the Allmend. The ladies team was founded in 1995.  The locality of Bremgartenwald was home to the Bremgarten Circuit, the Grand Prix motor racing course that at one time hosted the Swiss Grand Prix.  Bern Bears is an NGO Basketball Club since 2010 in city of Bern.

Economy.

, Bern had an unemployment rate of 3.3%., there were 259 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 59 businesses involved in this sector. 16,413 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 950 businesses in this sector. 135,973 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 7,654 businesses in this sector. , there were 94,367 workers who commuted into the municipality and 16,424 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 5.7 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. Of the working population, 50.6% used public transport to get to work, and 20.6% used a private car.

Education.

The University of Bern, whose buildings are mainly located in the "Länggasse" quarter, is located in Bern, as well as the University of Applied Sciences ("Fachhochschule") and several vocations schools.  In Bern, about 50,418 or (39.2%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 24,311 or (18.9%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a "Fachhochschule"). Of the 24,311 who completed tertiary schooling, 51.6% were Swiss men, 33.0% were Swiss women, 8.9% were non-Swiss men and 6.5% were non-Swiss women.  The canton of Bern school system provides one year of non-obligatory kindergarten, followed by six years of primary school. This is followed by three years of obligatory lower secondary school where the pupils are separated according to ability and aptitude. Following the lower secondary pupils may attend additional schooling or they may enter an apprenticeship.  During the 2009–10 school year, there were a total of 10,979 pupils attending classes in Bern. There were 89 kindergarten classes with a total of 1,641 pupils in the municipality. Of the kindergarten pupils, 32.4% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 40.2% have a different mother language than the classroom language. The municipality had 266 primary classes and 5,040 pupils. Of the primary pupils, 30.1% were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 35.7% have a different mother language than the classroom language. During the same year, there were 151 lower secondary classes with a total of 2,581 pupils. There were 28.7% who were permanent or temporary residents of Switzerland (not citizens) and 32.7% have a different mother language than the classroom language.  Bern is home to 8 libraries. These libraries include; the Schweiz. Nationalbibliothek/ Bibliothèque nationale suisse, the "Universitätsbibliothek Bern", the "Kornhausbibliotheken Bern", the "BFH Wirtschaft und Verwaltung Bern", the "BFH Gesundheit", the "BFH Soziale Arbeit", the "Hochschule der Künste Bern, Gestaltung und Kunst" and the "Hochschule der Künste Bern, Musikbibliothek". There was a combined total () of 10,308,336 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 2,627,973 items were loaned out. , there were 9,045 pupils in Bern who came from another municipality, while 1,185 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

Transport.

The public transport in and around Bern is operated by BERNMOBIL, which is integrated into the fare network libero with coordinated timetables, which in itself covers the area of canton of Bern and Solothurn. The fare network includes any mode of public transport, such as any kind of train (including the urban S-Bahn), PostAuto buses, trams, buses (either trolleybuses or motorized buses) and others. Fares are based on the number of zones crossed during a specified time and are independent of the mode of transport or the number of connections. The central part of Bern, excluding Bümpliz, "Betlehem", "Bottigen", "Brünnen", and "Riedbach" in the west of the municipality, is part of the fare zone "100".  Bern's central railway station "Bahnhof Bern") (formerly known as "Hauptbahnhof Bern") is not only the central network nucleus of Bern, but also of the whole urban and inter-cantonal region. It connects the city to the urban, national and international railways network and is Switzerland's second most busy railway station (202,600 passengers per working day in 2014).  A funicular railway leads from the "Marzili" district to the "Bundeshaus". The Marzilibahn funicular is, with a length of, the second shortest public railway in Europe after the Zagreb funicular.  Several Aare bridges connect the old parts of the city with the newer districts outside of the peninsula.  Bern is well connected to other cities by several motorways (A1, A12, A6).  Bern is also served by Bern Airport, located outside the city near the town of Belp. The regional airport, colloquially called "Bern-Belp" or "Belpmoos", is connected to several European cities. Additionally Zurich Airport, Geneva Airport and EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg also serve as international gateways, all reachable within less than two hours by train or car from Bern.

Bern or Berne ( ; ; ; ; ) is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to by the Swiss as their "federal city", in German "Bundesstadt", French "ville fédérale", and Italian "città federale". With a population of about 140,000 (as of 2019), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000. Bern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerland's cantons.

伯恩(伯恩德语:Bärn;;;;)位于瑞士西半部领土中央偏北之处,为仅次于苏黎世、日内瓦、巴塞尔和洛桑的第五大城,是伯恩州首府,亦是该国实际上的首都。其旧城区今日已成为联合国教科文组织核定的世界遗产。


Description.

"Protoavis" is usually depicted as being a bipedal archosaur, similar to several poposaurids and rauisuchids that lived during roughly the same time as "Protoavis". In a description published by Sankar Chatterjee, structures were identified as quill knobs, although there has been debate as to whether these are actually quill knobs or not.

Skull and braincase.

The braincase of "Protoavis" is similar in some respects to "Troodon", with an enlarged cerebellum that shifted the optic lobes ventrolaterally, and also has a large floccular lobe. The inner ear is also pretty similar and bird-like in both taxa. The canalicular systems and the cochlear process differ in both taxa, and the vestibular region is relatively small and located in a ventral position to most of the anterior and posterior semicircular canals. The anterior semicircular canal is significantly longer than the others, and the cochlear process is a relatively long, vertically oriented tube. However, "Protoavis" is also remarkedly non-bird like in that it possess only a single exit for the trigeminal. However, these characters are not robust enough to identify "Protoavis" as a bird.  The skull has an extremely narrow parietal with block like dorsal aspect, very broad, T-shaped frontals that form the "lateral wings" that Chatterjee applies to the lack of postorbitals. There are short curved ulnae with olecranon processes, and a possible scapula with bent shaft, and the cervicals have profiles and aspects to their exterior that are very similar to the "Megalancosaurus" cervical series. All the cervicals but the most posterior and axis/atlas have hypapophyses and those triangular neural spines; all characteristics that have been described in "Megalancosaurus". This suggests that portions of "Protoavis" may be drepanosaurid in nature.  Chatterjee presents the skull of "Protoavis" as complete, although only the caudal aspect of the cranium is represented in the available fossils. Chatterjee argues that the temporal region displays a streptostylic quadrate with orbital process for attachment of the M. protractor pterygoidei et quadrati, with associated confluence of the orbits with the temporal fenestrae, thus facilitating prokinesis. He further asserts that the braincase of "Protoavis" bears a number of characters seen in Ornithurae, including the structure of the otic capsule, the widespread pneumatization of the braincase elements, a full complement of tympanic recesses, and the presence of an epiotic.  Of this material, only the quadrate and orbital roof, in addition to limited portions of the braincase are preserved with enough fidelity to permit any definitive interpretation. The quadrates of TTU P 9200 and TTU P 9201 are not particularly alike; a fact not easily explained away if the material is conspecific, as Chatterjee insists. There does not appear to be an orbital process present on either bone, and the modifications of the proximal condyle permitting wide range of motion against the squamosal, are not readily apparent. Furthermore, the quadratojugal and jugal appear far more robust in the "Protoavis" specimens themselves, than represented by Chatterjee. The size and development of the quadratojugal seems to contradict Chatterjee's assertion that this bone contacted the quadrate via a highly mobile pin joint. These data render the assertion of prokinesis in the skull of "Protoavis" questionable at best, and it seems most parsimonious to conclude that the specimen displays a conventional opisthostylic quadrate.  The braincase is where "Protoavis" comes close to being as avian as Chatterjee has maintained. The otic capsule is allegedly organized in avian fashion, with three distinct foramina arranged as such: fenestra ovalis, fenestra pseudorotunda, and the caudal tympanic recess, with a bony metotic strut positioned between the fenestra pseudorotunda and caudal tympanic recess. The claim that the full complement of tympanic recesses seen in ornithurines, are similarly observed in "Protoavis" is questionable, as the preservation of the braincase is not adequate to permit concrete observations on the matter. Chatterjee omits in his 1987 account of the braincase, the presence of a substantial post-temporal fenestra, which in all Aves (including "Archaeopteryx"), is reduced or absent altogether, and the lack of a pneumatic sinus on the paroccipital. Furthermore, the braincase possesses multiple characters symplesiomorphic of Coelurosauria, including an expanded cerebellar auricular fossa, and a vagal canal opening into the occiput. What is preserved of the preorbital skull curiously lacks apomorphic characters to be expected in a specimen, which is allegedly more closely allied to Pygostylia than is "Archaeopteryx lithographica". Most telling is the complete absence of accessory fenestrae in the antorbital fossa, leading to maxillary sinuses.

Post-cranial anatomy.

The post-cranial remains are as badly preserved, or worse, than the cranial elements, and their interpretation by Chatterjee are in many cases unsubstantiated or speculative. Of the postcranial skeleton, Chatterjee has isolated the axial skeleton as displaying a suite of avian characters, including heterocoelus centra, hypapophyses and reduction of the neural spines. First and foremost, the preservation quality of the vertebrae is poor. While the centra are modified, they do not appear to be truly heterocoelus. The presence of incipient hypapophyses in and of itself might be considered indicative of avian affinity, but their poor development and presence on vertebrae otherwise thoroughly non-avian, is most parsimoniously regarded as mild convergence until further material should be brought to light. The reduction of the neural spines is questionable.  Curiously, Gregory Paul has noted that the cervicals of "Protoavis" and drepanosaurs are astonishingly similar, such they are hardly distinguishable from one another. Considering the modification of the drepanosaur neck for the purposes of snap-action predation, it becomes more likely that superficial similarities in the cervicals of both taxa are in fact only convergent with Aves. Chatterjee does not identify the remaining vertebrae as particularly avian in their osteology.

Pectoral girdle.

The pectoral girdle is discussed by Chatterjee as being highly derived in "Protoavis", displaying synapomorphies of avialans more derived than "Archaeopteryx", including the presence of a hypocleidium-bearing furcula, and a hypertrophied, carinate sternum. Chatterjee's interpretation of the fossils identified as such in his reviews of the "Protoavis" material are open to question due to the preservation quality of the elements and as of this time, it is not clear whether either character was in fact present in "Protoavis". The glenoid appears to be oriented dorsolaterally permitting a wide range of humeral movement. Chatterjee implies that this is a highly derived trait which allies "Protoavis" to Aves, but why this should be so is not clearly discussed in the descriptions of the animal. In and of itself, the orientation of the glenoid is not a sufficient basis for placing "Protoavis" within Aves. The scapular blade is far broader than illustrated by Chatterjee in his 1997 account, and not particularly avian in its gross form. The coracoid, identified by Chatterjee as strut-like and retroverted, is, like the supposed furcula and sternum, too poorly preserved to permit accurate identification. Moreover, the original spatial relationship of the alleged coracoid to the scapula is entirely unknown. Uncinate processes and sternal ribs are missing.

Pelvic girdle.

Chatterjee asserts that the pelvic girdle is apomorphic comparative to archaic birds and displays a retroverted pubis, fusion of the ischium and ilium, an antitrochanter, and the presence of a renal fossa. The pubis does appear to display opisthopuby, although this has yet to be verified. The alleged fusion of the ischium and ilium into an ilioischiadic plate is currently not substantiated by the fossils at hand, despite Chatterjee's auspicious illustration to the contrary in "The Rise of Birds". At this time the pelvic girdle is not sufficiently well preserved to ascertain whether or not a renal fossa was present, although as no known avian from the Mesozoic displays a renal fossa, it is not clear why "Protoavis" should, even if it is more derived than "Archaeopteryx". Similarly, it is unclear if the alleged antitrochanter has been correctly identified as such.

Arms and legs.

The manus and carpus are among the few areas of the "Protoavis" material which are well preserved, and they are astonishingly non-avian. The distal carpals, while long, are in no way similar to those observed in the urvogel or other archaic birds. There is no semilunate element, and the structure of the radiale and ulnare would have limited the flexibility of the wrist joint. The manus is not tridactyl, and metacarpal V is present. In even the most basal avialian, "Archaeopteryx", there is no vestige of the fifth metacarpal and its presence in "Protoavis" seems incongruous with the claim that it is a bird, let alone one more derived than "Archaeopteryx".  Chatterjee claims that the humerus of "Protoavis" is "remarkably avian", but as in all matters with the fossils referred to this taxon, accurate identification of the elaborate trochanters, ridges, etc., attributed to the humerus by Chatterjee is impossible at this time. The expanded distal condyles, which appear to be present in the humerus of "Protoavis" and enlarged deltopectoral crest (a ridge for the attachment of chest and shoulder muscles), are congruent with the morphology of ceratosaur humeri, as is the apparent presence of a distal brachial depression.  The femur of "Protoavis" is astonishingly similar to non-tetanurans, namely coelophysoids. The proximal femur displays a trochanteric shelf caudal to the lesser and greater trochanters, a feature distinguishing non-tetanurans theropods from Tetanurae. Further similarities between the proximal humerus of "Protoavis" and that of non-tetanuran theropods are found in the shared presence of an enlarged obturator ridge, whose morphology in "Protoavis" is again, uncannily like that observed in robust ceratosaurs, e.g., ""Syntarus" kayentakatae". The resemblance between the femur of "Protoavis" and that of a non-tetanuran theropod becomes ever more pronounced at the distal end of the bone. Both share a crista tibiofibularis groove, a feature of a non-tetanuran theropod separating the medial and lateral condyles.  The tibia of "Protoavis" allegedly possesses both a lateral and cranial cnemial crest, though the validity of this claim is subject to question due to the preservation quality of the material. The fibula is continuous to the astragalocalcaneal unit. A tibiotarsus is absent, unusual considering Chatterjee's claims for the pygostylian affinity of "Protoavis", as is a tarsometatarsus. The ascending process of the astragalus is reduced, a character entirely incongruous with a highly derived status for "Protoavis". Curiously, such abbreviation of the ascending process is found in ceratosaurs, and in its general osteology, the "Protoavis" tarsus and pes, is quite similar to those of non-tetanuran theropods. Chatterjee's restoration of the hallux as reversed is nothing more than speculation, as the original spatial relationships of the pedal elements are impossible to ascertain at this time.

Quill knobs.

Reconstructions usually depict it with feathers, as Chatterjee originally interpreted structures on the arm to be quill knobs, the attachment point for flight feathers found in some modern birds and non-avian dinosaurs. However, re-evaluation of the fossil material by subsequent authors such as Lawrence Witmer have been inconclusive regarding whether or not these structures are actual quill knobs.  In his 1997 account, Chatterjee infers the presence of feathers from alleged quill knobs on the badly smashed ulna and metacarpals III and IV, and infers the presence of remiges from such structures (though he does caution that this is uncertain). As is the case with the alleged quill knobs on the ulna, the metacarpal structures appear to be attributable to post-mortem damage. Moreover, the thumb, unlike the case in all birds, is not medially divergent. Considering how poorly preserved the ulna is, it is entirely premature to make any definitive conclusions as to the presence of quill knobs until such time as more adequate material becomes available. Upon further examination of the material no structures were isolated that could be deemed as homologous to remigial papillae.

Classification and taxonomy.

The taxonomy of "Protoavis" is controversial, with several palaeornithologists considering it to be an early ancestor of modern birds, while most other in the palaeontological community regard it as a chimaera, a mixture of several specimens. American palaeontologist Gregory Paul suggested that "Protoavis" is a herrerasaur. In a paper by Phil Currie and X.J. Zhao discussing a braincase of a "Troodon formosus", they compare the bird-like characters of "Troodon" and "Protoavis". In the paper, they make a number of corrections involving both Chatterjee's and Currie's own misinterpretations of parts of "Troodon" cranial anatomy before the particular braincase being described was found. At least a couple of the corrections (the anterior tympanic recess, and the relatively kinetic quadrate-squamosal contact) make "Troodon" more bird-like then Chatterjee made out in his "Protoavis" paper, but overall these particular corrections seem to have little bearing on the avian features of "Protoavis". Currie and Zhao do not explicitly state whether or not they consider "Protoavis" to be a theropod, however they suggest that although "Protoavis" has characters suggesting avian affinities, most of these are also found in theropod dinosaurs.

"Protoavis" is a bird.

Sankar Chatterjee and a few other palaeornithologists claimed that this material documents a Triassic origin of birds and the presence of a bird more advanced than "Archaeopteryx". Though it existed approximately 75 million years before the oldest known bird, its skeletal structure is allegedly more bird-like. "Protoavis" has been reconstructed as a carnivorous bird that had teeth on the tip of its jaws and eyes located at the front of the skull, suggesting a nocturnal or crepuscular lifestyle. The fossil bones are too badly preserved to allow an estimate of flying ability; although reconstructions usually show feathers, judging from thorough study of the fossil material there is no indication that these were present.  However, this description of "Protoavis" assumes that "Protoavis" has been correctly interpreted as a bird. Almost all palaeontologists doubt that "Protoavis" is a bird, or that all remains assigned to it even come from a single species, because of the circumstances of its discovery and weak avialan synapomorphies in its fragmentary material. When they were found at a Dockum Group quarry in the Texas panhandle in 1984, in a sedimentary stratum of a Triassic river delta, the fossils were a jumbled cache of disarticulated bones reflecting an incident of mass mortality following a flash flood.

"Protoavis" is a chimaera.

Chatterjee was convinced that some of these crushed bones belonged to two individuals – one old, one young – of the same species. However, only a few parts were found, primarily a skull and some limb bones which moreover do not well agree in their proportions respective to each other, and this has led many to believe that the "Protoavis" fossil is chimaeric, made up of more than one organism: the pieces of skull appear like those of a coelurosaur, while the femur and ankle bone catalogued under TTU P-9200 and TTU P-9201 respectively suggest affinities to non-tetanuran theropods and at least some vertebrae are most similar to those of "Megalancosaurus", a drepanosaurid. However, those supposed similarities between the cervicals of "Protoavis" and drepanosaurids were the same similarities that Feduccia and Wild (1993) used to argue for an affinity between "Archaeopteryx" and drepanosaurids.  "Everywhere one turns; the very fossils ascribed thereto challenge the validity of "Protoavis". The most parsimonious conclusion to be inferred from these data is that Chatterjee's contentious find is nothing more than a chimera, a morass of long-dead archosaurs."  If it really is a single animal and not a chimera, "Protoavis" would raise questions about when birds began to diverge from the dinosaurs, but until better evidence is produced, the animal's status currently remains uncertain. Furthermore, paleobiogeography suggests that true birds did not colonize the Americas until the Cretaceous; the most primitive lineages of unequivocal birds found to date are all Eurasian. Certainly, the fossils are most parsimoniously attributed to primitive dinosaurian and other reptiles as outlined above. However, coelurosaurs and ceratosaurs are in any case not too distantly related to the ancestors of birds and in some aspects of the skeleton not unlike them, explaining how their fossils could be mistaken as avian. Palaeontologist Zhonghe Zhou stated:  "["Protoavis"] has neither been widely accepted nor seriously considered as a Triassic bird... [Witmer], who has examined the material and is one of the few workers to have seriously considered Chatterjee’s proposal, argued that the avian status of "P. texensis" is probably not as clear as generally portrayed by Chatterjee, and further recommended minimization of the role that "Protoavis" plays in the discussion of avian ancestry."  Welman has argued that the quadrate of "Protoavis" displays synapomorphies of Theropoda. Paul has demonstrated the drepanosaur affinities of the cervical vertebrae. Gauthier & Rowe, and Dingus & Rowe have argued convincingly for identifying the hind limb of "Protoavis" as belonging to a ceratosaur. Feduccia has argued that "Protoavis" represents an arboreal "thecodont". In a study of early ornithischian dinosaurs, Sterling Nesbitt and others determined some of the partial remains of "Protoavis" to be a non-tetanuran theropod. The entire skull and neck are considered to be most likely from a drepanosaurid because the skull and neck are too big compared to the dorsal vertebrate of "Protoavis".

In discussions of evolution.

Scientists such as Alan Feduccia have cited "Protoavis" in an attempt to refute the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs. However, some scientists have claimed the only consequence would be to push the point of bird divergence further back in time. At the time when such claims were originally made, the affiliation of birds and maniraptoran theropods which today is well-supported and generally accepted by most ornithologists was much more contentious; most Mesozoic birds have only been discovered since then. Chatterjee himself has since used "Protoavis" to support a close relationship between dinosaurs and birds.  "As there remains no compelling data to support the avian status of "Protoavis" or taxonomic validity thereof, it seems mystifying that the matter should be so contentious. The author very much agrees with Chiappe in arguing that at present, "Protoavis" is irrelevant to the phylogenetic reconstruction of Aves. While further material from the Dockum beds may vindicate this peculiar archosaur, for the time being, the case for "Protoavis" is non-existent."

Phylogenetic implications.

It has been argued that if valid, "Protoavis" will represent the death knell to the theropod descent of birds. Palaeontologists counter that if valid, "Protoavis" in no way falsifies the theropod origin of birds. The very fact that Chatterjee used his putative bird to defend theropod origin seems to contradict the argument of Alan Feduccia that a true bird from the Triassic would bring about the collapse of the theropod "dogma".

Discovery and history.

Archosaur discoveries are comparatively abundant in Texas, and have been recovered in some quantity since E. D. Cope worked the redbeds of the panhandle over a century ago. The holotype specimen of "Protoavis" (TTU P 9200), the paratype (TTU P 9201), and all referred materials, were discovered in the Dockum Group, from the panhandle of Texas. The Dockum dates from the Carnian through the early Norian, in the terminal Triassic and is composed of four units of decreasing age: the Santa Rose Formation, the Tecovas Formation, the Trujillo Formation, and the Cooper Canyon Formation, and the Bull Canyon Formation. Many skeletal elements and partial elements of "Protoavis" were collected from the Post (Miller) Quarry of the Bull Canyon Formation in the 1980s and other specimens referred to "Protoavis" were collected from the underlying Kirkpatrick Quarry of the Tecovas Formation. The specimens altogether consists of a partial skull and postcranial remains belonging to possibly several large individuals. The bones were completely freed of the surrounding matrix, and some were heavily reconstructed and the identification of some of the elements have been questioned by other palaeornithologists and palaeontologists.  The type material was collected from mudstone deposits in June 1973 and initially identified as a juvenile "Coelophysis bauri". The level of the Dockum group from which the "Protoavis" material was recovered, was most likely deposited in a deltaic river system. The bone bed excavated by Sankar Chatterjee and his students of Texas Tech University, in which "Protoavis" was discovered, likely reflects an incident of mass mortality following a flash flood. Chatterjee, who first described "Protoavis", has assigned the binomial "Protoavis texensis" ("first bird from Texas") to the small cache of bones, allegedly conspecific. He interpreted the type specimen to have come from a single animal, specifically a 35 cm tall bird that lived in what is now Texas, USA, between 225 and 210 million years ago.  Due to the nature of the bones being jumbled into sandstone nodules, and completely disarticulated, it has been suggested that "Protoavis" was reworked from later sediments. However, a basic stratigraphic principle, the "principle of inclusions", is a special case of the principle of cross-cutting relationships. It states that rock has to exist before it can be included in other sedimentary rock. Reworking is the process of weathering fossils or rock containing fossils out of rocks already present, transporting them, and redepositing them in sediments which are later lithified as new sedimentary rocks. Since the Jurassic rocks occurred "after" the Triassic sediments of the Dockum Group, they could not have been reworked into the Dockum sediments as inclusions.

Palaeoenvironment.

The inferred palaeoclimate of the Dockum Group would have been subtropical and governed by a distinct dry/wet season pattern, with the latter marked by monsoonal rains. The botanical evidence indicates that the area was densely forested, and the abundance of both invertebrate and vertebrate material from the site suggests that the locale was in general richly populated by a wide variety of species. Dinosaurs were still fairly rare in the Dockum group, and only some ceratosaurs and other basal forms are well documented. The principal carnivores of the locale would have been poposaurids such as "Postosuchus", a species well represented in the Triassic redbeds of Texas. Other archaic archosaurs, such as rhynchosaurs and aetosaurs, were also fairly common.

Taphonomy.

Both the holotype and paratype were recovered from disparate locations, both disarticulated and unassociated. Consequently, spatial relationships are impossible to determine. No record of the original orientation of the material even as recovered, exists. Further material assigned to the taxon has been recovered in isolation with no apparent spatial relationships to each other, and more or less has been referred to "Protoavis" spuriously. Thus, the presentation of the holotype and paratype as coherent skeletons by Chatterjee is fallacious. Such representations are ad hoc conglomerations of bone whose status as conspecific is not apparent from their taphonomy.  Not only were the remains recovered disarticulated and unassociated, there are glaring morphometric differences in the various components of the holotype and paratype. For instance, the scapulae and coracoids are so reduced, that the association with the axial skeleton is extremely difficult to support. Juvenile ontogeny cannot be invoked credibly to explain this discrepancy. Furthermore, the degree of morphometric variation in the holotype and paratype seems incongruent with the component material representing a conspecific assemblage of bones.  The fossils themselves display significant postmortem damage, and are in some cases so badly crushed and distorted at the hand of geological processes, that accurate interpretation thereof is impossible. Consequently, the lucid analyses offered by Chatterjee are in many cases more artistic creativeness than an accurate description.  In his definitive analysis of the material, "The Rise of Birds" (1997), Chatterjee failed to illustrate the "Protoavis" fossils via pictures or sketches of the fossils proper, and instead offers the reader artistic reconstructions. For this, Chatterjee has been sharply criticized. Such an approach in science is entirely intolerable in that it idealizes the material at hand, and obscures the very fragmentary nature of the fossils, and their poor state of preservation.

Protoavis (meaning "first bird") is a problematic dinosaurian taxon known from fragmentary remains from Late Triassic Norian stage deposits near Post, Texas. Much controversy remains over the animal, and there are many different interpretations of what "Protoavis" actually is. When it was first described, the fossils were described as being from a primitive bird which, if the identification is valid, would push back avian origins some 60-75 million years.

原鸟属(属名:"Protoavis")意为「第一种鸟类」,是种主龙类,化石发现于德州Post市附近的晚三叠纪地层。


Early life and education.

Richard John Bingham was born on 18 December 1934 at 19 Bentinck Street, Marylebone, London, the second child and elder son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, an Anglo-Irish peer, and his wife Kaitlin Elizabeth Anne Dawson. A blood clot found in his mother's lung forced her to remain in a nursing home, so John, as he became known, was initially cared for by the family's nurserymaid. Aged three years, he attended a pre-prep school in Tite Street with his elder sister Jane, but in 1939, with war approaching, the two were taken to the relative safety of Wales. The following year, joined by their younger siblings Sally and Hugh, the Lucan children travelled to Toronto, Canada, moving shortly thereafter to Mount Kisco, New York, United States. They stayed for five years with multi-millionairess Marcia Brady Tucker. John was enrolled at The Harvey School and spent summer holidays away from his

Career.

On leaving the army in 1954, Lucan joined William Brandt's Sons and Co., a London-based merchant bank, on an annual salary of £500. In 1960 he met Stephen Raphael, a rich stockbroker who was a skilled backgammon player. They holidayed together in the Bahamas, went water-skiing, and played golf, backgammon and poker. Lucan became a regular gambler and an early member of John Aspinall's Clermont gaming club, located in Berkeley Square. He often won at games of skill like backgammon and bridge, but he also accumulated huge losses. On one occasion Lucan lost £8,000, or about two-thirds of the money

Personal life.

Marriage.

Lucan met his future wife, Veronica Duncan, early in 1963. She was born in 1937 to Major Charles Moorhouse Duncan and his wife, Thelma. Veronica's father had died in a car accident when she was young, after which the family moved to South Africa. Her mother remarried, and her family returned to England where her new step-father became manager of a hotel in Guildford. With her sister, Christina, she was educated at St Swithun's School, Winchester. After displaying a talent for art Veronica went on to study at an art college in Bournemouth. The two sisters later shared a flat in London, where Veronica worked as a model and later as a secretary. Christina's marriage to the wealthy William Shand Kydd (half-brother to Peter Shand Kydd, stepfather to Diana Spencer, later Princess

Separation.

Some months later Lucan moved again, to a larger rented flat in nearby Elizabeth Street. Despite an early attempt by his wife at reconciliation, by that point all Lucan wanted from the marriage was custody of his children. In an effort to demonstrate that Veronica was unfit to look after them, he began to spy on his family (his car was regularly seen parked in Lower Belgrave Street), later employing private investigators to perform the same task. Lucan also canvassed doctors, who explained that his wife had not "gone mad", but was suffering from depression and

Gambling.

Losing the court case proved devastating for Lucan. It had cost him an estimated £20,000, and by late 1974 his financial position was dire. As he drank more heavily and started chain-smoking, his friends began to worry. In drunken conversations with some of them, including Aspinall's mother, Lady Osborne, and her son, Lucan discussed murdering his wife. Greville Howard later gave a statement to the police describing how Lucan had talked of how killing his wife might save him from bankruptcy, how her body might be disposed of in the Solent and how he "would never be caught". Lucan borrowed £4,000 from his mother and asked Marcia Tucker for a loan of £100,000. Having no luck there, he

Murder.

Sandra Rivett.

Sandra Eleanor Rivett was born on 16 September 1945, the third child of Albert and Eunice Hensby. The family moved to Australia when she was two years old, but returned in 1955. Sandra was a popular child, described at school as "intelligent, although she does not excel academically". She worked for six months as an apprentice hairdresser before taking a job as a secretary in Croydon. After a failed romance Sandra became a voluntary patient at a mental hospital near Redhill, Surrey, where she was treated for depression. She became engaged to a builder named John and took a job as a children's nanny for a doctor in Croydon. On 13 March 1964, she gave birth to a boy named Stephen, but, as her relationship with John was failing, she returned home to live with her

Investigation.

By the time Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson arrived at Lower Belgrave Street early on Friday 8 November, the divisional surgeon had pronounced Sandra Rivett dead and forensic officers and photographers had been called to the property. Other than the front door, which the first two officers on the scene had kicked in, there was no sign of a forced entry. A bloodstained towel was found in Veronica's first-floor bedroom. The area around the top of the basement staircase was heavily bloodstained. A bloodstained lead pipe lay on the floor. Pictures hanging from the staircase walls were askew and a metal banister rail was damaged. At the foot of the stairs, two cups and saucers lay in a pool of blood. Rivett's arm protruded from the canvas sack, which lay in a slowly expanding pool of blood. The light fitting at the bottom of the stairs was missing its bulb;

Forensics.

The forensic examination of the lead pipes found at the murder scene and in the Corsair's boot revealed traces of blood on the pipe from 46 Lower Belgrave Street. This proved to be a mixture of Lady Lucan's (blood group A) and Sandra Rivett's (B) blood. Hair belonging to Veronica Lucan was also found on that pipe, but none belonging to Sandra Rivett. The pipe found inside the car had neither blood nor hair on it. Home Office scientists were unable to prove conclusively that both pipes were cut from the same, longer, piece of piping, although

Media reaction.

By the afternoon of Friday 8 November, the newspapers' early editions carried photographs of the Lucans across their front pages, accompanied by headlines like "Body in sack... countess runs out screaming", and "Belgravia murder – earl sought". A meeting that day at the Clermont, between Aspinall, Meinertzhagen, Kydd, Elwes, Charles Benson, and Stephen Raphael became the cause of much press speculation. Meinertzhagen and Raphael later insisted that the gathering was just a rational discussion between concerned friends, keen to share anything they knew about what had happened, but the relationship between the police and Lucan's social circle was strained; some officers complained that an "Eton mafia" worked against them. Susan Maxwell-Scott refused to add to her statement, and when Aspinall's mother, Lady Osborne, was asked if she could help locate Lucan's body, she replied, "The last I heard of him, he was being fed to the tigers at my son's zoo",

Inquest.

The inquest into Sandra Rivett's death opened on 13 November 1974 and was led by the Coroner for Inner West London, Gavin Thurston. Two witnesses were called to the courtroom, which was packed with reporters; Roger Rivett, who confirmed that he had identified his wife's body, and the pathologist, Keith Simpson, who confirmed that Rivett had died from being hit on the head with a blunt instrument. At Ranson's request, the hearing was then adjourned. Further adjournments were made on 11 December 1974 and 10 March 1975, before a full inquest was scheduled for 16 June 1975.  The hearing began with introductions from

Lucan's defence.

Lucan's friends and family were critical of the inquest, which they felt offered a one-sided view of events. His mother told reporters that it did not serve "any useful purpose at all". Veronica's sister, Christina, said that she felt "great sadness and sorrow" at the verdict. Susan Maxwell-Scott continued to press the earl's claims of innocence and claimed to feel "awfully sorry" for the countess.  However, as Lucan remained absent, his description of "a traumatic night of unbelievable coincidence" came only from the letters he authored and the people he spoke with soon after Rivett's murder. While his fingerprints were not found at the scene, his assertions make no provision for the lead pipe discovered in the boot of the Ford Corsair, the claims by some that he discussed murdering his wife, or the lack of a viable suspect for the man he claimed to have seen fighting her. No sign of a forced entry

Bankruptcy and estate.

As Lucan's bankruptcy proceeded, in August 1975 his creditors were informed that the missing earl had unsecured debts of £45,000 and preferential liabilities for £1,326. His assets were estimated at £22,632. The family silver was sold in March 1976 for around £30,000. His remaining debts were repaid by the Lucan family trust in the years immediately following his

Ultimate fate and reported sightings.

The last confirmed sighting of Lucan was at about 1:15 am on 8 November 1974 as he exited the driveway of the Maxwell-Scott property in his friend's Ford Corsair, and his ultimate fate remains a mystery. Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson initially claimed that Lucan had "done the honourable thing" and "fallen on his own sword", a view repeated by many of Lucan's friends, including John Aspinall, who said that he believed that the earl was guilty of Rivett's murder and that he had committed suicide by scuttling his motorboat and jumping into the English Channel with a stone tied around his body. Veronica Lucan committed suicide in 2017, and she believed that her husband had killed himself "like the nobleman he was".  Ranson later changed his view, explaining that he considered it more likely that suicide was far from Lucan's thoughts, that a drowning at sea was implausible, and that the earl had moved to southern Africa. A detective who led a new investigation into Lucan's disappearance 32 years after the murder told the "Telegraph" that "the evidence points towards the fact that Lord Lucan left the

References.

Footnotes

Further reading.

Non-fiction  Fiction

Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (born 18 December 1934 – disappeared 8 November 1974, declared dead February 3, 2016), commonly known as Lord Lucan, was a British peer who disappeared after being suspected of murder. He was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, the eldest son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan by his mother Kaitlin Dawson. Lucan was an evacuee during the Second World War but returned to attend Eton College, and served with the Coldstream Guards in West Germany from 1953 to 1955. He developed a taste for gambling and became skilled at backgammon and bridge, and was an early member of the Clermont Club. Lucan's losses often exceeded his winnings, yet he left his job at a London-based merchant bank and became a professional gambler. He was known as Lord Bingham from April 1949 until January 1964, during his father's lifetime.

卢肯伯爵案是一起发生在英国伦敦贝尔格莱维亚,震动英国的刑事案件。主角理乍得·约翰·宾厄姆是第七代卢肯伯爵,喜爱赌博。1974年11月7日晚,他家的保姆桑德拉·里维特被发现于地下室被钝器击打致死,卢肯则于事后离开。卢肯妻子忆述当晚她曾遭到丈夫的殴打,而卢肯的母亲于晚上亦两度接到伯爵的电话。卢肯在半夜去了朋友伊思·马克威尔-斯科特家里,其妻子苏珊接待了他,之后卢肯不知去向,两天后他借的汽车发现被人弃置在英伦海峡港。卢肯一案经七个月的审理,最后陪审团在缺席审判的情况下裁决卢肯为凶手。警方认为他本来想谋杀婚姻关系破裂的妻子,却误杀了保姆。


Origin.

The title "Whole Earth Catalog" came from a previous project by Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the "Whole Earth." He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be.  Andrew Kirk in "Counterculture Green" notes that the "Whole Earth Catalog" was preceded by the "Whole Earth Truck Store". The WETS was a 1963 Dodge truck: In 1968, Brand, who was then 29, and his wife Lois embarked "on a commune road trip" with the truck, hoping to tour the country doing educational fairs. The truck was not only a store, but also an alternative lending library and a mobile microeducation service.  Kevin Kelly, who would edit later editions of the catalog, summarizes the very early history this way:  The "Truck Store" finally settled into its permanent location in Menlo Park, California. Instead of bringing the store to the people, Brand decided to create "accumulatively larger versions of his tool catalog" and sell it by mail so the people could contact the vendors directly.  Using the most basic typesetting and page-layout tools, Brand and his colleagues created the first issue of "The Whole Earth Catalog" in 1968. In subsequent issues, its production values gradually improved. Its outsize pages measured 11×14 inches (28×36 cm). Later editions were more than an inch thick. The early editions were published by the Portola Institute, headed by Richard Raymond. The so-called "Last Whole Earth Catalogue" (June 1971) won the first U.S. National Book Award in category Contemporary Affairs. It was the first time a catalog had ever won such an award. Brand's intent with the catalog was to provide education and "access to tools" so a reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested."  J. Baldwin was a young designer and instructor of design at colleges around the San Francisco Bay (San Francisco State University [then San Francisco State College], the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of the Arts [then California College of Arts and Crafts]). As he recalled in the film "Ecological Design" (1994), "Stewart Brand came to me because he heard that I read catalogs. He said, 'I want to make this thing called a "whole Earth" catalog so that anyone on Earth can pick up a telephone and find out the complete information on anything.... That's my goal.'" Baldwin served as the chief editor of subjects in the areas of technology and design, both in the catalog itself and in other publications which arose from it.  True to his 1966 vision, Brand's publishing efforts were suffused with an awareness of the importance of ecology, both as a field of study and as an influence upon the future of humankind and emerging human awareness.

Organization.

From the opening page of the 1969 "Catalog":  The 1968 catalog divided itself into seven broad sections:  Within each section, the best tools and books the editors could find were collected and listed, along with images, reviews and uses, prices, and suppliers. The reader was also able to order some items directly through the catalog.  Later editions changed a few of the headings, but generally kept the same overall framework.  The "Catalog" used a broad definition of "tools." There were informative tools, such as books, maps, professional journals, courses, and classes. There were well-designed special-purpose utensils, including garden tools, carpenters' and masons' tools, welding equipment, chainsaws, fiberglass materials, tents, hiking shoes, and potters' wheels. There were even early synthesizers and personal computers.  The "Catalog"'s publication coincided with a great wave of convention-challenging experimentalism and a do-it-yourself attitude associated with "the counterculture," and tended to appeal not only to the intelligentsia of the movement, but to creative, hands-on, and outdoorsy people of many stripes. Some of the ideas in the "Catalog" were developed during Brand's visits to Drop City.  With the "Catalog" opened flat, the reader might find the large page on the left full of text and intriguing illustrations from a volume of Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in China", showing and explaining an astronomical clock tower or a chain-pump windmill, while on the right-hand page are a review of a beginners' guide to modern technology ("The Way Things Work") and a review of "The Engineers' Illustrated Thesaurus". On another spread, the verso reviews books on accounting and moonlighting jobs, while the recto bears an article in which people tell the story of a community credit union they founded. Another pair of pages depict and discuss different kayaks, inflatable dinghies, and houseboats.

Books.

Three books were serialized in the pages of the WEC, printing a couple of paragraphs per page. This made reading the catalog a page-by-page experience.

Impact.

Steve Jobs compares "The Whole Earth Catalog" to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called "The Whole Earth Catalog", which was one of the bibles of my generation... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Then at the very end of this commencement speech Jobs quotes explicitly the farewell message placed on the back cover of the last 1974 edition of the "Catalog" (#1180 October 1974 titled "Whole Earth Epilog") and makes it his own final recommendation : "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."  Kevin Kelly made a similar comparison in 2008:  For this new countercultural movement, information was a precious commodity. In the '60s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels.... [The "WEC"] was a great example of user-generated content, without advertising, before the Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog.... No topic was too esoteric, no degree of enthusiasm too ardent, no amateur expertise too uncertified to be included.... This I am sure about: it is no coincidence that the "Whole Earth Catalogs" disappeared as soon as the web and blogs arrived. Everything the "Whole Earth Catalogs" did, the web does better.  Looking back and discussing attitudes evident in the early editions of the catalog, Brand wrote, "At a time when the New Left was calling for grassroots "political" (i.e., referred) power, "Whole Earth" eschewed politics and pushed grass-roots "direct" power—tools and skills."  The broad interpretation of "tool" coincided with that given by the designer, philosopher, and engineer Buckminster Fuller, though another thinker admired by Brand and some of his cohorts was Lewis Mumford, who had written about words as tools. Early editions reflected the considerable influence of Fuller, particularly his teachings about "whole systems," "synergetics," and efficiency or reducing waste. By 1971, Brand and his co-workers were already questioning whether Fuller's sense of direction might be too anthropocentric. New information arising in fields like ecology and biospherics was persuasive.  By the mid-1970s, much of the Buddhist economics viewpoint of E. F. Schumacher, as well as the activist interests of the biological species preservationists, had tempered the overall enthusiasm for Fuller's ideas in the catalog. Still later, the amiable-architecture ideas of people like Christopher Alexander and similar community-planning ideas of people like Peter Calthorpe further tempered the engineering-efficiency tone of Fuller's ideas.  An important shift in philosophy in the "Catalogs" occurred in the early 1970s, when Brand decided that the early stance of emphasizing individualism should be replaced with one favoring "community". He had originally written that "a realm of intimate, personal power is developing"; regarding this as important in some respects (to wit, the soon-emerging potentials of personal computing), Brand felt that the overarching project of humankind had more to do with living within natural systems, and this is something we do in common, interactively.  As an early indicator of the general Zeitgeist, the catalog's first edition preceded the original Earth Day by nearly two years. The idea of Earth Day occurred to Senator Gaylord Nelson, its instigator, "in the summer of 1969 while on a conservation speaking tour out west," where the Sierra Club was active, and where young minds had been broadened and stimulated by such influences as the catalog.  Despite this popular and critical success, particularly among a generation of young hippies and survivalists, the catalog was not intended to continue in publication for long, just long enough for the editors to complete a good overview of the available tools and resources, and for the word, and copies, to get out to everyone who needed them.

Publication after 1972.

After 1972 the catalog was published sporadically. Updated editions of "The Last Whole Earth Catalog" appeared periodically from 1971 to 1975, but only a few fully new catalogs appeared. In 1974 the "Whole Earth Epilog" was published, which was intended as a "volume 2" to the "Last Whole Earth Catalog". In 1980, "The Next Whole Earth Catalog" () was published; it was so well received that an updated second edition was published in 1981.  There were two editions in the 1980s of the "Whole Earth Software Catalog", a compendium for which Doubleday had bid $1.4 million for the trade paperback rights.  In 1986, "The Essential Whole Earth Catalog" () was published, and in 1988 the "WEC" was published on CD-ROM using an early form of hypertext developed by Apple Computer called "HyperCard". In 1988, there was a "WEC" dedicated to Communications Tools. A "Whole Earth Ecolog" was published in 1990, devoted exclusively to environmental topics. Around this time there were special "WEC"s on other topics (e.g., "The Fringes of Reason" in 1989).  The last "full" "WEC", entitled "The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog" (), was published in 1994.  A slender, but still on A3 paper "30th Anniversary Celebration WEC" was published in 1998 as part of Issue 95 of the "Whole Earth" magazine (); it reprinted the original "WEC" along with new material. An important aspect of this copy of the first "WEC" was a limitation placed on it by book publishers who "begged ["Whole Earth"] not to reprint the Catalog with their names anywhere near books they no longer carry". As a result, all such information was placed at the back of the catalog. This placement hampered a valuable function of the "WEC": nudging publishers to keep featured seminal works in print.

Spin-offs and inspirations.

From 1974 to 2003, the Whole Earth principals published a magazine, known originally as "CoEvolution Quarterly". When the short-lived "Whole Earth Software Review" (a supplement to "The Whole Earth Software Catalog") failed, it was merged in 1985 with "CoEvolution Quarterly" to form the "Whole Earth Review" (edited at different points by Jay Kinney, Kevin Kelly, and Howard Rheingold), later called "Whole Earth Magazine" and finally just "Whole Earth". The last issue, number 111 (edited by Alex Steffen), was meant to be published in Spring 2003, but funds ran out. The Point Foundation, which owned "Whole Earth", closed its doors later that year.  The Whole Earth website continues the "WEC" legacy of concepts in popular discourse, medical self-care, community building, bioregionalism, environmental restoration, nanotechnology, and cyberspace.  Recognizing the "developed country" focus of the original WEC, groups in several developing countries have created "catalogs" of their own to be more relevant to their countries. One such effort was an adaptation of the WEC (called the "Liklik Buk") written and published in the late 1970s in Papua New Guinea; by 1982 this had been enlarged, updated, and translated (as "Save Na Mekem") into the Pidgin language used throughout Melanesia, and updates of the English "Liklik Buk" were published in 1986 and 2003.  In the United States, the book "Domebook One" was a direct spin-off of the WEC. Lloyd Kahn, Shelter editor of the WEC, borrowed WEC production equipment for a week in 1970 and produced the first book on building geodesic domes. A year later, in 1971, Kahn again borrowed WEC equipment (an IBM Selectric Composer typesetting machine and a Polaroid MP-5 camera on an easel), and spent a month in the Santa Barbara Mountains producing "Domebook 2", which went on to sell 165,000 copies. With production of DB 2, Kahn and his company Shelter Publications followed Stewart Brand's move to nationwide distribution by Random House.  In 1973, Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie are part of a research project at Berkeley University and publish a feminist catalog inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog, the New Woman's Survival Catalog, which gathers feminist initiatives in different domains (art, communication, work, money, self-help, self-defense...) in the USA.  In 1969, a store which was inspired by (but not financially connected with) "The Whole Earth Catalog," called the Whole Earth Access opened in Berkeley, California. It closed in 1998. In 1970 a store called the "Whole Earth Provision Co.", inspired by the catalogue, opened in Austin, Texas. It now has eight stores in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Southlake, and San Antonio.  In late 2006, Worldchanging released their 600-page compendium of solutions, "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century", which Bill McKibben, in an article in the "New York Review of Books" called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for the iPod generation." The editor of Worldchanging has since acknowledged the Catalog as a prime inspiration.  "Whole Arctic Catalog" was written by Pamela Richot and Published in "Backet 3: At Extremes" in 2015 to draw attention to threats to the arctic region specifically, similarly to how "The Whole Earth Catalog" drew attention to global environmental threats.  Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds publishes a "Whole Seed Catalog," with a title and cover image inspired by the "Whole Earth Catalog".

Scholarship.

Stewart Brand and "The Whole Earth Catalog" are both subjects of interest to scholars. Notable examples include works by Theodore Roszak, Howard Rheingold, Fred Turner, John Markoff, Andrew Kirk, Sam Binkley and Felicity Scott. The Stanford University Library System has a "Whole Earth" archive in their Department of Special Collections.

In popular culture.

In 1970, on April Fool's Day, the Whole Earth Restaurant opened at UC Santa Cruz. It was an early source of "whole foods" in Northern California until it closed in 2002.  A 2010 issue of the political art magazine made by the Adbusters Media Foundation was titled "The Whole Brain Catalog", which features a parody cover with a small human brain in place of the earth, and many references to the 1960s counter culture movement. The tagline read "Access to Therapies" rather than "Access to Tools".  On April 17, 2018 My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James announced the release of his third solo album "Uniform Distortion", which he stated was inspired by "The" "Whole Earth Catalog."

The Internet.

Kevin Kelly, mentioned above for his role in editing later editions of the "Whole Earth Catalog", maintains a web site—Cool-Tools.org—that publishes reviews of "the best/cheapest tools available. Tools are defined broadly as anything that can be useful. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas." He also published a large format book in 2013—"Cool Tools A Catalog of Possibilities"—which draws on the many reviews published over the years on that web site. The format, size, and style of the book reflect and pay homage to the original "Whole Earth Catalog".

The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, "do it yourself" (DIY), and holism, and featured the slogan "access to tools". While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Instead, the vendor's contact information was listed alongside the item and its review. This is why, while not a regularly published periodical, numerous editions and updates were required to keep price and availability information up to date.

《全球概览》(WEC)是斯图尔特·布兰德(Stewart Brand)在1968年至1972年期间每年出版几次的美国反主流文化杂志和产品目录,此后偶尔出版,直至1998年。该杂志以散文和文章为主,但主要关注产品评论。编辑的重点是自给自足、生态学、另类教育、“DIY”和整全观,并打出了“获得工具”(access to tools)的口号。虽然WEC列出并评论了范围广泛的产品(服装、书籍、工具、机器、种子等),但它没有直接销售任何产品。相反,供应商的联系信息被列在物品及其评论旁边。这就是为什么,虽然不是定期出版的期刊,许多版本和更新需要保持最新的价格和可用性信息。


Origin and Discovery.

The genus name "Naemorhedus" is derived from the Latin words "nemus" (genitive "nemoris"), meaning "forest", and "haedus", meaning a young goat.  Reports dating back to 1912 of a remarkable foxy-red coloured goral or goat-antelope (Nemorhaedus) from S.E. Tibet and N.E. Assam have been investigated.  One of the earliest recorded references to their existence was made in 1863, however it was not until 1961 that the red goral was identified as its one species.  Red goral are endemic to the region where the borders of India, Myanmar, and China meet.

Appearance and Morphology.

The red goral is a bright foxy-red animal with long, soft, shaggy hair. A thin, dark stripe runs along the back from the head to the tip of the tail. The legs are the same rich red as the body, while the undersides are a lighter buff color. The black-colored tail is very short for a goral, but a long tuft of dark hair at the end may double its apparent length.  The red goral is easily distinguished from other members of the genus Naemorhedus by its reddish coat - all other gorals are greyish-brown with grizzled hairs. The red goral is also the smallest goral, and has a greater curvature to its horns. Both males and females have a pair of short, arcing horns. The horns of males tend to be longer and thicker than those of females, but lengths of 7.5–16 cm are typical for both sexes.  Body weight of the red goral typically ranges from 20-30 kilograms. The red goral's body length can reach lengths of 100 cm. There is evidence showing that the females can reach body sizes larger than that of male red gorals, but size difference between the sexes is too small to be significant.

Behavior.

Red gorals are most active during the day, and tend to retreat to inaccessible cliffs at night, where they sleep on sheltered ledges. They are strong climbers and jumpers, and seek safety from predators by fleeing up cliffs. The predators of the red goral are jackals and leopards. They are also very vulnerable and can easily contract Ixodes which is a tick that attacks the tissue and then sucks the gorals blood. They can clear obstacles over 1.8 m high from a standing start. Red gorals live in mountainous regions and woodlands in The People's Republic of China and other countries near China. The goral is an animal that migrates vertically according to the season. During the summer seasons they stay in the upper area of the forest while during the winters they migrate down to the low areas in the forest. Although generally quiet, males make a call which sounds like "zer - zer" during the breeding season; female red gorals also whistle as males approach. Red gorals typically inhabit a home range of around 40 hectares. Males are territorial during the breeding season. Their diets consist of lichens, grasses, stems, and leaves. Their most common food source is Usnea which is a type of lichen.  "N. baileyi" is primarily diurnal, with most activity occurring in the early morning and evening. During the day, red gorals graze on sunny slopes, retreating to rocky cliffs at night, where they bed down on sheltered ledges. As with most members of the Caprinae, red gorals are very agile and move with easy speed amongst rough terrain.  Red gorals are primarily solitary, although females tend to be accompanied by their latest youngster. Only during mating season is when the usually solitary animals come together. "N. baileyi" is occasionally seen in small groups, typically with three animals. The composition of these groups is usually a male, a female, and her offspring, or a female with her offspring from the previous two years. This is due to the fact that females only produce one offspring at a time so they usually stay in a group with them.

Reproduction.

This species breeds from September to November. Typically, the female goral enters estrus at the age of 1.5 years and gives birth at 2 years of age, whereas males first show rutting behavior and mating at 3 years of age. During the rut, males will follow females closely, being in frequent nasogenital contact (often accompanied by smelling and licking) to determine the onset of estrus. Non-receptive females will either flee from the advances of males or threaten them by butting the bodies of the males with their heads. Receptive females tend to stand still as the male approaches, signalling their estrus by raising their tails. The Flehmen response (lip curl) was observed during the majority of encounters between a male and a receptive female.

Ecology.

Their range is centered on the region where the borders of India, Tibet and Myanmar meet.  This species is listed on Appendix I of CITES (2009). Their world population is estimated to be less than 10,000 animals, and is likely considerably less. From data collected in 1987 and 1988, the Tibetan population of this species was estimated to number between 810 and 1,370 animals. Numbers in India and Myanmar are unknown, but due to the restricted range of this species, they are unlikely to be common. Hunting is a major threat to the continued survival of this species; it is the most heavily harvested ungulate in its range. Habitat loss due to forestry practices and clearing for agriculture also poses a major threat. Red gorals inhabit several protected regions, including Hkakabo-Razi National Park in Myanmar, and Gangxiang, Muotuo, Xiaca, and Medoq in Tibet. A small captive-breeding group is kept in the Shanghai Zoo.

Habitat Loss.

The red gorals’ are found in mountainous regions in Nepal, China, Tibet, and Burma about 1,000 to 2,000 meters above sea level. Vegetation and habitats are currently being destroyed due to climate change, and excessive hunting. Traditionally the climate has been very seasonal with wet periods interspersed with dry periods, but a historically unusual dry spell has interfered with the red gorals’ ideal climate, making it harder for red gorals to reproduce. Fragmentation and forest loss have also contributed to a decrease in the red goral population.

Human Interaction.

The red goral is a commonly hunted animal and is often killed for its body parts. Red gorals are one of the seven most valuable species that are being hunted and targeted by humans. Red gorals are hunted for their meat, skin, antler, legs, and gall bladder. The meat of the red goral is mostly eaten by the local human population, while the skin of the red goral is then sold to outside traders. Red goral meat is valued by the hunters because they prefer to eat it when they go on their long hunting trips. Red goral hunters are either locals who sell the body parts in China or traders who come from China to get the body parts themselves. The hunting of the red goral contributes to its population decline because gorals only produce one offspring at a time.  <nowiki>*</nowiki>note the table is in US dollars, the price can be more or less depending on the currency conversion in different countries*

Human Intervention.

Due to a decrease in the red goral population, the Breeding Center of Shanghai Zoo started a breeding program to prevent extinction. The program started with seven wild red gorals and in the span of 22 years raised 27 red gorals. China is currently attempting to enforce laws on red goral hunting and restore their natural habitat. Programs like Chinese Geotourism aim to make revenue from wildlife while preserving their natural habitats, however emphasis on Chinese conservation is usually placed upon the endangered Panda.

IUCN Status.

Version 3.1 of the IUCN lists the red goral as vulnerable. R. Harris and M. Festa-Bianchet re-assed the red gorals’ status in June 2008. The mature population of red gorals is still below 10,000 individuals, and there is still a continuing population decline due to over hunting. Therefore, the status of red gorals remained vulnerable, as it had been previously in 1996, 1990 and 1988.

The red goral ("Naemorhedus baileyi") is a species of even-toed ungulate in the subfamily Caprinae in the family Bovidae. It is found in India, Tibet and Myanmar. Its natural habitats are seasonal mountainous areas 1,000 to 2,000 meters above sea level. It is threatened by habitat loss and hunting.

红斑羚(学名:),属于牛科斑羚属,是一种小型的偶蹄目动物,主要分布于中国、印度和缅甸,包括西藏亚种和缅甸亚种。自然栖息地为亚热带和热带的干燥森林或低地草原地区,由于栖息地的破坏,数量日益减少,面临绝种的威胁,是中国国家一级保护动物。


History.

The present building dates from the 13th century and is the second longest cathedral in Ireland, after St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. Beside the cathedral stands a 100 ft 9th-century round tower. St Canice's tower is an example of a well-preserved 9th-century "Celtic Christian" round tower. It is dedicated to St Canice. It is one of only three such medieval round towers in Ireland that can still be climbed to the top, the other two being Kildare Round Tower in Kildare Town and Devenish Round Tower in County Fermanagh.  The cathedral stands on the site of a Celtic Christian monastery said to have been founded in the sixth century by St Canice as a daughter house of Aghaboe Abbey. The Synod of Rathbreasail in 1111, which first divided Ireland into territorial dioceses, included both Aghaboe and Kilkenny in the Diocese of Ossory, with the episcopal see at Kilkenny, the capital of the Kingdom of Ossory. Thus the abbey church became the cathedral. The erroneous belief that the see was originally at Aghaboe and later transferred to Kilkenny is traced by John Bradley to a 16th-century misinterpretation of a 13th-century property transfer.  Following the English Reformation, the reformed church in Ireland was established by decree of the Irish Parliament to become the state church in the Kingdom of Ireland as the Church of Ireland, taking possession of most church property (and so retaining a great repository of religious architecture and other items, though some were later destroyed).  The substantial majority of the population, however, remained faithful to Roman Catholicism, despite the political and economic advantages of membership in the state church. Since St Canice's Cathedral was taken over in this way, Roman Catholic adherents were consequently obliged to worship elsewhere. St Mary's Cathedral in Kilkenny was later built for the Roman Catholic diocese.  The cathedral contains some 16th-century monuments. The architectural style of the cathedral is Early Gothic and is built of limestone. It is richly endowed with many stained glass windows, including the East window which is a replica of the original 13th-century window. The cathedral contains some of the finest 16th-century monuments in Ireland.

Ancient history.

Kilkenny was the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Ossory and St Canice's Cathedral stands on a site which has experienced Christian worship since the 6th century. The name of "Kilkenny" itself retains the anglicised version of the Irish "Cill Chainnigh", which translates as "Church of Cainneach", or "Canice".  The earliest church on the site is presumed to have been made of wood, later to be replaced in the later medieval period by a romanesque-style stone church. This was in turn replaced by the current imposing medieval cathedral. A few yards from the present south transept stands an imposing 9th-century round tower, 100 ft high.  Accessible only by a steep set of internal ladders, it may once have been both a watchtower and a refuge. The summit gives a clear view of Kilkenny and the countryside around. The hill on which the cathedral stands is believed to be the centre of the first major settlement at Kilkenny, and the round tower suggests an early ecclesiastical foundation.  Much less is known about the early secular structures, but the area around the cathedral, called Irishtown, is the oldest part of the present city.  There is no mention of Kilkenny in the lives of Cainnech of Aghaboe, Ciarán of Saighir or any of the early annals of Ireland suggesting that in those times it was not of great importance. The "Annals of the Four Masters" recorded entries for "Cill Chainnigh" in 1085 ("Ceall-Cainnigh was for the most part burned") and again in 1114 ("... Cill-Cainnigh... were all burned this year").  The present building was begun in the 13th century, when it was at the western end of Kilkenny, and shows some similarities to St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, both dating from the same period and completed by the end of the 13th century.  In the "Red Book of Ossory", fifteen pages dating from about 1324 contain sixty Latin verses, or "Cantilenae", written by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, best known for his connection with trials for heresy and witchcraft. As stated elsewhere in the "Red Book", Ledred wrote these verses "for the Vicars Choral of Kilkenny Cathedral, his priests and clerics, to be sung on great festivals and other occasions, that their throats and mouths, sanctified to God, might not be polluted with theatrical, indecent, and secular songs."  The cathedral was "restored" between 1844 and 1867 without the removal of any important medieval features.

Description.

Cruciform, the cathedral was built in the Early English, or English Gothic, style of architecture, of limestone, with a low central tower supported on black marble columns. The exterior walls, apart from the gables, are embattled, and there are two small spires at the west end. The cathedral is seventy-five yards long, and its width along the transepts is forty-one yards.  Inside, high pointed arches form entrances from the nave into the choir and the two transepts. Between the nave and each aisle is a row of five black marble clustered columns, with high moulded arches. The nave is lighted by a large west window and five clerestory windows, while the aisles each have four windows. The choir has a groined ceiling with fine tracery and a central group of cherubs.  The baptismal font is medieval and the ancient stone of enthronement for bishops still exists under the seat of the medieval throne in the North Transept, where to this day the bishops of Ossory are enthroned.  The cathedral contains some of the finest ancient monuments in Ireland, including one to Bishop David, and the tombs of many bishops of Ossory and several owners of Kilkenny Castle. The subjects of the memorials stretch widely across the social spectrum, from the great figures of the House of Ormonde to the humble shoemaker and carpenter. In the north transept is the ancient Chair of St Kieran, made of carved stone, still used as the chair of enthronement for the Church of Ireland Bishops of Cashel and Ossory.  There are continental carvings on the choir stalls and the hammerbeam roof. The cathedral has many stained glass windows, including the fine East window, which is a replica of the 13th-century original.  On the eastern side of the south transept is the consistory court, built by Bishop Pococke, with the chapter house to the north of it. From the north transept a dark passage leads into St Mary's chapel, where the services of St Canice's parish once took place, and a later parish church next to it holds the tomb of Bishop Gafney (died 1576). Despite some 19th-century restoration, the cathedral has been carefully preserved in its original style and form. Near the cathedral's east end is Bishop's Palace.

St. Canice's Library.

Was established in 1693 by Bishop Thomas Otway, it contains many theological documents and artifacts particularly relating to Bishop Otway and Bishop Edward Maurice from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2013 the Maurice Otway collection was loaned to Maynooth College for restoration and safe keeping; earlier some documents has been moved to Church of Ireland Representative Body house in Dublin.

St Canice's Cathedral, also known as Kilkenny Cathedral, is a cathedral of the Church of Ireland in Kilkenny city, Ireland. It is in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin.

圣卡尼斯座堂(英语:St Canice's Cathedral)是位于爱尔兰共和国城市基尔肯尼的一座爱尔兰圣公会的教堂。教堂的历史可以追溯至13世纪,是爱尔兰历史第二悠久的座堂,仅次于都柏林的圣帕特里克大教堂。