Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Genus (/ ˈ dʒ iː n ə s /; pl.: genera / ˈ dʒ ɛ n ər ə /) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. [1] In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus.
The non-orientable genus, demigenus, or Euler genus of a connected, non-orientable closed surface is a positive integer representing the number of cross-caps attached to a sphere. Alternatively, it can be defined for a closed surface in terms of the Euler characteristic χ, via the relationship χ = 2 − k , where k is the non-orientable genus.
Taxa at the rank of genus and above have a botanical name in one part (unitary name); those at the rank of species and above (but below genus) have a botanical name in two parts (binary name); all taxa below the rank of species have a botanical name in three parts (an infraspecific name). To indicate the rank of the infraspecific name, a ...
Sometimes a genus name or specific descriptor is simply the Latin or Greek name for the animal (e.g. Canis is Latin for dog). These words may not be included in the table below if they only occur for one or two taxa.
Meaning: a prefix used to make words with a sense opposite to that of the root word; in this case, meaning "without" or "-less". This is usually used to describe organisms without a certain characteristic, as well as organisms in which that characteristic may not be immediately obvious.
The genus Homo has been taken to originate some two million years ago, since the discovery of stone tools in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in the 1960s. Homo habilis (Leakey et al., 1964) would be the first "human" species (member of genus Homo) by definition, its type specimen being the OH 7 fossils.
The varied definitions either place taxonomy as a sub-area of systematics (definition 2), invert that relationship (definition 6), or appear to consider the two terms synonymous. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy (definitions 1 and 2), or a part of systematics outside taxonomy.
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.