Search Results

Rhinos are known from North America and the Old World, and have a well-documented fossil record. Rhinocerotidae is first reported from the Eocene, and members of the family persisted through the remaining Cenozoic. This chapter examines fossil remains of two Rhinocerotidae representatives present in the Daka Member. Specimens of Ceratotherium simum, a grazer, include a mandible, a maxilla, and several dental specimens. Daka Member Diceros is represented by a single premolar.

Many wildlife commodities, such as ivory, rhino horn and bear bile, have been stockpiled in large quantities by speculators who expect that future price increases justify forgoing the interest income associated with current sales. When supply from private stores competes with supply from ‘wild populations’ (in nature), and when speculators are able to collude, it may be optimal to coordinate on an extinction strategy. This chapter finds that it is optimal to deter poachers’ entry either by depressing prices (carefully timing own supply) or by depressing wild stocks. Which strategy maximizes profits depends on the initial wildlife stock and initial speculative stores. The model is applied to black rhino conservation, and results suggest that it is likely that “banking on extinction” is profitable if current speculators can collude. This chapter also finds that extinction is favoured by such factors as low discount rates or high growth rates.

Embrithopoda is represented in the Afro-Arabian fossil record by Arsinoitherium and Namatherium. Physically impressive, Arsinoitherium superficially resembled extant rhinos in the ornamentation of its cranium by massive, protuberant horns, and by the great magnitude of its skeletal frame. Arsinoitheres were endemic to Afro-Arabia during the middle Eocene through late Oligocene and are best known from the Fayum, Egypt. The last known occurrence of embrithopods was at Lothidok, Kenya, of latest Oligocene age. Conflicting ideas about embrithopod relationships have been addressed by recent morphologic and phylogenetic analyses. These studies reaffirm Simpson's (1945) earlier classification of arsinoitheres (and, by extension, Embrithopoda) in Paenungulata, with proboscideans, sirenians, desmostylians, and hyraxes. Nonetheless, debate continues about whether arsinoitheres are more closely related to proboscideans, sirenians, or are a more distant sister taxon to tethytheres. Molecular analyses of extant taxa suggest that paenungulates belong with elephant shrews, African insectivorans, and aardvarks in the clade Afrotheria, whose modern biogeography is largely African. This chapter describes the systematic paleontology of Embrithopoda.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, British zoologist Charles Andrews described new fossil mammals from Egypt that demonstrated Africa had once harbored an archaic, endemic fauna very different from the continent's modern mammal communities. This fauna, we now know, characterized much or all of the continent during the early Tertiary, a time when Africa was isolated from Eurasia by the Tethys Sea. The order Hyracoidea was a central component of this endemic fauna, a startling realization given the inauspicious nature of the living hyraxes, which today include only a few small species in three genera. The African fossil record reveals dozens of hyracoids that ranged in size from that of small rabbits upward to that of modern Sumatran rhinos. Hyracoids have played an important role in studies of mammalian evolution owing to their relation to elephants. This chapter describes the systematic paleontology of Hyracoidea.

Among the Perissodactyla, Rhinocerotidae have traditionally been allied with tapirs because they lack a mesostyle, even though other primitive perissodactyls may also lack it. The most parsimonious recent cladistic analyses, using no less than 282 characters, unite under the Rhinocerotini (which includes the bulk of the Rhinocerotinae) as an unresolved trichotomy, the Teleoceratina (Old and New World brachypotheres), the Aceratheriina (Old World aceratheres and related forms), and the Rhinocerotina (non-elasmothere Old World horned rhinos); the Elasmotheriini are the sister group of the Rhinocerotinae. There are five living species, all of them seriously threatened or even close to extinction: Dicerorhinus sumatrensis, found in Sumatra and the Malaysian peninsula; Rhinoceros sondaicus, R. unicornis, also from southeastern Asia; Ceratotheriumsimum; and Diceros bicornis. Some morphological cladistic analysis and mitochondrial gene sequencing suggests that, among living forms, African rhinos are the sister group of Dicerorhinus + Rhinoceros. This chapter describes the systematic paleontology of Rhinocerotidae.

This chapter explores the role of technology in military adaptation, and the markedly different challenges of technological adaptability at the tactical and institutional levels. At the tactical level, technological adaptability requires leaders and soldiers to approach problems with creativity, manufacture solutions on the battlefield, and disseminate solutions rapidly across the force. At the institutional level, technological adaptability requires effective communication with soldiers on the battlefield, and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles within established acquisition processes. The chapter includes case studies of French tank development during World War I and US Army tank development and battlefield modifications during World War II in Europe.

The white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum), one of five remaining rhinoceros species, is particularly sensitive to etorphine, the opioid drug used for chemical capture. As a result, capture often results in morbidity and mortality. With the recent, unprecedented rise in rhino poaching, fuelled by a growing demand for rhino horn, intensive management procedures, including chemical capture, are key to the conservation and management of this large iconic species. The use of sophisticated physiological monitoring techniques in rhinoceros undergoing capture and other management procedures (e.g. translocation) and experimental trials of different pharmacological interventions have provided insights into the causes and consequences of capture-related pathophysiology. This chapter explores some of the approaches used to investigate physiological responses of the white rhinoceros, and how the results from experimental trials are helping us move towards safer methods of chemical capture and transport.

This chapter shows that the illegalization of an economic exchange is not a straightforward political decision with fixed goalposts, but a protracted process that may encounter unexpected hurdles along the way to effective implementation and enforcement. While political considerations informed the decision to ban trade in rhino horn initially, diffusion of the prohibition has been uneven and lacks social and cultural legitimacy among key actors along the supply chain. Moreover, some market actors justify their participation in illegal rhino horn markets based on the perceived illegitimacy of the rhino horn prohibition. The concept of “contested illegality” captures an important legitimization device of market participants who do not accept the trade ban.

In the United Kingdom striptease dancing has a very different history and set of aesthetic values than its US counterpart. While table dancing and lap dancing were integral to striptease in the United States as early as the 1970s, they invaded the exotic dance scene in the United Kingdom only in the mid 1990s, driven by American entrepreneurship. Until the mid-1990s, striptease in Britain was a shame-inducing pursuit that took place in basement pubs and involved women carrying empty pint glasses from customer to customer to solicit tips in order to perform on makeshift stages. The history of the “lap dance wars” in London reveals changes in British constructions of class and sexuality, and in the interplay between them; careful observation of contemporary British striptease dancing allowed analysis of the ramifications of these shifts.

This chapter reveals how the judiciary succumbed to executive pressure in regard to subsequent drafts of the Judges’ Rules. This occurred in a manner which directly contests the constitutional principle that nothing should be said or done to shake confidence in the good sense and freedom from bias of those who have to administer justice, a principle earlier set out by the Home Office itself. The analysis shows the relevance of contemporaneous occurrences in criminal justice (including, but not limited to, the Sheffield Rhino Whip affair—where police officers assaulted prisoners not suspected of crimes; the Challenor incidents—in which bricks were planted on innocent people; and the Stephen Ward/Christine Keeler/John Profumo scandal—in which the police engaged in dubious arrest, detention, and interrogation practices at the behest of the executive) as it uncovers the constitutional struggle between the executive and the judiciary in which the judges were forced into a climb-down by political threats that went to the heart of British constitutional arrangements and the associated notion of judicial independence.