Woolly rhinoceros

The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and northern Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived the last glacial period. The genus name Coelodonta means "cavity tooth". The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna.

Evolution

As the last and most derived member of the Pleistocene rhinoceros lineage, the woolly rhinoceros was well adapted to its environment. Stocky limbs and thick woolly pelage made it well suited to the steppe-tundra environment prevalent across the Palearctic ecozone during the Pleistocene glaciations. Like the vast majority of rhinoceroses, the body plan of the woolly rhinoceros adhered to a conservative morphology, like the first rhinoceroses seen in the late Eocene.

A study of 40,000- to 70,000-year-old DNA samples showed its closest extant relative is the Sumatran rhinoceros.

Description

The appearance of woolly rhinos is known from mummified individuals from Siberia as well as cave paintings. An adult woolly rhinoceros was typically around 3 to 3.8 metres (9.8 to 12.5 ft) in length, with an estimated weight of around 1,800–2,700 kg (4,000–6,000 lb) or 2,000 kg (4,400 lb). The woolly rhinoceros could grow to be 2 m (6.6 ft) tall; the body size was thus comparable to, or slightly larger than, the extant white rhinoceros. Two horns on the skull were made of keratin, the anterior horn being 61 cm (24 in) in length, with a smaller horn between its eyes. It had thick, long fur, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Cave paintings suggest a wide dark band between the front and hind legs, but the feature is not universal, and the identification of pictured rhinoceroses as woolly rhinoceros is uncertain.

Ark: Survival Evolved

Ark: Survival Evolved (stylized as ARK: Survival Evolved) is an action-adventure survival video game developed by Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios and Virtual Basement. It is scheduled for release in June 2016 for Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game's early access began for Windows on June 2, 2015, for OS X and Linux on July 1, 2015, and for Xbox One on December 16, 2015. In the game, players must survive in a world filled with roaming dinosaurs, natural hazards, and potentially hostile human players.

The game is played from either a third-person or first-person view and its world is navigated on foot or by riding a dinosaur. Players use firearms and improvised weapons to defend against hostile humans and creatures, with the ability to build bases as defense. Players can also customize weapons using items scavenged from the environment. The game has both single-player and multiplayer options, with the latter allowing players to engage in simultaneous gameplay.

Ice age

An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacials" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "ice age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene—of the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.

Origin of ice age theory

In 1742 Pierre Martel (1706–1767), an engineer and geographer living in Geneva, visited the valley of Chamonix in the Alps of Savoy. Two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of erratic boulders to the glaciers, saying that they had once extended much farther. Later similar explanations were reported from other regions of the Alps. In 1815 the carpenter and chamois hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin (1767–1858) explained erratic boulders in the Val de Bagnes in the Swiss canton of Valais as being due to glaciers previously extending further. An unknown woodcutter from Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland advocated a similar idea in a discussion with the Swiss-German geologist Jean de Charpentier (1786–1855) in 1834. Comparable explanations are also known from the Val de Ferret in the Valais and the Seeland in western Switzerland and in Goethe's scientific work. Such explanations could also be found in other parts of the world. When the Bavarian naturalist Ernst von Bibra (1806–1878) visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850, the natives attributed fossil moraines to the former action of glaciers.

Far Cry Primal

Far Cry Primal is an upcoming action-adventure video game developed and published by Ubisoft. It is set to be released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 23, 2016, and Microsoft Windows on March 1, 2016. The game is set in the Stone Age, and revolves around the story of Takkar, who starts off as an unarmed hunter and rises to become the leader of a tribe.

Setting

The game is set in 10,000 BCE, during the beginning of the Mesolithic period. It takes place in the fictional Oros valley in Central Europe, an open world filled with wildlife such as mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Survival is a daily challenge as tribes come into conflict with one another and nature.

Players take on the role of a Wenja tribesman named Takkar (Elias Toufexis), who is stranded in Oros with no weapons after his hunting party is ambushed. Takkar, using his newfound skill of taming animals, will eventually rise to power and lead his own tribe.

Language

The characters speak a fictional language with a defined syntax and structure. It is based on Proto-Indo-European, which is the common ancestor of most modern European languages. Linguists constructed three dialects - Wenja, Udam and Izila - one for each of the three featured tribes. Each dialect was designed to have a distinct sound conveying the culture of its tribe. Lead writer Kevin Shortt said that players will begin to understand Wenja vocabulary, and finish the game with "a real sense of it".

Far Cry

The Far Cry series is a franchise of first-person shooter computer and video games, named after the first game of the series. The first game, Far Cry, was developed by Crytek Studios in Germany and published by Ubisoft on March 23, 2004 for Microsoft Windows. Far Cry received positive reviews upon release. The original game has been followed by three sequels: Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4, and spawned many spin-off games, including Far Cry Instincts, Far Cry Instincts: Evolution, Far Cry Instincts: Predator, Far Cry Vengeance and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

A 2008 English-language German movie entitled Far Cry was based on the game.

The Far Cry franchise has been known for putting players in exotic open world environments, from the Himalayas to the plains of Africa. The series has also included an immersive map editing program that lets players create and share their own custom maps for use in multiplayer.

Main series

Far Cry (2004)

Far Cry is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Crytek Studios from Germany and published by Ubisoft on March 23, 2004 for Windows.