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82-613: Gnathifera (from the Greek gnáthos , “jaw”, and the Latin -fera , “bearing”) is a clade of generally small spiralians characterized by complex jaws made of chitin . It comprises the phyla Gnathostomulida , Rotifera and Micrognathozoa . Chaetognatha has recently been recognised as closely related to the group, with it either being included within Gnathifera or the broader group Chaetognathifera . Gnathiferans include some of

164-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

246-622: A cataclysm known as " The Great Dying ", the third and most severe Phanerozoic mass extinction. The early Cambrian climate was probably moderate at first, becoming warmer over the course of the Cambrian, as the second-greatest sustained sea level rise in the Phanerozoic got underway. However, as if to offset this trend, Gondwana moved south, so that, in Ordovician time, most of West Gondwana (Africa and South America) lay directly over

328-480: A distinct lineage with no close relatives, were identified as gnathiferans in 2019. A similar grouping, Acanthognatha, was suggested in 1998 to unite gastrotrichs with gnathostomulids and rotifers. However, gastrotrichs are more closely related to lophotrochozoans than gnathiferans. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

410-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

492-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

574-445: A foothold on land. These early plants were the forerunners of all plant life on land. During this time, there were four continents: Gondwana (Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, Siberia), Laurentia (North America), Baltica (Northern Europe), and Avalonia (Western Europe). The recent rise in sea levels allowed many new species to thrive in water. The Devonian spanned from 419–359 million years ago. Also known as "The Age of

656-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

738-742: Is a member of Spiralia. It is the sister taxon of a clade comprising all other spiralians. An alternative phylogeny place Gnathifera into a main spiralian clade Platyzoa s.l. as sister clade to Mesozoa and Platyhelminthes . Before the cladistic era, most gnathiferans were regarded as aschelminths , a grouping now recognized as polyphyletic . Chaetognaths exhibit numerous morphological similarities to rotifers, suggesting that they may be sister taxa. However, based on molecular data, micrognathozoans may be more closely related to rotifers than chaetognaths. Rotifera comprises four subclades: Seisonida , Acanthocephala , Bdelloidea , and Monogononta . Acanthocephalans were traditionally excluded from Rotifera, but it

820-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

902-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

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984-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

1066-663: Is considered the first Phanerozoic mass extinction event, and the second deadliest. The Silurian spanned from 444–419 million years ago. The Silurian saw the rejuvenation of life as the Earth recovered from the previous glaciation. This period saw the mass evolution of fish, as jawless fish became more numerous, jawed fish evolved, and the first freshwater fish evolved, though arthropods, such as sea scorpions , were still apex predators . Fully terrestrial life evolved, including early arachnids, fungi, and centipedes. The evolution of vascular plants ( Cooksonia ) allowed plants to gain

1148-420: Is now known that rotifers are paraphyletic without including acanthocephalans. Some taxonomists call the clade of rotifers including acanthocephalans Syndermata, but others continue to use Rotifera and regard acanthocephalans as rotifers. Numerous hypotheses of rotifer interrelationships exist. The enigmatic phylum Cycliophora may belong to Gnathifera, but other studies suggest that it is more closely related to

1230-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

1312-829: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Paleozoic The name Paleozoic

1394-475: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

1476-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

1558-599: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

1640-575: Is the sudden appearance of nearly all of the invertebrate animal phyla in great abundance at the beginning of the Cambrian. The first vertebrates appeared in the form of primitive fish, which greatly diversified in the Silurian and Devonian Periods. The first animals to venture onto dry land were the arthropods. Some fish had lungs, and powerful bony fins that in the late Devonian, 367.5 million years ago, allowed them to crawl onto land. The bones in their fins eventually evolved into legs and they became

1722-616: Is transient and only forms during defecation. Unlike other gnathiferans, in chaetognaths and the extinct Amiskwia the anus is located on the ventral surface in a subterminal position. Both Gnathostomulida and Micrognathozoa are acoelomates , rotifers are pseudocoelomates , and chaetognathans have a true coelom . Gnathostomulidans and chaetognathans are hermaphrodites , and Micrognathozoa appears to be parthenogenetic as no males have ever been observed, but it has been suggested undiscovered dwarf males could be responsible for fertilization. In rotifers both males and females occurs, except from

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1804-605: The Appalachians , Caledonides , Ural Mountains , and mountains of Tasmania . The Cambrian spanned from 539–485 million years ago and is the first period of the Paleozoic Era of the Phanerozoic. The Cambrian marked a boom in evolution in an event known as the Cambrian explosion in which the largest number of creatures evolved in any single period of the history of the Earth. Creatures like algae evolved, but

1886-531: The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse . Gondwana was glaciated as much of it was situated around the south pole. The Permian spanned from 299–252 million years ago and was the last period of the Paleozoic Era. At the beginning of this period, all continents joined together to form the supercontinent Pangaea, which was encircled by one ocean called Panthalassa . The land mass was very dry during this time, with harsh seasons, as

1968-645: The Early Palaeozoic Icehouse , culminating in the Hirnantian glaciation, 445  million years ago at the end of the Ordovician. The middle Paleozoic was a time of considerable stability. Sea levels had dropped coincident with the ice age, but slowly recovered over the course of the Silurian and Devonian. The slow merger of Baltica and Laurentia, and the northward movement of bits and pieces of Gondwana created numerous new regions of relatively warm, shallow sea floor. As plants took hold on

2050-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

2132-578: The Entoprocta . The fossil record of gnathiferans is poor. There are no known fossil gnathostomulids. Fossils of the extant rotifer genus Habrotrocha are known from Dominican amber dating to the late Eocene , but rotifers are otherwise only known from the Holocene . By contrast, the chaetognath fossil record, while still patchy, includes numerous Paleozoic specimens. Protoconodonts are stem-group chaetognaths. The earliest protoconodonts date to

2214-458: The Fortunian age of the Cambrian , and are among the oldest known bilaterians. The enigmatic Cambrian taxon Amiskwia is a gnathiferan and may also be a stem-group chaetognath. The Cambrian ectoparasite Inquicus appears to be a gnathiferan. Gnathifera was named in 1995 to unite gnathostomulids and rotifers. Micrognathozoans were soon added to this grouping. Chaetognaths, long considered

2296-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

2378-571: The South Pole . The early Paleozoic climate was strongly zonal, with the result that the "climate", in an abstract sense, became warmer, but the living space of most organisms of the time – the continental shelf marine environment – became steadily colder. However, Baltica (Northern Europe and Russia) and Laurentia (eastern North America and Greenland) remained in the tropical zone, while China and Australia lay in waters which were at least temperate. The early Paleozoic ended, rather abruptly, with

2460-550: The coal beds of Europe and eastern North America . Towards the end of the era, large, sophisticated synapsids and diapsids were dominant and the first modern plants ( conifers ) appeared. The Paleozoic Era ended with the largest extinction event of the Phanerozoic Eon , the Permian–Triassic extinction event . The effects of this catastrophe were so devastating that it took life on land 30 million years into

2542-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

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2624-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

2706-648: The Fish", the Devonian featured a huge diversification of fish, including armored fish like Dunkleosteus and lobe-finned fish which eventually evolved into the first tetrapods. On land, plant groups diversified rapidly in an event known as the Devonian explosion when plants made lignin , leading to taller growth and vascular tissue; the first trees and seeds evolved. These new habitats led to greater arthropod diversification. The first amphibians appeared and fish occupied

2788-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

2870-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

2952-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

3034-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

3116-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

3198-658: The Mesozoic Era to recover. Recovery of life in the sea may have been much faster. The base of the Paleozoic is one of the major divisions in geological time representing the divide between the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic eons, the Paleozoic and Neoproterozoic eras and the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods. When Adam Sedgwick named the Paleozoic in 1835, he defined the base as the first appearance of complex life in

3280-610: The Middle Carboniferous). An important evolutionary development of the time was the evolution of amniotic eggs , which allowed amphibians to move farther inland and remain the dominant vertebrates for the duration of this period. Also, the first reptiles and synapsids evolved in the swamps. Throughout the Carboniferous, there was a cooling trend, which led to the Permo-Carboniferous glaciation or

3362-629: The Palaeozoic had very few facultatively motile animals that could easily adjust to disturbance, with such creatures composing 1% of its assemblages in contrast to 50% in Cenozoic faunal assemblages. Non-motile animals untethered to the substrate, extremely rare in the Cenozoic, were abundant in the Palaeozoic. Palaeozoic phytoplankton overall were both nutrient-poor themselves and adapted to nutrient-poor environmental conditions. This phytoplankton nutrient poverty has been cited as an explanation for

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3444-459: The Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras and the Permian and Triassic periods is marked by the first occurrence of the conodont Hindeodus parvus . This is the first biostratigraphic event found worldwide that is associated with the beginning of the recovery following the end- Permian mass extinctions and environmental changes. In non-marine strata, the equivalent level is marked by the disappearance of

3526-660: The Permian Dicynodon tetrapods . This means events previously considered to mark the Permian-Triassic boundary, such as the eruption of the Siberian Traps flood basalts , the onset of greenhouse climate, ocean anoxia and acidification and the resulting mass extinction are now regarded as being of latest Permian in age. The GSSP is near Meishan , Zhejiang Province, southern China. Radiometric dating of volcanic clay layers just above and below

3608-529: The Silurian Period, about 420 million years ago, when they began to transition onto dry land. Terrestrial flora reached its climax in the Carboniferous, when towering lycopsid rainforests dominated the tropical belt of Euramerica . Climate change caused the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse which fragmented this habitat, diminishing the diversity of plant life in the late Carboniferous and Permian periods. A noteworthy feature of Paleozoic life

3690-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

3772-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

3854-549: The basal Cambrian Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) at the base of the Treptichnus pedum assemblage of trace fossils and immediately above the last occurrence of the Ediacaran problematica fossils Harlaniella podolica and Palaeopsacichnus . The base of the Phanerozoic, Paleozoic and Cambrian is dated at 538.8+/-0.2 Ma and now lies below both the first appearance of trilobites and SSF. The boundary between

3936-516: The boundary confine its age to a narrow range of 251.902+/-0.024 Ma. The beginning of the Paleozoic Era witnessed the breakup of the supercontinent of Pannotia and ended while the supercontinent Pangaea was assembling. The breakup of Pannotia began with the opening of the Iapetus Ocean and other Cambrian seas and coincided with a dramatic rise in sea level. Paleoclimatic studies and evidence of glaciers indicate that Central Africa

4018-539: The class Bdelloidea . All known gnathiferans are direct developers . Though gnathiferans are included in Spiralia, rotifers and chaetognaths do not exhibit spiral cleavage . Little is known of the development of micrognathozoans. The development of gnathostomulids is poorly known, but they appear to exhibit spiral cleavage. Gnathostomulida Micrognathozoa Chaetognatha Seisonida Acanthocephala Bdelloidea Monogononta Platytrochozoa Gnathifera

4100-511: The climate of the interior of Pangaea was not regulated by large bodies of water. Diapsids and synapsids flourished in the new dry climate. Creatures such as Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus ruled the new continent. The first conifers evolved, and dominated the terrestrial landscape. Near the end of the Permian, however, Pangaea grew drier. The interior was desert, and new taxa such as Scutosaurus and Gorgonopsids filled it. Eventually they disappeared, along with 95% of all life on Earth, in

4182-561: The continental margins, oxygen levels increased and carbon dioxide dropped, although much less dramatically. The north–south temperature gradient also seems to have moderated, or metazoan life simply became hardier, or both. At any event, the far southern continental margins of Antarctica and West Gondwana became increasingly less barren. The Devonian ended with a series of turnover pulses which killed off much of middle Paleozoic vertebrate life, without noticeably reducing species diversity overall. There are many unanswered questions about

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4264-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

4346-507: The empty continent of Gondwana. By the end of the Ordovician, Gondwana was at the south pole, early North America had collided with Europe, closing the intervening ocean. Glaciation of Africa resulted in a major drop in sea level, killing off all life that had established along coastal Gondwana. Glaciation may have caused the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events , in which 60% of marine invertebrates and 25% of families became extinct, and

4428-560: The end of the Permian period. In late middle Permian the pareiasaurs originated, successful herbivores and the only sauropsids that could reach sizes comparable to some of the largest synapsids. The Palaeozoic marine fauna was notably lacking in predators relative to the present day. Predators made up about 4% of the fauna in Palaeozoic assemblages while making up 17% of temperate Cenozoic assemblages and 31% of tropical ones. Infaunal animals made up 4% of soft substrate Palaeozoic communities but about 47% of Cenozoic communities. Additionally,

4510-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

4592-461: The first tetrapods, 390  million years ago , and began to develop lungs. Amphibians were the dominant tetrapods until the mid-Carboniferous, when climate change greatly reduced their diversity, allowing amniotes to take over. Amniotes would split into two clades shortly after their origin in the Carboniferous; the synapsids, which was the dominant group, and the sauropsids . The synapsids continued to prosper and increase in number and variety till

4674-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

4756-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

4838-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

4920-548: The late Paleozoic. The Mississippian (early Carboniferous Period) began with a spike in atmospheric oxygen, while carbon dioxide plummeted to new lows. This destabilized the climate and led to one, and perhaps two, ice ages during the Carboniferous. These were far more severe than the brief Late Ordovician ice age; but, this time, the effects on world biota were inconsequential. By the Cisuralian Epoch, both oxygen and carbon dioxide had recovered to more normal levels. On

5002-504: The majority of Ediacaran to Cambrian rock sequences are composed of siliciclastic rocks where skeletal fossils are rarely preserved. This led the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) to use trace fossils as an indicator of complex life. Unlike later in the fossil record, Cambrian trace fossils are preserved in a wide range of sediments and environments, which aids correlation between different sites around

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5084-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

5166-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

5248-400: The most abundant phyla. Rotifers are among the most diverse and abundant freshwater animals and chaetognaths are among the most abundant marine plankton. The most distinctive characteristic of gnathiferans is the presence of complex sclerotized mouthparts made of chitin. In most gnathiferans, the anus opens on the dorsal surface of the animal. In micrognathozoans and gnathostomulids, the anus

5330-434: The most rapid and widespread diversification of life in Earth's history, known as the Cambrian explosion , in which most modern phyla first appeared. Arthropods , molluscs , fish , amphibians , reptiles , and synapsids all evolved during the Paleozoic. Life began in the ocean but eventually transitioned onto land, and by the late Paleozoic, great forests of primitive plants covered the continents, many of which formed

5412-603: The most ubiquitous of that period were the armored arthropods, like trilobites. Almost all marine phyla evolved in this period. During this time, the supercontinent Pannotia begins to break up, most of which later became the supercontinent Gondwana. The Ordovician spanned from 485–444 million years ago. The Ordovician was a time in Earth's history in which many of the biological classes still prevalent today evolved, such as primitive fish, cephalopods, and coral. The most common forms of life, however, were trilobites, snails and shellfish. The first arthropods went ashore to colonize

5494-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

5576-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

5658-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

5740-520: The other hand, the assembly of Pangaea created huge arid inland areas subject to temperature extremes. The Lopingian Epoch is associated with falling sea levels, increased carbon dioxide and general climatic deterioration, culminating in the devastation of the Permian extinction. While macroscopic plant life appeared early in the Paleozoic Era and possibly late in the Neoproterozoic Era of the earlier eon, plants mostly remained aquatic until

5822-401: The rock record as shown by the presence of trilobite -dominated fauna. Since then evidence of complex life in older rock sequences has increased and by the second half of the 20th century, the first appearance of small shelly fauna (SSF), also known as early skeletal fossils, were considered markers for the base of the Paleozoic. However, whilst SSF are well preserved in carbonate sediments,

5904-479: The short, but apparently severe, late Ordovician ice age. This cold spell caused the second-greatest mass extinction of the Phanerozoic Eon. Over time, the warmer weather moved into the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician and Silurian were warm greenhouse periods, with the highest sea levels of the Paleozoic (200 m above today's); the warm climate was interrupted only by a 30 million year cool period,

5986-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

6068-554: The top of the food chain. Earth's second Phanerozoic mass extinction event (a group of several smaller extinction events), the Late Devonian extinction , ended 70% of existing species. The Carboniferous is named after the large coal deposits laid down during the period. It spanned from 359–299 million years ago. During this time, average global temperatures were exceedingly high; the early Carboniferous averaged at about 20 degrees Celsius (but cooled to 10 °C during

6150-521: The world. Trace fossils reflect the complexity of the body plan of the organism that made them. Ediacaran trace fossils are simple, sub-horizontal feeding traces. As more complex organisms evolved, their more complex behaviour was reflected in greater diversity and complexity of the trace fossils they left behind. After two decades of deliberation, the ICS chose Fortune Head , Burin Peninsula, Newfoundland as

6232-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

6314-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

6396-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

6478-418: Was first used by Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873) in 1838 to describe the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. It was redefined by John Phillips (1800–1874) in 1840 to cover the Cambrian to Permian periods. It is derived from the Greek palaiós (παλαιός, "old") and zōḗ (ζωή, "life") meaning "ancient life". The Paleozoic was a time of dramatic geological, climatic, and evolutionary change. The Cambrian witnessed

6560-539: Was most likely in the polar regions during the early Paleozoic. The breakup of Pannotia was followed by the assembly of the huge continent Gondwana ( 510  million years ago ). By the mid-Paleozoic, the collision of North America and Europe produced the Acadian-Caledonian uplifts, and a subducting plate uplifted eastern Australia . By the late Paleozoic, continental collisions formed the supercontinent of Pangaea and created great mountain chains, including

6642-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

6724-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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