Early North American Research Articles

Genetic evidence suggests a widespread distribution of native North American populations of reed canarygrass

Reed canarygrass is an important agricul- tural crop thought to be native to Europe, Asia, and North America. However, it is one of the worst wetland invaders in North American wetlands. The native North American status has been supported by the circumstantial evidence of early botanical records and the dating and location of herbarium specimens. The lack of empirical evidence has left the North American native status of the species in doubt and prevented comparisons between native North Amer- ican and Eurasian populations of the species. We utilized genetic markers to compare a wide range of European and Asian collections to DNA extracted from 38 early North American herbarium specimens. The genetic data confirm the presence of a distinct population present throughout North America in the early twentieth century, but not present in Europe or Asia, ranging from Alaska, USA to New Brunswick, Canada. These native North American populations of reed canarygrass are likely present throughout Alaska today, as one specimen was collected as recently as 1996, and may still be present in other regions of North America. Future research can utilize this dataset to determine the origin of present-day invasive popula- tions in North American wetlands.

Science Podcast

The show includes a vaccine that recombines in the wild, early North American inhabitants, HIV/AIDS in the U.S., and more.

The beginning of the sauropod dinosaur hiatus in North America: insights from the Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation of Wyoming

ABSTRACT We redescribe and present newly excavated sauropod material from the Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation of Wyoming that we refer to the titanosauriform Sauroposeidon proteles. In contrast to previous hypotheses that it was a brachiosaurid, we assert that Sauroposeidon is a member of the Somphospondyli on the basis of numerous features. Thus, the mid-Cretaceous disappearance of sauropods from the North American fossil record concerned both brachiosaurids and somphospondylans. We find claims for titanosaurs in the Early Cretaceous of North America to be unsubstantiated. The latest register of Sauroposeidon and other Early Cretaceous North American sauropods (before the ‘sauropod hiatus’) occurs in or below the coastal units marking transgression of the Western Interior Seaway, whereas many ecologically disparate dinosaur groups are present both below and above this boundary in the same geologic units that sauropods are found in. The presence of these through-ranging groups with sauropods before and after sauropod absence suggests that appropriate sauropod-bearing environments were present into the Late Cretaceous, implying that the disappearance of sauropods is not attributable to taphonomic or sampling bias. Furthermore, field observations of the Cloverly Formation indicate that Cretaceous pre-hiatus sauropods inhabited near-coastal environments, which were abundant in the western United States well after the start of the hiatus. The start of the sauropod hiatus is interpreted as the result of a genuine continent-wide extinction, coincident with the appearance of (and perhaps attributable to competition with) advanced ornithischian herbivores, decrease in habitat due to the incursion of the Western Interior Seaway, or both.

Radiocarbon calibration curves, summed probability distributions, and early Paleoindian population trends in North America

Archaeologists increasingly examine summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to search for temporal trends in ancient human populations, including early North American population trends across the onset of the Younger Dryas climatic period (10,900 BC). We use both IntCal04 and IntCal09 to simulate and calibrate sequences of radiocarbon dates that represent evenly spaced calendar ages from 12,000 to 9000 BC and use IntCal09 to simulate two different demographic processes across this interval. The shapes of the calibrated summed probability distribution from our first set of simulations mirror many trends that have been interpreted in demographic terms and this shape shows clear links to the shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve. This is true for both IntCal04 and IntCal09, although these different curves produce different probability distributions. The shapes of the calibrated summed probability distribution from our second set of simulations differ somewhat but show virtually identical trends at points where the actual frequencies of calendar dates are very different. We conclude that changing frequencies of radiocarbon dates over time probably do contain demographic information, but that extracting this information is more difficult than archaeologists have acknowledged.

The Göttingen Four and the Exchange of North American and German Phenomenology

Georg-August-Universitat (Gottingen, Germany) has long been at the forefront of bilingual English-German scholarship, owing first to its founding by the British King George II (who was also a member of the German nobility), second to the participation of his English speaking offspring in the ruling life of the university, and third because thereafter it nurtured a robust network of exchange programs with English language universities. Likewise, its tradition of English liberalism, combined with its place at the origins of the German Romantic movement, meant that it was often surprisingly resistant to demands of intellectual submission to the sovereign or the theology faculty. Many scholars traveled there to conduct their work in this climate of relative freedom and respect for individual inquiry. This article focuses on four scholars who conducted research at Georg-August-Universitat—listed, in the order of their arrival: Josiah Royce (1876, as a graduate student), Edmund Husserl (1901–1916, as a professor), William Hocking (1902, as a graduate student), and Winthrop Bell (1911– 1914, as a graduate student). The latter two were graduate students at Harvard under Royce and at Gottingen under Husserl, and they did much to interpret ideas between their teachers and between English and German language phenomenology. Considering the relation of these four philosophers, there are strong reasons to look for a robust relationship between early North American phenomenology and German phenomenology, particularly by way of Harvard philosopher Royce, who began writing on what he called the “New Phenomenology” from 1879, and the Gottingen/Freiburg philosopher Husserl, who began writing on phenomenology from the last years of the 19 th century. While the connection between Roycean and Husserlian phenomenology has been largely overlooked in histories of philosophy, a small but enduring community of scholars has noted striking similarities between Royce’s phenomenology and European phenomenology. Not including Royce’s and Husserl’s own work in this regard, we may date the origin of third-party comparisons of their thought to 1902, with Hocking.

Building an Identity on Paper: The Negotiation of Italianitá in the Early North American Ethnic Press

This article examines the language of one of the several Italian newspapers in-print between the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century in North America, the Gazzetta del Massachusetts. The goal of this paper is to show how the journalistic activity borne by overseas immigrants have re-created and/or re-negotiated a new «Italianita» via a quite different use of the Italian language when compared to coeval papers printed in Italy.

Disney discourses of self and Other: animality, primitivity, modernity, and postmodernity

We need Otherness to define self. As our world widens in an age of global commerce, travel, and entertainment, we encounter a sometimes bewildering array of Otherness delivered at an ever‐increasing pace. In light of postmodern diversity and hybridity, we need increasingly fundamental Others against whom to construct ourselves. In the theme parks typified by those of Disney in Orlando, Florida, we find several discourses that offer us a perspective on who we are vis‐à‐vis the Other. The particular Others (and sometimes the particular selves) of these discourses often come from the non‐human animal kingdom as well as from other human animal groups. The animal self/Other is not new and can be traced back to Aesop’s Fables and earlier. But in the controlled and carefully planned world of Orlando theme parks, supplemented by films, cartoons, animatronics, and other “imagineering” techniques, the possibilities of representation are greatly expanded. Nor is offering human Others a new thing and the “human zoos” of some of the early North American World’s Fairs brought pseudo‐villages full of “natives” for spectator amusement and contemplation. In addition, various depictions of human Others in film, print, and art can be seen in earlier eras, ranging from William Rice Burrough’s Tarzan to Pablo Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon. But in a postmodern, post‐colonial, degendered era of self‐commoditization, global environmentalism, and multiculturalism, sensitivities are quite different from those that prevailed during earlier attempts at stylized presentations of the Other. Chauvinistic doctrines of superiority no longer go unchallenged with the human animal Other, and the non‐human animal Other presents a somewhat less contentious alternative. In this paper the authors seek to understand the Otherness crafted in Orlando theme parks, the messages they convey, and the broader societal discourses invoked and mobilized. The contrasts offered in these theme parks and that facilitate an understanding of our selves and our place in the world include not only us and them, but also a conflated array of here and there, now and then (past or future), human and animal, primitive and civilized, he and she, good and bad, and responsible and irresponsible. The authors do this by presenting auto‐ethnographic accounts of their own engagements with two Orlando theme parks, Disney Animal Kingdom and Anheuser‐Busch SeaWorld.

Philatelic Programs on Early North American Radio

Using scripts, publications, and philatelic press descriptions, this study investigates programs for stamp collectors in the early years of radio. NBC's Ivory Stamp Club of the Air was the most prominent of these. Syndicated and locally originated philatelic programming was widespread in the late 1930s and continued into the 1960s in Canada and the USA. Some programs appealed to kids but others were targeted at adults and sophisticated collectors. A strong male bias pervaded the programming. Culturally, appeals to patriotic and nationalistic pride were common, with programs providing stories behind why stamps commemorated certain events in the issuing nations' histories.

The Woman's Page: Journalism and Rhetoric in Early Canada (review)

Reviewed by: The Woman's Page: Journalism and Rhetoric in Early Canada Jordan Stouck The Woman's Page: Journalism and Rhetoric in Early Canada. By Janice Fiamengo . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 257 pp. $62, $26.95. How did Canadian women journalists in the late 1800s and early 1900s create public personas when no such female voices had existed before them? What rhetorical tactics did they use to achieve not only a place from which to speak but also a wide-ranging popularity among readers and listeners when women were not yet allowed to vote or officially participate in public life? Janice Fiamengo's The Woman's Page goes some way to answering these questions through her analysis of rhetorical self-fashioning in early Canadian women's journalism, essays, and public performances. I say "some way" without criticism, as one of the most powerful claims in Fiamengo's work is that more such analysis needs to be done, particularly in considering the individual strategies of these women. That said, Fiamengo makes an invaluable start in considering the writings and performances of Agnes Machar, [End Page 191] Sarah Jeanette Duncan, Pauline Johnson, Kit Coleman, Flora MacDonald Denison, and Nellie McClung for how they constructed public personas while carefully balancing the expectations of a diverse public and the reactions of anti-feminist opponents. As the "woman question" surrounding enfranchisement became a topic for public debate, Fiamengo shows how Machar, Duncan, Johnson, Coleman, Denison, and McClung skilfully manipulated public opinion, constructing womanly but also revolutionary and socially influential identities through a series of performative rhetorical postures. Fiamengo explains how Agnes Machar, for instance, wrote articles in the 1890s for a variety of periodicals in which she constructed a radical Christian identity, using scriptural allusion, metaphor, and close analyses to gain moral authority over her audience. In contrast, Sarah Jeannette Duncan used tactics of parody and irony in her early career as a Globe columnist to create a public identity that was unsentimental and unconventional, but nevertheless humorous and widely read. Pauline Johnson's self-fashioning has perhaps received the most previous critical attention, but Fiamengo argues that Johnson was, above all, an effective rhetorician, presenting her cross-cultural Métis heritage in poems and prose pieces (several published in popular magazines and newspapers) as "conciliatory but ... also unsettling" (104). Kit Coleman was immensely popular in her role as women's advice columnist for the Toronto Daily Mail (later the Mail and Empire), where she created an empathetic yet morally-decisive womanly persona. Flora MacDonald Denison's 1909-13 column in the Toronto Sunday World was in large part a forum for her radical feminist views, which she constructed as a holy war led against an apathetic population. Meanwhile, Nellie McClung recast stereotypes in her orations against conservative Manitoba premier Sir Rodmond Roblin, Fiamengo argues, using a structure of humorous engagement and logical argument, then emotional appeals and calls to action to create compelling pro-suffrage speeches. McClung's rhetoric of the "fair deal" for all, regardless of "race, colour and creed" (as well as sex) had lasting impact, making her one of the founders of Canadian equal rights (206). While these writers sometimes overlap in applying metaphors of housecleaning and maternity to the nation, as well as in valuing both religious and secular social commitment, Fiamengo stresses their distinct strategies of self-presentation and the ways in which they forever changed newspaper discourse, forging public roles for women. For readers interested in the development of female voices in early North American periodicals as well as in the history of Canadian journalism, Fiamengo's study offers valuable insights. Her close analyses of the rhetorical tactics used by these women journalists and orators are particularly enlightening and nicely balanced against discussion of the ideological issues of the day. Indeed, as Fiamengo notes, much criticism to date has not only overlooked these and other women journalists [End Page 192] but has been ideologically rather than rhetorically oriented, making the kind of analysis in which she engages even more important. In this spirit of scholarly exploration, I might suggest that the different genres of isolated editorial, ongoing social commentary, public performance, advice column, and political oration...

Politics in the Archives: Records, Property, and Plantation Politics in Massachusetts Bay, 1642-1650

AbstractThis essay concerns the permutations of English popular politics in its seventeenth-century Atlantic setting, using the record of local and individual experience of politics to examine the process whereby settlers took possession of land in Massachusetts Bay. Historians have long appreciated the importance of English local customs in the early North American settlements, but the explicit political significance of English corporate and manorial approaches to land law in these settlements, and in the expansion of the Massachusetts Bay regime during the 1640s, have not been properly understood. The essay's perspective is microhistorical, developing its case from Obadiah Bruen's detailed "town book" of the Gloucester plantation: the book that he kept as the settlement's recorder between 1642 and 1650. The plantation occupied a key set of coordinates at the junction of English popular politics and religion and the building of the Massachusetts Bay colony during the 1640s. Using a close reading of Bruen's text, the essay identifies a politics of land possession, fashioned from traditional English political forms and their uses of land law, that sustained the Gloucester plantation, much like the colony as a whole, through a decade of bitter internal divisions. In the face of religious conflict and the myriad difficulties of building a new regime, political order came to depend, in Gloucester as in Massachusetts Bay generally, on the power to convey secure title to the possession of land, a power enshrined in the routine administrative records of local notaries or recorders, officially required in each Massachusetts Bay township during the 1640s.

Making a Treaty: the North American experience

A paper written by Canadian anthropologist Diane Barwick to help the 1979 Aboriginal Treaty Committee in discussions on a possible Treaty with Australian Aboriginal people is presented. She offers information on earlier North American treaties between the government and Indian natives in Canada and the United States to aid the process.

New Generation of Esophageal Stents: Early North American Experience Managing Obstructing Esophageal Cancers, Esophageal Perforations and Tracheoesophageal Fistula

New Generation of Esophageal Stents: Early North American Experience Managing Obstructing Esophageal Cancers, Esophageal Perforations and Tracheoesophageal Fistula

Pentagon Pictures: The Civil Divide in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night

This paper focusses on Norman Mailer's treatment of the 1967 March on the Pentagon in his Pulitzer Prize-winning work of non-fiction The Armies of the Night. The visual and linguistic properties developed by the author throughout the first book of The Armies of the Night are identified and assessed in relation to the anti-war movements and counterculture temperament of the 1960s. Comparisons are made with post-war writers and earlier North American authors as a means of clarifying “American” aspects of Mailer's handling of his material. Mailer's journalistic techniques, his often spontaneous and engaged responses, are also defined within the context of the social conflicts of the late 1960s.

Environmental Stimulus Package: Potential for a Rising Oxidative Deficit

A close relationship exists between the multiple systems in the body and the gradual exposure to the environmental influences of oxidative stress, such as airborne particulate matter, pesticides, diet and lifestyle. Over time, exposure to exogenous sources of oxidative stress can ultimately impair both tissue and cellular function and lead to cellular senescence, apoptosis, and the destruction of nuclear chromatin. The effects of oxidative stress from the environment may be muted in some individuals if sufficient anti-oxidant defenses are in place. However, in others, comprised defenses such as those that can occur with immune system dysfunction, can lead to progressive damage in genetic coding and mitochondrial DNA that have been associated with signaling pathway errors and tumorigenesis. Interestingly, “multiple hits” by environmental toxins may be required to lead to system dysfunction or tumor growth. For example, a number of studies have observed that an accumulation of gene mutations with increased age may be necessary to eventually lead to cancers involving the breast or the gastrointestinal tract. Furthermore, the exposure to exogenous agents that may generate the release of reactive oxygen species also may initiate a critical cascade of cell injury. The occurrence of genetic mutations from the initial release of reactive oxygen species can then lead to polymorphisms in key enzymes such as glutathione S-transferase and cytochrome p450 that are vital to protect cells and tissues against oxidative stress. As a result of the loss of these anti-oxidant pathways, further accumulated tissue damage can ensue and the risk of developing significant illness increases further. Given the intimate relationship between the body and its susceptibility to exogenous sources of oxidative stress, we have highlighted a number of novel studies in this issue of Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity that examine specific cellular and tissue responses to endogenous agents and the broad anti-oxidant systems that can mitigate injury during normal physiology and disease states. Kovacic and Somanathan set the stage for this issue with their opinion paper that describes the biology of a hallucinogenic agent that was an integral part of religious ceremonies by early North American natives and its use remains in our current society, namely mescaline. Their work provides new understanding for the cellular signaling of this agent in the nervous system, its role in structure function relations, and its ties to the hallucinogen psilocybin. In his review article, Flora broadens this perspective in regards to xenobiotics with metal and metalloid exposure. The biological properties of several agents that can lead to human illness are discussed that include copper, cobalt, and arsenic as well as the multiple anti-oxidant systems that can be activated, such as carotenoids, enzymes, hormones, phenolics, minerals, and vitamins. Interestingly, anti-oxidant systems also may play a significant role to prevent toxicity of chemotherapeutic agents. Al-Yahya et al. demonstrate that a naturally occurring branched-chain complex polysaccharide termed Gum Arabic can neutralize acrolein, a reactive metabolite of cyclophosphamide and block bladder toxicity from reactive oxygen species that may provide new direction for chemotherapeutic agents to enhance efficacy but limit toxicity. The ability to block cellular injury during periods of toxic elevated reactive oxygen species release also may be extended to a number systems throughout the body. Santo et al. show that ascorbic acid may be a powerful cytoprotectant in highly sensitive regions of the central nervous system during epilepsy and oxidative stress. Furthermore, in the paper by Mahapatra et al. that examines the effects of the exogenous toxin nicotine on immune cells, extracts from the plant Ocimum gratissimum were shown to have high flavonoid and phenolic content that may account for the ability of this agent to reduce super oxide anion generation, lipid peroxidation, and prevent cytotoxicity in immune cell peritoneal macrophages, suggesting that even the inflammatory effects of tobacco smoke that contains at least sixty known carcinogens may be reduced with appropriate anti-oxidant therapy. The efficacy of anti-oxidant therapy is brought to clinical consideration by Tripathi et al. in their paper. These investigators illustrate that administration of L-arginine, which has anti-apoptotic properties and can improve endothelial function, was able to lower serum cholesterol, increase superoxide dismutase function, and enhance the levels of total thiols in patients with cardiac ischemia, suggesting that chronic therapy with L-arginine in these patients may prevent the detrimental

The twentieth-century migration of parabolic dunes and wetland formation at Cape Cod National Sea Shore, Massachusetts, USA: landscape response to a legacy of environmental disturbance

Cape Cod, an early North American colony, was covered by mature forest prior to European contact but, with settlement in the late seventeenth century, aeolian processes dominated into the twenty-first century. An aerial photographic time series from AD 1938 to 2003 quantifies dune movement that reflects processes over centuries and documents accelerated parabolic dune movement at ~4 m/yr from 1938 to 1977 during a drier interval. In contrast, dune movement between 1987 and 2003 slowed to ~1 m/yr with wetter conditions. Wetlands expand post dune movement often forming in dune blowouts with seasonally wet conditions. Stratigraphic studies, coupled with optically stimulated luminescence ages, place erosion and burial of the pre-settlement forest soil by migrating dunes at AD 1690 ± 40 yr, with aeolian deposition continuing into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, consistent with the historic record of land surface conditions. A threshold of landscape stability was exceeded in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries, indicated by dune formation in response to human-induced land-cover changes, concomitant severe droughts and exposure to tropical storm/hurricane windfield. Dune orientation indicates preferential movement during winter with winds dominantly from the W—NW and with reduced vegetation cover. The present high biodiversity in interdunal wetlands is a legacy of aeolian processes from landscape disturbance initiated by European settlers in the seventeenth century.

The oldest North American primate and mammalian biogeography during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Undoubted primates first appear almost synchronously in the fossil records of Asia, Europe, and North America. This temporal pattern has complicated efforts to reconstruct the early dispersal history of primates in relation to global climate change and eustatic fluctuations in sea level. Here, I describe fossils from the Tuscahoma Formation on the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi documenting an anatomically primitive species of Teilhardina that is older than other North American and European primates. Consistent with its antiquity, a phylogenetic analysis of dental characters recognizes Teilhardina magnoliana, sp. nov., as the most basal member of this genus currently known from either North America or Europe. Its stratigraphic provenance demonstrates that primates originally colonized North America near the base of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), but before an important fall in eustatic sea level. Correlation based on carbon isotope stratigraphy and sequence stratigraphy indicates that the earliest North American primates inhabited coastal regions of the continent for thousands of years before they were able to colonize the Rocky Mountain Interior. The transient provincialism displayed by early North American primates corresponds to similar biogeographic patterns noted among fossil plants. Decreased precipitation in the Rocky Mountain Interior during the early part of the PETM may have been an important factor in maintaining biotic provincialism within North America at this time. These results underscore the need to obtain multiple, geographically dispersed records bearing on significant macroevolutionary events such as the PETM.

Brief Communication: Physiological stress in the Florida Archaic—Enamel hypoplasia and patterns of developmental insult in early North American hunter‐gatherers

We examined the prevalence and developmental timing of linear enamel hypoplasias (LEHs) in an early Archaic Floridian population from Windover (8,120-6,980 (14)C years B.P. uncorrected). Using digital images, mandibular and maxillary canines were analyzed for defect prevalence and timing of insults. Although overall prevalence was very weakly correlated with earlier defect timing, there were significant differences in defect prevalence that varied by sex and tooth type. The mean LEH count in male mandibular canines was far higher than in male maxillary canines or in female mandibular or maxillary canines. We examined defect timing as a possible predictor of the sex differences in LEH prevalence. There were no significant sex differences in the developmental timing of the earliest defects in either tooth class. Developmental timing is not responsible for the sex differences seen in defect prevalence in mandibular canines.

Mineral economics: Overview of a discipline

Mineral economics is the academic discipline that investigates and promotes understanding of economic and policy issues associated with the production and use of mineral commodities. While its origins can be traced back at least 200 years to the writings of David Ricardo and other early Classical economists, it emerged as a separate academic field only after World War II and then primarily in the United States. As a separate academic discipline, its roots are found in mining schools that needed to consider the milieu in which minerals are sold. While geologists, mining engineers, and others with technical backgrounds were largely responsible for creating the first stand-alone mineral-economics programs, ultimately trained economists became participants as well. Moreover, even after the rise of mineral-economics departments, most of the research in the field continued and continues to be carried out in other academic units, including traditional economic departments and engineering schools, as well as in government agencies, nonprofit research organizations, consulting firms, and international organizations. In the decades following World War II, after early fears of a new depression and excess capacity evaporated, mineral economics focused on the long-run availability of nonrenewable commodities and the threat of supply interruptions for strategic and critical minerals from the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and southern Africa, concerns that persisted at least through the 1980s. The relationship between mineral companies and governments (with particular attention on taxes and other ways of sharing the benefits from mining) was another important issue, as were more traditional interests, including market analysis (mainly, price and demand forecasts), project evaluation, and monopoly and antitrust issues. Since then, the discipline has spread from its early North American base around the globe. The range of topics addressed has grown as well and now includes the environmental impact of mineral production and use, the resource curse, the rise of China and India as major consumers, the concerns of indigenous people and local communities, and a host of other economic and policy issues associated with mineral commodities. This article examines the nature of mineral economics, its emergence as a distinct academic discipline following World War II, and its more recent evolution. It concludes with a few observations about the future.

Species Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biogeography of the Brontotheriidae (Mammalia: Perissodactyla)

The Brontotheriidae is an extinct family of Eocene perissodactyls known from North America, Asia, and, rarely, Eastern Europe. Brontotheres are widely recognized as having evolved very large body size and conspicuous frontonasal horns, although these traits do not characterize every species. Characters shared by all brontotheriids include an anteroposteriorly abbreviated face and an elongate postorbital cranium. Dentally, brontotheriids share bunoselenodont upper molars with a W-shaped ectoloph, isolated lingual cusps, and with paraconules, metaconules, and transverse molar crests that are either vestigial or absent. Early North American paleontologists such as Leidy, Cope, Marsh, and Osborn placed considerable emphasis on brontothere research, however, since Osborn's massive 1929 monograph on North American brontotheres, serious research on this diverse Eocene family has waned. Nonetheless, a great need for a revision of the Brontotheriidae has long been recognized because earlier works on brontothere taxonomy and systematics, particularly those of Osborn, are universally considered problematic due to their reliance on the discredited theory of orthogenesis.The present study reevaluates the species taxonomy of brontotheres based on craniodental materials. All known taxa were considered for revision except North American representatives of Eotitanops, Palaeosyops, and Megacerops. A phylogenetic species concept, where species are defined as the smallest diagnosable clusters of specimens, was adopted for this study. Monospecific quarry samples (mass death assemblages) consistently suggest that certain characters, including canine size, horn size, and many premolar characters show intraspecific polymorphic tendencies; such characters were not generally used to delimit species. All characters found to be monomorphic within mass death assemblages were considered when delimiting taxa.A total of 116 potential species were considered for revision. Among these species, 41 were found to be valid, 34 species were found to be invalid junior synonyms of valid species, 31 species were found to be nonima dubia, and three others were found to be problematic due to extremely fragmentary fossils, but not necessarily invalid. One new species, Wickia brevirhinus, is named and six other potential species are recognized but remain unnamed due to very poor fossil material.Phylogenetic analysis of 47 brontotheriid taxa was undertaken with 227 states distributed among 87 characters. The outgroup method was employed using Hyracotherium, Pachynolophus, Danjiangia, and Lambdotherium. Two analyses were performed, one with ordered multistate characters and another with unordered multistate characters. Both analyses yielded large numbers of most parsimonious trees. A strict reduced consensus was used to identify and prune fragmentary wildcard taxa a posteriori. Not surprisingly, the results of the phylogenetic analysis differ substantially from prior orthogenetic hypotheses of brontothere phylogeny and a radical revision in the higher classification of brontotheres is presented. Eotitanops and Palaeosyops are the most basal members of the Brontotheriidae. All other brontotheres form a clade, Brontotheriinae, which is supported by numerous molar apomorphies suggesting increased functional emphasis on shearing on the outer wall of enamel of the upper molars. Many of the previously named brontothere subfamilies are clearly paraphyletic while others correspond to subclades of the Brontotheriinae and have been assigned new ranks, resulting in a revised classification consisting of internested monophyletic taxa.Nine to twelve intercontinental dispersals, mostly in the middle Eocene (Uintan and Irdinmanhan land mammal “ages”) between North America and Asia are implied by the cladistic results. The timing of these dispersals agrees with prior conclusions regarding the timing of large influxes of mammal taxa into North America from Asia. However, the frequency of in

John C. Weaver, The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006. x + 498 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7735-3153-6 (pbk.). $27.95.

[Extract] The Great Land Rush is a wide-ranging book that demonstrates the advantages of a transnational approach to history. The integration of the history of the early United States with later events in the Australasian colonies, the Cape Colony and Canada works very well, and the patterns that John C. Weaver identifies in the earlier North American context provide a useful theoretical framework for examination of later frontier and settler societies.