Encyclopedia > Fauna

  Article Content

Fauna

Fauna is a collective term for animal life. The corresponding term for plants is flora. Technically, the proper term for fauna plus flora is biota, but fauna is often used instead. In zoology and paleontology the term is often used to refer to the typical collection of animals (and sometimes plants) found in a specific time and/or place -- e.g. the 'Sonoran Desert[?] fauna' or the 'Burgess shale fauna'.

Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of 80 or so faunal stages.


Fauna is also an alternate name for Bona Dea, Ops, Terra and Tellus, ancient Roman goddesses. The name Marica is also used.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Islandia, New York

... husband present, and 25.2% are non-families. 18.8% of all households are made up of individuals and 2.3% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. Th ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 28.1 ms