Regal Elegance
by Stephen Melia
Title
Regal Elegance
Artist
Stephen Melia
Medium
Photograph - Print
Description
The mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789, and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803. Both cygnus and olor mean "swan" in Latin; cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, a borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning.Despite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia and the black-necked swan of South America, not the other Northern Hemisphere swans. The species is monotypic with no living subspecies.Mute swan subfossils, 6,000 years old, have been found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia, Great Britain. They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, and from France, 13,000 BP (Desbrosse and Mourer-Chauvire 1972–1973).[full citation needed] The paleosubspecies Cygnus olor bergmanni, which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan.
Uploaded
March 2nd, 2018
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