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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;areich, post: 1488557, member: 37479&quot;]<b>Sierra Leone - Pygmy Hippopotamus</b></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Choeropsis liberiensis - Pygmy Hippopatamus</b></p><p><b><i>Sierra Leone</i></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Sierra Leone is a small West African Nation with a long complex history involving Colonial and&nbsp; local slave trade, the reverse migration of freed Slaves, rebellion against British rule until to today&#039;s&nbsp; unitary presidential constitutional republic.&nbsp; It has suffered several military coups, a one party state and juntas.&nbsp; The country has been pressured by Liberia and Charles Taylor had intervened directly in the state from Liberia by supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) under the command of former Sierra Leonean army corporal Foday Saybana Sankoh.&nbsp; As lateas 2001 political violent had rocked the nation.&nbsp; During 1986-1987 when this coin was produced, Sierra Leone was being lead by the questionably elected government of&nbsp; Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh, whose government was fraught with corruption.&nbsp; Environmentally, the nation has been ravaged by deforestation secondary to heavy lumbering and slash and burn farming.&nbsp; Soil erosion is a major problem which is destabilizing the nations economy&nbsp; and putting the natives at risk.&nbsp; The capital, Freetown, sits on the third largest harbor in the world.</p><p><br /></p><p>The environmental troubles in Sierra Leone and all of West Africa, for that matter, have adversely affected&nbsp; Pygmy Hippos everywhere they existed.&nbsp; The Nigerian subspecies has been extict at least from the 1940&#039;s and a Madagascar species went extinct about 500 years ago.&nbsp; They are mostly nocturnal herbivorous&nbsp; It is semi-aquatic, like its larger cousins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Much has been learned of Hippo evolution within the last 2 decades.&nbsp; It was for many years thought to be related to Pigs, but modern generics and Clad analysis has shown them to be surprisingly most related to Whales!&nbsp; A mutual ancestor among the artiodactyls around 60 milliom years ago and separated a mere&nbsp; 7 million years ago (see hominid evolution for reference).&nbsp; This is a blink of the eye in geological history.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[video=youtube;LCaiIiW09ko]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCaiIiW09ko[/video]</p><p><br /></p><p>[video]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Pygmyhippopotamus-uenozoo2008.ogg[/video]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]189172.vB[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.mrbrklyn.com/hippos/hippo.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.mrbrklyn.com/hippos/hippo_rk_frame.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>The Coin is a 10 Leones, .925 Fineness Silver Proof with a weight of 28.28 grams and a diameter.&nbsp; The British Mint made 25,000 of these coins.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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