Peloneustes is a genus of pliosaurid plesiosaur from the Middle Jurassic
of England, known from the Oxford Clay Formation. Its sole species was
originally named Plesiosaurus philarchus by Harry Govier Seeley in 1869
before Richard Lydekker gave it its own genus in 1889. It is known from
many specimens, some very complete. It had a total length of 3.5 to 4
metres (11 to 13 ft), and a large, triangular skull elongated into a
narrow snout with conical teeth. The two sides of its mandible (lower
jaw) were fused into a long symphysis at the front. Its neck was short
for a plesiosaur and its limbs were modified into flippers, with the
back pair larger than the front. Peloneustes is classified in
Thalassophonea with other short-necked pliosaurids. It was well-adapted
to aquatic life, using its flippers for swimming, and its skull was
reinforced against the stresses of feeding. Peloneustes's long, narrow
snout could have been swung through the water to catch fish with its
sharp teeth.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloneustes>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1535:
Francisco Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes (present-day
Lima, Peru) as the capital of the lands he conquered for the Spanish
crown.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lima>
1788:
The armed tender HMS Supply, the first ship of the First
Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Supply_%281759%29>
1958:
Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the
National Hockey League, becoming the first black Canadian to compete in
the NHL.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_O%27Ree>
1990:
In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Marion Barry, the
mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested for possession of crack cocaine.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
endian:
(computing) Preceded by a qualifying word: of a computer: storing
multibyte numbers with the most significant byte at a particular memory
address; for example, at the smallest address (big-endian) or the
largest address (little-endian).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/endian>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the
ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.
--Daniel Webster
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Webster>