Megarachne was a predatory freshwater arthropod of the order of eurypterids, often called sea scorpions. Two fossil specimens of the genus have been discovered, in San Luis, Argentina, in deposits of Late Carboniferous age from the Gzhelian stage. Megarachne ("great spider") was initially misidentified as a spider. With a body length of 54 cm (1.77 ft), it was a medium-sized eurypterid, similar to others within the Mycteropoidea, a rare group known primarily from South Africa and Scotland. The mycteropoids evolved a specialized method of feeding referred to as sweep-feeding, raking through the substrate of riverbeds to capture and eat smaller invertebrates. Due to their fragmentary fossil record and similarities between the genera, Megarachne and two other members of its family, Mycterops and Woodwardopterus, have been hypothesized to represent different developmental stages of a single genus.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megarachne
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1387:
Hundred Years' War: The English navy captured more than 80 ships and at least 8,000 tuns of wine from an allied French, Castilian and Flemish fleet at the Battle of Margate in the English Channel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Margate
1903:
The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (ship pictured) anchored in the South Orkney Islands with the intention of establishing the first meteorological station in Antarctic territory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Antarctic_Expedition
1934:
Enrico Fermi published his discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi
1971:
Vietnam War: South Vietnamese forces abandoned a campaign to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail, which supplied North Vietnamese troops, in Laos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lam_Son_719
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
adytum: 1. (Ancient Greece, religion) The innermost sanctuary or shrine in an ancient temple, from where oracles were given. 2. (by extension) A private chamber; a sanctum. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adytum
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. … What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants. --Rudolf Rocker https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rudolf_Rocker