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>
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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>
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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>
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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>