Bharattherium is a mammal that lived in India during the Maastrichtian (latest Cretaceous). The genus has a single species, Bharattherium bonapartei. It is part of the gondwanathere family Sudamericidae, which is also found in Madagascar and South America during the latest Cretaceous. The first fossil of Bharattherium was discovered in 1989 and published in 1997, but the animal was not named until 2007, when two teams independently gave it different names. The specific name bonapartei honors Argentinean paleontologist José Bonaparte, who was the first to describe a gondwanathere fossil. Bharattherium is known from a total of eight isolated fossil teeth, including one incisor and seven molariforms (molar-like teeth). Bharattherium molariforms are high, curved teeth, with a height of 5.97 to 8.40 mm. The tooth enamel has traits that have been interpreted as protecting against cracks in the teeth. The hypsodont (high-crowned) teeth of sudamericids like Bharattherium is reminiscent of later grazing mammals, and the discovery of grass in Indian fossil sites contemporaneous with those yielding Bharattherium suggest that sudamericids were indeed grazers.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharattherium
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1638:
A rebellion by Catholic Japanese peasants in Shimabara over increased taxes was put down by the Tokugawa shogunate, resulting in greater enforcement of the policy of national seclusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion
1802:
English poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy encountered a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring him to pen his most famous work, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud
1958:
On Walter O'Malley's initiative, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants played in the first Major League Baseball game on the US West Coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_O%27Malley
1989:
A human crush during an FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England (memorial pictured), caused 96 deaths, the most of any stadium- related disaster in British history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster
1995:
At a GATT ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities signed an agreement to establish the World Trade Organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
eschatology: 1. (countable) System of doctrines concerning final matters, such as death. 2. (uncountable) The study of the end times — the end of the world, notably in Christian theology the second coming of Christ, the Apocalypse or the Last Judgment. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eschatology
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
 A thought has no size in the physical sense but is vast as compared to the physical acts and objects into which it is later precipitated. The power of a thought is enormous and superior to all the successive physical acts, objects, and events that body forth its energy. A thought often endures for a time much greater than the whole life of the man who thought it. --Harold W. Percival https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harold_W._Percival
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