Plateosaurus (probably meaning "broad lizard"), a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur, lived around 214 to 204 million years ago during the Late Triassic period in what is now Central and Northern Europe. It was an early sauropodomorph dinosaur, a so-called "prosauropod". It is now among the dinosaurs best known to science: over 100 skeletons have been found, some of them nearly complete. The abundance of its fossils in Swabia, Germany, has led to the nickname Schwäbischer Lindwurm (Swabian lindworm). Plateosaurus was a bipedal herbivore with a small skull on a long, mobile neck, sharp but plump plant-crushing teeth, powerful hind limbs, short but muscular arms and grasping hands with large claws on three fingers, possibly used for defence and feeding. Plateosaurus showed strong developmental plasticity: instead of having a fairly uniform adult size, fully grown individuals were between 4.8 and 10 metres (16 and 33 ft) long and weighed between 600 and 4,000 kilograms (1,300 and 8,800 lb). The animals lived for at least 12 to 20 years, but the maximum life span is not known.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateosaurus
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1508:
Ferdinand II of Aragon appointed Amerigo Vespucci to the post of Chief Navigator of Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci
1638:
The Massachusetts Bay Colony expelled Anne Hutchinson from its ranks for dissenting from Puritan orthodoxy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson
1913:
Phan Xích Long, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Vietnam, was arrested for organising a revolt against the colonial rule of French Indochina, which was nevertheless carried out by his supporters the following day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_X%C3%ADch_Long
1963:
Please Please Me, the first album recorded by The Beatles, was released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Please_Me
2006:
The remaining three Christian Peacemaker Teams hostages were rescued from their Iraqi captors by a multinational force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Peacemaker_hostage_crisis
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
pseudometeorite: A rock that is initially believed to be a meteorite, but is in fact terrestrial in origin. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pseudometeorite
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning. --Louis L'Amour https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_L%27Amour