Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 January 8

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From today's featured article

Ceratosaurus was a theropod dinosaur in the Late Jurassic, around 150 million years ago. This genus was first described in 1884 by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh based on a nearly complete skeleton discovered in Garden Park, Colorado, in rocks belonging to the Morrison Formation. In 2000 and 2006, a partial specimen from the Lourinhã Formation of Portugal was described, providing evidence for the presence of the genus outside of North America. Ceratosaurus was a predator with deep jaws supporting long, blade-like teeth. It had a prominent, ridge-like horn on the midline of the snout and a pair of horns over the eyes. The forelimbs were very short but remained fully functional, with four-fingered hands. The tail was thick from top to bottom. It shared its habitat with other large theropods including Torvosaurus and Allosaurus. It may have hunted plant-eating dinosaurs or aquatic prey such as fish. The nasal horn was probably used solely for display. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Macrozamia riedlei pollen cones

... that Macrozamia riedlei (pictured), a favoured food plant of southwest Australians, was responsible for the accidental poisoning of some early European explorers?
... that Jim Siwy was a police officer before and after his career in Major League Baseball?
... that Yum Balam Flora and Fauna Protection Area, which provides a habitat for jaguars, is named for a Maya jaguar god of nature?
... that William Gould Young was the first faculty member at UCLA to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the university's chemistry building was renamed in his honor?
... that one of the poems in How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes was described as having "echoes of the cultural critique of race relations in America" in Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man?
... that the whitespot ghost shark is known from only four specimens in the Galápagos Islands?
... that suspected hitwoman Joselyn Alejandra Niño had a nickname that she shared with Our Lady of Holy Death?
... that Denmark won the 1971 Women's World Cup, an unofficial association football tournament, after 15-year-old Susanne Augustesen scored all three goals in the final?

In the news

Bartholomew I hands the tomos of autocephaly to Metropolitan Epiphanius.

Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople (pictured, left) grants autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the ongoing schism within Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
The China National Space Administration's Chang'e 4 becomes the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon.
A train accident on the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark kills eight passengers.
In darts, Michael van Gerwen defeats Michael Smith to win the PDC World Championship.

On this day

January 8

RMS Queen Mary 2

1198 – Lotario de Conti was elected as Pope Innocent III; he later worked to restore papal power in Rome.
1735 – The opera Ariodante by George Frideric Handel was first performed in the Covent Garden Theatre, London.
1904 – Blackstone Library, the first branch of the Chicago Public Library system, was dedicated.
1977 – Three bombs attributed to Armenian nationalists exploded across Moscow, killing 7 people and injuring 37.
2004 – RMS Queen Mary 2 (pictured), at the time the longest, widest and tallest passenger ship ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Arcangelo Corelli (d. 1713) · Wilkie Collins (b. 1824) · Bernard Krigstein (d. 1990)

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Today's featured picture

Jupiter's moon Europa is shown here in a realistic-color mosaic of images taken by NASA's Jupiter orbiter Galileo in 1995 and 1998. This view of the moon's anti-Jovian hemisphere shows numerous lineae, linear features created via a tectonic process in which crustal plates of water ice floating on a subsurface ocean (kept warm by tidal flexing) shift in relative position. Reddish regions are areas where the ice has a higher mineral content. The north polar region is at right. (See also: photograph with annotated geologic features.)

Photo credit: NASA/JPL

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