Saturday, April 11, 2020

Wikipedia article of the day for April 12, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for April 12, 2020 is Segnosaurus.
Segnosaurus is a genus of large-bodied therizinosaurid dinosaurs that lived during the Late Cretaceous. Discovered in the Gobi Desert in southeastern Mongolia in the 1970s, incomplete but well-preserved specimens included the lower jaw, neck and tail vertebrae, the pelvis, the shoulder girdle, and limb bones. Parts of the specimens have since gone missing or become damaged. Named in 1979, Segnosaurus ('slow lizard') is estimated to have been about 6–7 m (20–23 ft) long and to have weighed about 1.3 metric tons (1.4 short tons). It was bipedal, with the trunk of its body tilted upwards. The head was small with a beak at the tip of the jaws, and the neck was long and slender, adapted to browsing. The forelimbs were robust, with three-fingered hands bearing large claws, and the feet had four toes. The pubic bone was turned backwards, as in birds. Segnosaurus and its relatives are thought to have been mainly herbivorous, unlike most other theropods, and slow-moving.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Wikipedia article of the day for April 11, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for April 11, 2020 is Apollo 13.
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (pictured) failed two days into the mission. Apollo 13 was commanded by Jim Lovell with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella. After the explosion, the CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve resources, forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. Although the LM was designed to support two men for two days, Mission Control improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days. The astronauts' peril briefly renewed interest in the Apollo program; tens of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean by television. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized, most notably in the 1995 film Apollo 13.

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Thursday, April 9, 2020

Wikipedia article of the day for April 10, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for April 10, 2020 is Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca.
Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, the false chanterelle, is a species of fungus in the family Hygrophoropsidaceae. It is found across several continents, growing in woodland and heathland, and sometimes on woodchips used in gardening and landscaping. Its mushrooms are yellow-orange with a funnel-shaped cap up to 8 cm (3 1⁄8 in) across that has a felt-like surface. The thin, often forked gills on the underside of the cap run partway down the length of the otherwise smooth stalk. The mushroom can be mildly poisonous. Austrian naturalist Franz Xaver von Wulfen described the false chanterelle in 1781, noting both its resemblance to the true chanterelles and people's propensity to confuse them. The false chanterelle was then placed in the genus Clitocybe, but it was later observed that its forked gills and dextrinoid spores indicated a relationship to Paxillus. Genetic analysis has confirmed that it belongs to the order Boletales and is more closely related to boletes.