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Reconstructed skeleton of Thalassodromeus

Thalassodromeus was a pterosaur (a flying reptile) that lived in what is now northeastern Brazil about 100 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. The original skull was discovered in 1983 in the Romualdo Formation of the Araripe Basin. This genus had one of the largest known skulls among pterosaurs, around 1.42 metres (4 ft 8 in) long, with one of the largest cranial crests of any vertebrate in proportion to its skull. Running from the tip of the upper jaw to beyond the occiput at the back of the skull, the lightly built crest may have been used for thermoregulation or in display behaviour. The crest may not have fully developed until after sexual maturity. Though only the skull is known, the animal is estimated to have had a wingspan of 4.2 to 4.5 m (14 to 15 ft). The jaws were toothless, with sharp upper and lower edges and strong musculature. Thalassodromeus may have been able to kill and eat prey on the ground. (Full article...)

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Alexander Caulfield Anderson

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The World Health Organization declares the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
The Chinese paddlefish, one of the world's largest freshwater fish species, is declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
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On this day

July 28

SY Aurora

1148 – Crusades: The siege of Damascus ended in a decisive victory for the Muslims, leading to the disintegration of the Second Crusade.
1911 – The Australasian Antarctic Expedition began with the departure of SY Aurora (pictured) from London.
1939 – During the excavation of a 7th-century ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England, archaeologists discovered a helmet that is widely associated with King Rædwald of East Anglia.
1940 – At the Salzburg Conference, German dictator Adolf Hitler demanded the replacement of much of Slovakia's cabinet.
1995 – Two followers of the Indian mystic Rajneesh were convicted of a 1985 plot to assassinate Charles Turner, the U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon.

Lucy Burns (b. 1879)
Baruch Samuel Blumberg (b. 1925)
Clara Ng (b. 1973)

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Today's featured picture

$1: Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant
$2: George Washington
$5: Running Antelope

Silver certificates are a type of representative money issued between 1878 and 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Coinage Act of 1873, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard. Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but they remain legal tender at their face value and hence are still an accepted form of currency. This is a complete set of the 1899 series of large-size silver certificates, designed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and comprising three denominations from $1 to $5. Each banknote bears the engraved signatures of Judson Whitlocke Lyons (Register of the Treasury) and Ellis H. Roberts (Treasurer of the United States), and a portrait of a different individual or individuals, identified above.

Banknote design credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; scanned by Godot13

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