Holotype skull

Xixiasaurus is a genus of troodontid dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous. The only known specimen (a partial skull, jaw with teeth, and forelimb) was discovered in Xixia County, Henan Province, in central China, and was given a species description in 2010. Xixiasaurus is estimated to have been 1.5 metres (5 ft) long and to have weighed 8 kilograms (18 lb). As a troodontid with some similarities to Byronosaurus, the genus would have been bird-like and lightly built, with grasping hands and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on the second toe. Its skull was long, with a long, low snout that formed a tapering U-shape when seen from below. The frontal bone of the forehead was dome-like in side view, indicating an enlarged braincase. Troodontids had keen senses and were probably agile. The lack of serrated teeth indicates that Xixiasaurus and some other troodontids were herbivorous, as they had lost the ability to slice meat. (Full article...)

Margit Bokor

• ... that the soprano Margit Bokor (pictured) created the role of Zdenka in Arabella by Richard Strauss at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1933, and performed the role in the UK premiere at the Royal Opera House?


• ... that the wildlife of Sweden is likely to be affected by global warming, with the tree line moving to higher latitudes and forests replacing tundra?


• ... that Yury Karandin was the first Soviet referee to officiate matches involving National Hockey League players?


• ... that Sharlene San Pedro and Nash Aguas, the lead actors of the 2018 thriller Class of 2018, worked together on a sketch comedy show when they were children?


• ... that according to historian An Zuozhang, the governing principle of the Western Han dynasty of ancient China was "doing nothing against nature"?


• ... that the children's poetry book The Great Migration: Journey to the North reflects author Eloise Greenfield's own childhood experiences?


• ... that Percy Furnivall, Britain's first heart surgeon, was also a champion amateur bicyclist, tricyclist, and tandemist?


• ... that the University of Mississippi band was asked to stop playing "From Dixie with Love" because fans kept chanting, "The South will rise again"?

Nursultan Nazarbayev

• 
  Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured) resigns as President of Kazakhstan after a 29-year tenure, appointing Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as interim president.


• 
  Karen Uhlenbeck becomes the first woman to be awarded the Abel Prize in mathematics.


• A gunman kills three people and injures five others in a shooting in Utrecht, Netherlands.


• More than 90 people are killed by a flash flood and landslide in Jayapura Regency and Jayapura, Indonesia.

March 22: World Water Day; Shushan Purim in Jerusalem and Susa (Judaism, 2019)

Amerigo Vespucci

• 
  1508 – Ferdinand II of Aragon appointed Amerigo Vespucci (pictured) to the post of Chief Navigator of Spain.


• 
  1638 – Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for teaching that Christians were not bound by law.


• 
  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.


• 
  1942 – Second World War: The Royal Navy confronted Italy's Regia Marina at the Second Battle of Sirte in the Mediterranean Sea near the Gulf of Sirte.


• 
  2014 – A massive landslide in Oso, Washington, killed 43 people after engulfing a rural neighborhood, the largest death toll for a standalone landslide in U.S. history.

Caroline Norton (b. 1808) · Juan Uribe (b. 1979) · Bebo Valdés (d. 2013)