Month: February 2022

Enlarge / View of the fossilized skull of an extinct species of stargazer fish, showing preserved fecal pellets in the brain. (credit: Calvert Marine Museum)

A fossilized cranium of an extinct species of stargazer fish was stuffed with tiny fecal pellets known as coprolites, according to a recent paper published in the journal Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia—the first known skull in the fossil record to be completely filled with fecal pellets. This is a joint study by paleontologists at the University of Pisa in Italy, and the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland, who proposed that tiny scavenging worms ate their way into the dead fish's skull and pooped out the pellets.

It was a 19th century British fossil hunter named Mary Anning (recently portrayed by Kate Winslet in the 2020 film Ammonite) who first noticed the presence of so-called "bezoar stones" in the abdomens of ichthyosaur skeletons around 1824. When she broke open the stones, she often found the fossilized remains of fish bones and scales. A geologist named William Buckland took note of Anning's observations five years later, suggesting that the stones were actually fossilized feces. He dubbed them coprolites.

Coprolites aren't quite the same as paleofeces, which retains a lot of organic components that can be reconstituted and analyzed for chemical properties. Coprolites are fossils, so most organic components have been replaced by mineral deposits like silicate and calcium carbonates. It can be challenging to distinguish the smallest coprolites from eggs, for example, or other kinds of inorganic pellets, but they typically boast spiral or annular markings, and, as Anning discovered, often contain undigested fragments of food.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Cindy Ord )

Spotify on Friday removed 70 Joe Rogan Experience episodes from 2020 and previous years. Meanwhile, Rogan issued an apology after video showed him saying the n-word on various podcast episodes.

The new episode removals weren't related to the COVID misinformation that led Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and others to ask for their music to be pulled from Spotify, which caused a backlash from angry fans. But it was the second big round of Rogan episode removals since Spotify signed the podcast host.

"Previously, Spotify had pruned 43 'JRE' episodes from the catalog after the company added Rogan's show in September 2020 under a $100 million exclusive distribution pact. Those included segments with right-wing figures such as Infowars' Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes and Milo Yiannopoulos and also episodes with comedians," according to Variety.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's the weekend, which means it's time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a new low price on the 45mm version of the Apple Watch Series 7, which is currently down to $370 at various retailers. That's about $40 off the average street price we've tracked in recent months and $60 off Apple's MSRP. The discount only applies to certain colorways as of this writing, but it's still decent savings for the top pick in our guide to the best smartwatches. If you'd prefer to pay a little bit less for a smaller version of the watch, note that the 41mm variant of the Series 7 is on sale for $349, which is $10 more than the lowest price we've tracked.

Elsewhere, our deals roundup also includes a new low price on LG's near-universally well-reviewed C1 OLED TV, the 65-inch version of which is currently down to $1,650 at Amazon subsidiary Woot. That's about $175 off its usual going rate over the past few months. While LG has already announced its OLED TV lineup for 2022 and promised improved peak brightness on the C1's successor, we wouldn't expect that model to reach this deal price until several months after launch. If you're willing to buy last year's models, now is typically a good time of year to snag a TV deal; this discount isn't cheap by any means, but it's a relatively good value for those interested in upgrading to the improved contrast of a quality OLED panel.

Beyond that, the Dealmaster has good prices on Fitbit's Charge 5 activity tracker, SSDs from Samsung and WD, SanDisk microSD cards, several video games we like (including Hades, Psychonauts 2, and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales), the iPad Air, and more. You can check out our full curated list below.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Trinity College)

On October 21, 1638, people were congregating at a church at Widecombe-in-the-Moor, in Devon, England, when a severe thunderstorm broke out. Witnesses described an 8-foot ball of fire hurtling through the church, tossing large stones from the walls to the ground, smashing pews and windows, and filling the church with smoke and the pungent odor of sulfur. Four people died and many more were injured in what has been widely recognized as the earliest known account of ball lightning in England—until now.

A British historian and a retired physicist have found an even earlier credible account of ball lightning in the writings of a 12th-century Benedictine monk, Gervase of Christ Church Cathedral Priory in Canterbury. According to a recent paper published in the journal Weather, Gervase of Canterbury recorded in his Chronicle a "marvelous sign" that "descended near London" on June 7, 1195. The sign was a "fiery globe" emerging from below a dark and dense cloud, and it predates the Widecombe-in-the-Moor account by nearly 450 years.

“Ball lightning is a rare weather event that is still not understood today," said co-author Brian Tanner of Durham University (emeritus). “Gervase’s description of a white substance coming out of the dark cloud, falling as a spinning fiery sphere and then having some horizontal motion is very similar to historic and contemporary descriptions of ball lightning. If Gervase is describing ball lightning, as we believe, then this would be the earliest account of this happening in England that has so far been discovered.”

Enlarge (credit: Star Citizen)

Star Citizen developers Cloud Imperium Games' new public development roadmap will no longer include target dates for coming features more than one calendar quarter away. The change, the company writes, is largely to avoid "distraction" and "continued noise every time we shift deliverables" from "a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises."

It has now been just over nine years since Chris Roberts first raised $6.3 million in Kickstarter funds for Star Citizen, a haul that has grown to over $434 million in funding in the years since. Despite all that time and money, though, the game still only exists as a very rough Alpha version that's still missing many of the promised features that have slowly crept into the project during that time. The single-player spinoff game Squadron 42, meanwhile, has seen a planned beta delayed multiple times, with CIG COO Carl Jones recently saying it still might be "one or two more years" before the game is playable.

To help provide "more transparency" on the state of both games, RSI promised to overhaul its public roadmap in a way that would "utilize our internal sprint-tracking process to visualize our progress." When that new roadmap rolled out in late 2020, it came with a focus on a new, less time-sensitive "Progress Tracker" for each development team. That was alongside the traditional "Release View," which offered a quarter-by-quarter estimate for when new features would be implemented over the next 12 months.