ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
Scientists are aghast at an eBay listing offering a rare baby T-rex fossil for a $2.95 million buy-it-now price. Fossil hunter Alan Detrich, who discovered the fossil in 2013, is believed to have created the listing in February for the 68-million-year-old artifact, which until recently had been on loan to the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. CNBC reported the specimen has a 15-foot-long body, 21-inch skull and serrated teeth, and Detrich estimates its age at death to be about 4 years. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology issued a statement expressing concerns that “the fossil, which represents a unique part of life’s past, may be lost from the public trust… Only casts and other replicas of vertebrate fossils should be traded, not the fossils themselves.”
THE CONTINUING CRISIS
On April 13, a family in Newtown, Connecticut, returned home from a morning shopping trip to find Joseph Achenbach, 35, wandering around inside their home naked. The Watertown man had crashed his SUV in the homeowners’ backyard and moseyed inside through an unlocked glass door. Achenbach’s clothes could not be found at the scene, leading police to believe he had been naked when he crashed. FOX61 reported that he was charged with second-degree criminal trespassing and driving while intoxicated.
STAY IN SCHOOL
When the Wilkinson School in El Granada, California, received a bomb threat on the morning of April 11, it didn’t take long for administrators to empty the building of staff and students. But law officers searching the grounds found nothing – because the threatening phone call actually came from 2,100 miles away, in Woodville, Mississippi. That’s where a 15-year-old student intended to threaten her own Wilkinson County High School, reported The San Jose Mercury News, but apparently didn’t check her Google search thoroughly enough before dialing.
SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED
A concerned animal lover in Devon, England, contacted authorities on April 8 to report that a fox she had been watching hadn’t moved for several days, reported Fox News. In response, Ellie Burt, an officer with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals, suggested trying the “broom test,” which didn’t make the fox stir, but Burt was told it “tracked them with its eyes and seemed to be breathing well.” When Burt arrived on the scene, she quickly diagnosed the problem: The fox was a fake, “stuffed by a taxidermist. He’d clearly been placed under a bush outside of the houses as a prank,” Burt said. “Someone had been moving it around the neighborhood.” Burt discarded the fox “to avoid any further calls.”
THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY
An unnamed 40-year-old man in Muncie, Indiana, is suing his parents for trashing his collection of porn videos and magazines, which he estimates was worth $29,000. According to the Associated Press, the man had been living with his parents for 10 months following a divorce, and after he bought a new house, his parents delivered his possessions – minus the 12 boxes of porn. His parents admitted dumping the collection; in an email quoted by the lawsuit, the father told his son, “I did you a big favor by getting rid of all this stuff.” The son is seeking $87,000 in financial damages.
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