Cowboy UFO, Bizarre Hairless Creature, Fondue Robots and More Mysterious News Briefly — March 1, 2022

Mysterious News Briefly — March 1, 2022

It’s difficult to tell from Stone Age remains how a person died, but new scanning electron microscopy (SEM) scans look inside bones where the marrow was and can find tiny ocean fossils, including algae, parasitic eggs and broken sponge structures called spicules helped confirm that bones found in northern Chile are the remains of a Stone Age fisherman who died by drowning in salt water. That’s what he gets for ignoring the rule to always wear an inflated pig stomach.

The arguments over who owns a rocket stage that's expected to crash into the far side of the moon on March 4 continue, and NASA 's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter won’t be in a position to record it, but NASA says a follow-up search is planned to hunt for the impact crater. If the debris identifies the owner, will they at least get fined for littering?

Move over, David Bowie and Elton John – the Texas country band Jason Boland & the Stragglers’ latest album, “The Light Saw Me,” is about a cowboy from the 1890s whose alien encounter leaves him time-traveling to a century later, where all he can think about is how much he misses his wife. Nothing says ‘We’re not Ziggy’s band’  like an alien saying, “Take us to y’all’s leader.”

A closed military base on the Mediterranean island of Corsica is the home to the world’s largest population of a rare and protected orchid (Serapias neglecta) – military bases are considered to be important areas for biodiversity because they are closed to the public and have soils that are unfertilized. Flowers on a military base – the 60’s have returned.

The origin of the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf – the 11 cm (4.3 in) high figurine of Venus discovered in 1908 in the Austrian village of Willendorf – has finally been pinpointed … the "oolite" stone statue was carved in northern Italy, which means the first modern humans in Europe made more early crossings of the Alps than once thought. Based on the shape of the figurine, Venus was not much of a skier.

A bizarre creature with a dog-like face, hairless body, weak legs and long claws – some thought it was a Chupacabra -- whose photos went viral online at the end of 2021 has finally been identified – it belongs to Italian artist Laira Maganuco who produces weird silicone figurines. Chupacabras should look for a lawyer so they can sue for defamation.

A deposit of at least 370 ceramic jars containing hundreds of embalming tools found in Abusir, Egypt dating back 2,600 years is being called the largest collection of such implements ever found and could provide unprecedented insight into the 70-day-long Egyptian mummification process. Seventy days – funeral directors must have been the first Egyptian millionaires.

Excavators in Hungary have discovered a rare gold Roman coin with the features of murdered third century Roman Emperor Volusianus, who co-ruled for only two years before he was assassinated at age 22 by his own soldiers – thus making his coins extremely rare. When Romans flipped this coin before sporting events, did they call “Deads or tails”?

Swiss scientists have invented the Bouebot – a robot which pours wine into a classic fondue mix of Vacherin Fribourgeois and Gruyere, stirs it, adds some pepper, spears a chunk of bread on a skewer, dunks it in the cheese and presents it to fondue lovers for tasting. It’s time to worry when American scientists invent a robot that melts Velveeta, dips chips and makes nachos.

The European Space Agency has made a $1.12 million deal with Thales Alenia Space to build an unmanned  machine that extracts oxygen from moon rocks and stores it in tanks for lunar villages which the ESA expects to be on the Moon by 2040. How much more do we need to spend to make this a rush order?