Walrus penis sells for $8,000 at auction

Why he became extinct? All the female walruses ran when they saw that thing!

A fossilized penis bone from an extinct walrus went for a whopping $8,000 at a Beverly Hills auction Sunday.

The 4 1/2-foot-long bone was sold to the company that runs the Ripley's Believe It or Not museums.

Discovered in Siberia, the fossilized penis bone is from a species of walrus that went extinct 12,000 years ago. The piece curves to a point and is covered with weathered skin and dry muscle tissue.

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Prehistoric whale skeleton found in Tuscany

Italian researchers have found the skeleton of a 33-foot prehistoric whale in the Tuscan countryside, a discovery that could shed light on the ancient environment of the sea, officials said.

The skeleton dates to 4 million years ago, to the Pliocene epoch, said paleontologists with the Museum of Natural History in Florence who are studying the fossil.

The skeleton was found a few weeks ago in Orciano Pisano, in the countryside about 50 miles east of Florence. It was found about 100 yards below ground in what used to be the sea occupying most of today's Tuscany, the statement said.

Ancient lizard glided on stretched skin

An ancient arboreal lizard coasted through the air using a winglike membrane stretched across elongated ribs, a new fossil reveals.

Dubbed Xianglong zhaoi, the gliding lizard lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 150 million years ago. The specimen, detailed Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is about 6 inches (15.5 centimeters) long, and its immature features suggest it died at a young age.

The fossil, described by Xing Xu of Shenyang Normal University in China and his colleagues, was discovered in northeastern China's Liaoning Province, a site that has yielded a treasure trove of feathered dinosaurs and early bird remains in recent years.