Weirdly, it was the dinosaur poop, a relatively common item among fossil hounds that normally would sell for about $1000 U.S. But this time, it got snatched up for nearly twice that, while the meteorite didn't sell at all. Maybe that was because the beautiful rock (a slice of which you are seeing above) started bids at over $2 million U.S. Made of palasite, a common metorite material, the big rock was found in China. Supposedly the owner has plans to sell it to a private party.

Dinosaur poop chunks, known as coprolites, are so common that you can even buy jewelry made out of them.

Dinosaur Feces - 1; 4.5 MYO Meteorite - 0 [Environmental Graffiti]

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• Massive quantities of helium were discovered leaking out of the ground in Nevada. This mysterious gas emission is even stranger because usually geologists only see this kind of thing near volcanoes. Is Nevada about to become a volcanic hellhole? [Discovery News]
• 10,000-year-old trees were discovered during a construction project on a farm in Michigan. They are among the best-preserved fossilized trees ever found, and scientsts speculate that they were crushed under the last glacier to stretch across North America. [Science Daily]
  

• A Japanese court ruled today that a grieving widow would receive compensation from Toyota because the company killed her husband with overwork. The 30-year-old man died after working 60 hours/week for a month, and then 70 hours/week for an additional month. In Japanese, there is a word for death from overwork: karōshi. [Autoblog]
  
• Scientists have just announced a "map of genetic aging" in mice. The map shows a series of genes whose behavior changes as the mice age. Since human and mouse genomes are fairly similar, researchers hope to use this map to find similar "aging genes" in humans, and perhaps tinker with those genes to reverse the aging process. [PLoS Genetics]
  
• If you're thinking of getting a genetic test, think again. Most experts say the tests are a total waste of money and tell us next to nothing. Even though there are more and more genetic tests every day, they aren't getting any more accurate or reliable. [Reuters]