Skeletons

She wears her father's World Series ring around her neck and his initials on her custom-made sneakers. Even as he was dying of cancer 18 months ago, Ted Uhlaender was coaching his daughter, Katie, on life and on giving the sport of skeleton her all. The former major league outfielder who played for three teams, "had a Gran Torino way of looking at things, where actions mean more than words," said Katie, 25, referring to the Clint Eastwood movie....

One of the skulls was marked by a large circular hole in the forehead, which authorities suspect was a bullet wound. The other, found roughly 25 to 50 yards away in a remote section of the Angeles National Forest, showed signs of severe trauma. On Monday, a forensic anthropologist and other investigators examined the skulls and other human bones found in the area last week. The bones are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that authorities hope will lead them to the identities of the victims and eventually to who or what killed them.

The tiny King Kong figurine that helped launch the career of one of cinema's biggest monsters sold for about $200,000 at a London auction Tuesday. Auctioneer Christie's said the 22-inch skeleton was the one used in the climactic scene of the 1933 movie in which the giant ape climbs New York's Empire State Building. Other such figurines were used elsewhere in the movie, which wowed contemporary audiences with its groundbreaking special effects. The figurine's metal skeleton was once covered in cotton, rubber, liquid latex and rabbit's fur. But the monster's fleshy covering has since rotted away.

A 13-year-old mystery involving the disappearance of four German tourists in the sweltering desert of Death Valley may have ended Friday, when authorities announced that bones that may be their skeletal remains had been found. In a statement, Inyo County Undersheriff Jim Jones said that personal identification belonging to one of the tourists was found near the skeletal remains, which were discovered by two hikers Thursday in a remote area of Death Valley National Park. The four tourists -- Cornelia Meyer, 28; her 4-year-old son, Max; Egbert Rimkus, 33; and his son, Georg Weber, 10 vanished in July 1996, when temperatures at the park reached 115 degrees.

A 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that failed to sell at a Las Vegas auction last month has been sold, the auction house says. Thomas Lindgren of Bonhams & Butterfields said he couldn't reveal the buyer or what he paid. But he said it was near pre-auction estimates of $5 million to $8 million. Lindgren said the buyer intended to display the fossil -- dubbed Samson -- in an American museum, and is in talks with several institutions. Samson is one of the three most complete T. rex specimens ever discovered, possessing the most intact skull in existence.

Some houses are heart-stopping perfect. But John Boyd's ticker skipped a beat a few years ago for another reason when he was previewing a house on behalf of a client. It was a "pretty expensive house," said Boyd of Home Buyer's Agent in Ann Arbor, Mich. "It was mostly vacant. There was some furniture, but it was clear no one was living there anymore. And I was alone." When he reached the basement, it was pitch black, so he had to fumble around for a light switch. Finally, he found one around a corner.

The auctioneer gazed out at the audience, knowing this was the moment they'd waited for. Next up, he said, was lot No. 23 -- a "wonderful, exceptional, 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as Samson." He gestured to the ferocious-looking skull sitting on a stand to his left. "There she is," he said. The people who had gathered in the elegant gallery at the Venetian hotel gasped. Samson is one of the three most complete T. rex specimens ever discovered, possessing the most intact skull in existence.

A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday. The centerpiece of the diverse collection of primate, animal and plant fossils is the near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor that demonstrates our earliest forebears looked nothing like a chimpanzee or other large primate, as is now commonly believed.

Did Sue the dinosaur die of a really bad sore throat? An international team of scientists thinks so after studying holes in the jaw of the 13-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. "It's a distinct possibility that Sue died of starvation by a substantial infection in the back of the throat" brought on by a tiny parasite, said Ewan Wolff, a paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of a paper describing the team's findings published Tuesday in the online science journal PloS One. In the past, according to Wolff, many paleontologists have speculated that the holes in Sue's jaw were caused by bite marks that were a product of Sue's rampaging lifestyle.