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MEET Diania cactiformis, the “walking cactus”, a 520-million-year-old fossil animal that is helping palaeontologists work out how some critters first strapped on armour to defend themselves against early predators.

The number of animals with tough shells and exoskeletons exploded around 540 million years ago in the early Cambrian, probably in response to a rise in predation at the time. It was then that arthropods evolved their exoskeleton - an innovation that has helped them become the most abundant animal group on the planet, with over a million species described to date.

The first arthropods are thought to have evolved from a strange group called the lobopods - essentially soft worms with legs - which look like arthropods minus the exoskeleton. But until now, the link between the two was missing. “We didn’t have a single fossil you can point at and say: that’s the first lobopod with a simple exoskeleton,” says Jianni Liu at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

D. cactiformis (pictured) is that missing link. Liu found the fossil in Chengjiang, China. Its body was largely soft and squidgy like a typical lobopod, but its numerous legs were sheathed in protective armour with a decidedly arthropod-like appearance (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09704).

The soft body of D. cactiformis suggests that arthropods grew armour on their legs first, rather than their bodies, contradicting the results of some developmental gene studies.

“The fossil record is not just to provide the decorations you hang on the tree afterwards - it gives you useful information to constrain genetic models about evolution,” says Graham Budd at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.

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While tablets vie for top spot as the new preferred web browser and media consumption device, others are sighting on a different market, while keeping a similar form factor. In the quest to eliminate paper from our note-taking routines, it’s hard to beat the familiar feel and ease of use of a stylus. Working with a pen or pencil is how most of us learned to write, and handwriting issues aside, it still feels pretty effective and natural.

The NoteSlate plays on that instinctive feel, with an eInk display that you can mark up like a sheet of paper, then save your work and start again. It’s monochrome, but the payoff for ditching color is a predicted 180 hour battery life. The display/writing area is big, 13 inches, with a resolution of 750×1080. The stylus has an eraser function, and data inputs can also be done with a mini USB port and SD card slot. While web browsing is not part of the picture, Wi-Fi functionality for connecting to network resources is available as a no-cost option.

Planned availability is to offer black or white screen options in June, with monochrome single-color options of red, blue, or green writing colors coming in December. A full color model is mentioned in the company’s plans, but no date is given. The tablet’s price will be $99, and you can sign up to be notified when orders can be taken at the NoteSlate site.

(via DVICE)

omg i want this!

lol this is funny

This is so nerdy.

Pokémon Will Teach You To Type, Or You Will Die Trying (Or Typing!)

Remember that mysterious Pokémon game from last year’s Tokyo Game Show, the one that was for the DS but would include a proper keyboard? It’s out in April in Japan. And still makes absolutely no sense.

It’s called Pokémon Typing, and is intended to serve as a touch-typing aid for kids, get them clacking away on their keyboards without having to look up the screen all the time. To this end, the game will include a Bluetooth keyboard which can sync with a DS, allowing kids to prop their tiny-screened handhelds up and get really good at hurting their eyes straining at a small screen.

Why they didn’t just release this for the Wii, for which there is already a keyboard peripheral and a screen large enough to accommodate this kind of business, is anyone’s guess.

On the bright side, the keyboard lacks any kind of Pokémon branding and is a simple Bluetooth peripheral, so if you don’t feel like using it on a DS you can use it on an iPad, PS3 or laptop instead.

[via ALBOTAS]

Facebook Experimenting with “Social Captchas” for Authentication

Most sites, when signing you up or verifying who you are after suspicious activity, ask you to answer a security question, or possibly read two out-of-focus words and type them into a box. Facebook is testing out a “social captcha”, where pictures of friends of the user trying to log in are shown, and the would-be user is asked to identify them. It’s only being used on a limited basis for now, but it’s a good reason to think about stripping down your Facebook to actual friends for the future. [Facebook Blog]

This actually seems like a good creative solution. Don’t know if it’ll work well but in theory it does.

UPDATE: Now with added Angry Birds catapult video!

We’ve just spotted this at the Toy Fair 2011: a real, functioning Angry Birds catapult. It’s hitting the shelves between June and July and will set you back a tenner.

The Angry Birds catapult is made by Character Options, who also make the Angry Birds plush toys. It’s brand spanking new, and even they didn’t know much about it, as just this one catapult arrived in the post this morning. There was only one red bird ball with the Angry Birds catapult we saw, but a spokesperson for Character Options didn’t know whether there’d be any more with the Angry Birds shooter.

We think you could set up a real life game of Angry Birds with this addition to the line up. Add a couple of plush pigs, some carefully built Duplo, and you’ve got yourself a pretty accurate set up.