Whiz of the Web: Thirsty Thursday

• "Fossil traces found in an oil field on the Arabian Peninsula are the oldest evidence yet of animals, pushing back the known origins of higher life to more than 635 million years ago."
• Live Nation and Ticketmaster are in late stage negotiations over a possible merger. Ugh.
• Autopia at Wired talks about the Progressive Automotive X-Prize, which is a race to build the world's first mass-production car capable of triple-digit fuel economy. The prize itself is $10 million.
• "A carefully coordinated global ATM heist last November resulted in a one-day haul of $9 million in cash." So... when's the TV movie coming out?
• There could be both a young Flynn and an old Flynn in Tron 2.0. Or maybe not. It's a little confusing.
• Some recently released character photos from the upcoming film Rage include a shot of Jude Law looking shockingly feminine.
• A very cool gallery of photos of successful director/star pairs.
• Apparently there are two King Lear films on the way, and one will star Al Pacino and be directed by Michael Radford.
• Windows 7 is getting some great buzz, but Download Squad can imagine five ways Microsoft could ruin everything.
• The promo video for the Wii-enhanced version of Metroid Prime.
• Game|Life makes us aware of a crazy auction of 160 different retro game consoles, including many rare, international examples.
• The episodic Wallace and Gromit video game series will debut on Xbox Live Arcade and PC this spring.
• The trailer for S. Darko, the direct-to-DVD sequel to Donnie Darko. It looks like it's just a retelling of the events of the first movie but from the perspective of Samantha, Donnie's little sister.
• Thrill as a local man sets the most important record of all time: 1,000,000 dings on the iPhone Cowbell app.
• "The Associated Press says it wants credit and compensation for use of a copyright-protected photo in the creation of Shepard Fairey's widely imitated 'Hope' campaign poster for Barack Obama."
• Parsons The New School for Design is offering a course called the Internet Famous Class, which teaches students how to maximize their online exposure.
• Nintendo killed the rip-off of Duck Hunt that was available at the iPhone App Store.
• We recently learned that Dead Space would be available on the Wii. To get you pumped, here's a video of a dude who hacked a non-Wii version of the game so it could be controlled with the Wii Remote.
• Hudson is putting out a new Adventure Island game for WiiWare, as well as an FPS. The first time we read the article, we thought the Adventure Island game was an FPS, which would have been something to see. C'mon, hackers! Throw that together.
• Looks like Guantlet for the DS has been killed.
• Coming this summer to the DS is LEGO Battles, which Cinematical says "sounds like a kind of LEGO-based strategy game, in which players build and defend bases in the LEGO Castle, Pirates and Space Themes, using units mixed and matched from the sets." Or, as the press release puts it, "pirate swordsmen fighting side-by-side with wizards and aliens; dragons battling ninjas; and pirate ships launching broadsides against spacecraft and knights!" We have to admit, that sounds pretty freaking awesome.
• The median price for a Wii game dropped to $40 in 2008.
• A couple of amusing parody Diablo III screenshots include a unicorn farting rainbows and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
• Super Punch provides many fun links, including Maximilian from The Black Hole as desktop wallpaper, a koala taking a bath, and Bill Gates releasing mosquitoes during his TED talk.
• Somebody wrote a prequel to The Maltese Falcon called Spade & Archer.
• A Street Fighter IV national tournament is going down Saturday, 2/21! Check out the list of locations here (pdf - skip to page 37 for the Philly locations). In other SFIV news, the game will feature some fun DLC, including costume packs and a free Championship Mode.
• And while we're talking fighting games, here's a trailer and some screenshots for Tekken 6.
• The folks at Joystiq already got their hands on a very early, pre-alpha version of DC Universe Online.
• A gallery of very strange Russian meat marketing photos. Often the meat is presented on a crazy psychedelic background, and accompanied by something random, like a cat mug, or plastic fruit. (Via Jill, via Serious Eats)

Image Credit: Flickr user Bruno Girin