Frozen, ice-age squirrel poop doesn’t stink. At least not at first. But that changes if it warms. As it thaws, the smell shows fecal pellets are not just stony fossils. And as a new study shows, they can host DNA and clues to what ancient squirrels had dined on.
Explainer: How a fossil forms
Melting feces release a pungent smell.
“There’s no mistaking. This is a very poopy-smelling lab,” says Tyler Murchie. He’s an archaeologist in Canada who studies ancient DNA. He works at the Hakai Institute in Heriot Bay, British Columbia. His team has been analyzing prehistoric squirrel scat.
In it, they turned up fragments of DNA — molecules that hold a cell’s operational instructions. The scat DNA pointed to what the squirrels had eaten. It now also helps paint a newly detailed picture of the squirrels’ ecosystem.
Murchie and his col...
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