Fecal Fossils: The Cave of Forgotten Poops

but um sing out of the way. Yeah. I was like, hey, that's that's my Plato fake poop. Um. But they did this. It was really great. My daughter loved it too. Um. They rolled up just a bunch of different like uh, plants, materials or bones or um both into different pieces of Plato. And then you'd have to discover, you know, was it a carnival or was Astonis wore an omnivore or nerbivore?

And kids love this. You're right, you know that they're all crowding these tables because even if you just call it pretend poop and it's squishy, they will pick it up and and have at it. Kids love poop. It's it's a known fact. And uh. And you can learn a lot from an animal species. It's uh, I mean, it's it's pretty established fact. You can learn about an animal's diet. You can learn about what kind of parasites it might have had, if it had you know, worms

and stuff. I mean, if you've if you, if you have a child, if you have a pet, you've probably encountered a little of this um where you you get to haven't get an intimant glance into what's going on inside your animal based or inside your child, based on what's coming out of said organism. Who is sometimes an animal? Yeah, that's true. You will know if corn was for dinner, You're like, whoa. You know, if you've changed your your pet cat's food and then you go to scoop the

litter box, you can sometimes tell WHOA. There was a shift and died here because the nature of the clumps has changed. Yep. And that's what that's what we're gonna talk about today, the nature of the clumps and the merits of schatology here. Um. It's something called copper lights actually copper lights, Yeah, which are basically stones that were once poops. Yep, it's a scientific name for for fossilized m escrement. And uh, pieces are droppings, however you want

to call it. And we're gon we're going big here. We're talking about humans, we're talking about animals, wily mammoths. Uh, we're not just talking about owl pellets. Yeah. So first I'm just gonna talk to just a little bit about fossilization, just a little grounding here. Uh. Fossilization takes place in various ways. There's freezing, there's compression, there's entrapment in amber, you know, with like a little bugs that are trapped in amber. And then there is um per mentalization, which

is the big one. This is the one that factors into any kind of like dinosaur fossils that you see in a museum. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of fossils is merely a bone thing, you know, or yeah, or in some cases tissue, because certainly bones will fossilize, but so little soft tissues. So can hair, so can u feathers, and indeed, so can poop. So

what happens during fossilization specifically during per mineralization UM. What we see is is a hardening of the minerals that have entered the small pores and cavities of a dead organism. UH and and to a large extent, what it takes place is kind of like a mold UH is created and then it is UH that the contents of that molds them then become stone. UM. For this to happen, though, you need rapid burial of the animal, and this is there are a number of things that have to take

place for something to to fossilize. And that's why we have holes in the fossil record and and why we don't depend solely on fossils for understanding what happened in the past, because not everything fossilized and the more organized. You know, some organisms we have loads of fossils off because they say lived in the mud and so when they died, they were quickly covered right in the anaerobic

bacteria really helped right in that process. Other situations, you know, if an animal dies and something eats it, no fossil. If something if an animal dies and it's just left to just slowly just being worn away by erosion, it's you know, it's not gonna happen. Likewise, top notch predators are harder to find fossils off in many cases because

there are fewer of them there. As we've discussed before, they are the creature standing at the top of a pyramid of bones, and so the the ecosystem can only um support a fixed number of them. You have to take all of these factors into place when contemplating um our fossil legacy. So trace fossils like fecal matter, for instance, UM, it's really important to make sure that when it happens, that the dew happens, so to speak, that it's in the right environment for preservation. UM. So it makes the

drop site really crucial the creation of young fossils. So UM, for instance, you've got young fossils which are usually just really dry bits of organic matter and aerobic bacteria. Of course, the bacteria that requires oxygen quickly breaks down wet organic matter. UM. So you would want to find, for instance, your fecal

matter in a cave that's really dry. This is very helpful, right, And that's just what happened in the most recent example of of corporate lates in the the news UM the journal Science reported a discovery in an Oregon cave of human DNA more than fourteen thousand years old, and the DNA was distracted from distracting. The DNA was extracted from copper lights. This was Paisley Caves, Paisley Caves in Oregon, and this represents the oldest human remains found in the

Western hemisphere. Like, this is pretty big deal here. Um. Yeah. An analysis of the sample suggests that the cave dwellers were omnivores who ate lots of roots and seeds and nuts and um. By the way, carnivors stand a better chance of having their fecal matter fossilized into stone because they consume bones in their diet, which are already mineralized. So that's less work for the bacteria to do. Yeah. I think they with a very high calcium phosphate content. Yeah,

so it's it's great that they were able to find. Um. You know, actually these these bits of fickle matter, uh, just as a historical record, but also giving us a bit different understanding of life there, um and what we thought was going on with humans fourteen thousand years ago. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But luckily they were pooping in a cave, which really helped because the stuff dried out really quickly and was just in the cave. So, I mean, we we encountered a similar

thing with giant slots. In some of the cases, these giant slots, they had these underground gins and they would just poop absolutely everywhere. So they have these massive quantities of of fossilized the giant sloth scat, which is kind of great, right, um, especially if you're a schatologist. I mean, can you imagine coming across that. Yeah, it's like a gold mine. Yeah, could it be? Um, But you know,

this isn't entirely uncommon. They defined human copper lights. Um. There are over one thousand human copper lights that have been collected from Heine's Cave in southwest Texas. UM in these churchs they think were deposited by ancient people over the course of about eight thousand years. And then, uh, there are a number of just really fascinating fines with animals UM In various various fossilized animal scats that have

turned up over the years. We've looked at some from Tarantosaurus Rex sixty five million years old, UM, and these were kind of big too. Slicking at the stats on one of these seventy point six by six point four by five point two inches, and it weighed over fifteen point five pounds, So that's pretty uh, it's pretty lofty scat U And and again you can you get into looking at these and you can, and in fact, with the t rex is fosilized doing they were able to

look in and they noted worm tracks. Uh, they indicated that the beasts were affected by worms and other intestinal parasites. UM also discovered bones, so you get a better idea of what they were they were eating. Again, it's just this is the end product of the creature's digestive processes. So it really lets you know how the animals working. Yeah, and they even uh coppylights can give you an idea of what sort of creatures were around at that time.

I'm thinking about this, uh, this one poop that scientists found. It was near Chesapeake Bay, and they took um. They took the sample and they made a silicon rubber mold of it, and they found the tooth marks indicate that the biter was most likely a relative to you know, what we think of as a tire shark today and then they they looked at it and they said, oh, it's really phosphate rich. Uh. It seems like the fecal matter came from a creature that fed on bony prey.

And then they looked at the size of it and they said, Okay, we think that this was possibly some sort of crocodilian creature dwelling there. And um, the fact that it has these bite marks indicate to us, and the way that they that the bite marks are positioned indicate that possibly this prehistoric tiger shark actually bit into the digestive uh system or that part of the crocodile digestive system and pierced the fecal matter that way. Wow.

So I mean, just from the fecal matter here, we're able to piece together this awesome battle between prehistoric tiger shark and prehistoric crocodile monster. Right, because it's not uncommon actually to find that that animals will will consume other animals fecal matter. And I believe that they've seen bite marks and other samples before. But the way that this is positioned, it was it was not just that this tiger shark took a little morsel and went, oh, I

wonder if I should eat this. It was that it was actually inside the belly of the crocodile the time, and our listeners have dogs, they know it goes now the interest I am reminded the komodo dragon does not fall into that category because I remember the they'll eat just about anything, uh Phil Bronson's toe as well, Sharon Stone. I don't know if they're still married, but that they went to go look at that behind behind the scenes

thing at the zoo. And yeah, but but I remember when I was writing about them, that they the the young komodo dragons, uh, will totally adults, will totally eat them, but they will coat themselves in fecal matter, and then that they'll they'll make themselves a less desirable as a um. All right, so we have to talk about mammoth poos, of course, but before we do, should we take a break. We shouldn't take a break, and then we will come back and discuss the leavings of the willing Mamma. All right,

we're back, um. You know we u when we were talking to Nilo grass Tyson, Um, you asked him about, you know, should we bring the wily mammoth back? And it's it's interesting. Uh, there's a lot of cool research in the possibility of cloning a wooly mammoth of you know, finding a surrogate elephant to give birth to it and

all this. But uh, let's talk about resurrecting their poos. Yeah. Um, it turns out that that these guys on occasion would consume other creatures poos and in fact, a wily mammoth discovered in northern Yakoosha, Russia eight feces shortly before it died. We ah that researchers discovered and uh, it was really well preserved actually for the for them to look at this, and they found traces of willows, daisies, sorrel such as rushes, sweet grass, sinka, fools, and other plants indicative of an

open grassy landscape. That is just a lovely sounding bit of fecal matter. I mean, it's just it's very floral sounding, right. But they also found this fungus Sporo miella, which is known to know to grow on depositive feces, So that's how they know there is a bit of feces in there. What I think is astounding about this is that you also get a hint of that diet. As you say, it sounded somewhat lovely. I mean, you've got sorel and daisies and willows. Um, but yes, you've got the fecal

matter as well. And it's believed that they actually did this for a reason. Um, sometimes they wanted to populate their guts with appropriate digestive bacteria. It's sort of made me think back to when we talked about fecal transplants. People who are suffering from C. Diff. Um. You know, there healthy digestive factories wiped out, and so they replace it with a fecal transplant from someone else, presumably a family member, someone they knew. Um, but this could be

a similar thing that these wooly mammoth were doing. Now, one of the articles who were looking at laid out this, uh, this interesting theory of kind of not quite an apocalypse caused by wooly man eth dung, but but kind of a complication of global warming meets lily mammoth dung. Oh

yeah yeah, so okay. Normally, um, it doesn't take long for dung to fossilize, right, We're talking like what within a couple hundred years, A couple hundred years, which sounds like a long time, but the geological scale is and a big deal, right. But it's a totally different story for the frozen tundra where you have generations of lily mammoths that roamed those that area for thousands and or

hundreds and thousands of years and they deposited. Of course they're mammoth do And so the idea here is that with global warming that dormant microbes in the dung heaps could begin to wake up because they just pooped everywhere and then it froze. Yes, it's a carpet of poop basically. So so this is when stuff starts thawing out, so too will fall out the mammoth dung, and then it's gonna release methane. It's gonna particularly have have microbes in it.

I mean, it's it's it's sort of we're opening a Pandora's box made out of yeah. And that again, this is what is really fascinating about this sort of scatological look into nature and what's happening here. I know some of you are thinking, hey, uh, poop is great and all, but what about vomit? Can we talk about vomit? Yes? Yes, we can talk about vomit. There is such thing as a fossilized vomit, and it is called a regurgit alike,

which sounds beautiful, right it does mineralized vomitous yep. Peter Doyle of the University of Greenwich described a conglomeration of bellamonite skeleton is believed to have been coughed up by a marine reptile called it wass. The saurus is the scary looking I like to think of as a fright dolphin. It's that prehistoric dolphin. It looks really kind of crazy and scary and nightmarish. That's the I. Thesaurus and the bellamites are, or were, an ancient type of squid that

actually had an internal skeleton, which was really interesting. Um so that's what this thing was eating and occasionally vomiting up way back when we talked about animals that would turn their like some sharks will turn their stomach out like a like an inside out socked so um or even see cucumbers too, right, Yeah, yeah, So I'm wondering if it was a similar thing where it was you know, it eats something it can't agree with, so it's just yeah,

just ejecting it possibly, but yeah, it reached that up about a hundred and sixty million years ago. And it turns out that this kind of stuff, these copper lights, this uh regurgital light is hot stuff in the eBay market. Oh yeah, you were searching for this yesterday. Yeah, yeah, I mean this and think about it too. It would make sense because some of these will will coalesce into

these beautiful patterns. Um. Just sort of like you know, petrified wood or anything that's been fossilized or been sort of baked by nature for a long time. Um. And one piece of jewelry relieves uh, struck my fancy the wrist watch. Yeah, it's dinosaur dung watch from a maker called Artia. Okay, it's a Swiss made time piece. It's flawless,

it's beautiful. I'm not kidding. It features a polished copper light face sourced from a herbivorous dinosaurs dung which was dropped a hundred million years ago, and it has a bronze casing that's that's chosen to match quote the warm and matchless tints of dinosaur dume. It's it's really hard to imagine, but if you go to the blog post that accompanies this, uh, this podcast, I'll include some links and maybe I can find something doing bad as well.

Get a quick glance at it. But these thinks, some of these things are really beautiful. I mean they just look like beautiful stones with a lot of like cool um earthy tones and even some like non earthy kind of bright vibrant colors sort of marble through it. Well, I love this. There was a PBC article about this, um I believe it's called Telling the Time with a wristful of dinosaur poo. And the maker of it is so excited by this, and he says like you're literally

time traveling with this. Yeah, I know, um with this with this watch, and you know he's trying to sell it, and you know why he's trying to sell it because it's twelve dollars. You've got to come up with a good story. But if you if you want to be the I mean, rist watches are are are cool again, right, No one actually needs them because you getting fun, but people like wearing them and and if you really want to set yourself apart, if you really want to be cool, uh,

this is the watch again. It is And I failed to mention that the strap is made from American cane toad skin. Well good, because you want something, um, something similar. They had to they could have to complete the DNA sequence of the used frogs. They had to complete the wrist watch. So turn to your amphibians. Yeah, it's kind of beautiful, right, it is. It is. It's a beautiful watch. So there you go. Copper lights, dung watches, yea, regurgital lights, all that good stuff. It's a it's this is a

fun one. Yeah, and uh and certainly um. I'm wondering if anybody out there has any of this jewelry, because you can also get like ear rings from copper lights, and it's pretty fancy stuff. I mean if I saw it on on Etsy or wherever, I wouldn't think for a second, Oh, that kind of looks like you're hanging dinosaur turrets from your ears. No, it looks fabulous. And my question is can you can polish a donis nicely done?

My question is if any of these have shown up on regretsy yet, because I would love to see that at least the description of it. Cool. Well, let's um, let's call over speaking of technology made out of done, Let's call over our robot Arnold. He doesn't any feelings. He he doesn't care what I call him, but he does have some mail. Here, let's see. Here's one from

Eric Eric Writeson and says he's talking about horror. We received a lot of comments on our Science of Horror episodes it I've never liked films like The Shining, however my sister still loves them. When I was about eleven and we had showtime and they were showing The Shining on TV, our parents were going out and UH explicitly told us not to watch the movie. So of course my sister nine at the time, had to see it. However, it was too scary for her, so she got up,

so she got me up to protect her. To this day, that movie treats me out. A few years ago, I was walking between two high hedges at night in the winter. It was very cold and the hedges were covered in sparkling snow. It brought back memories of the movie so so powerful it took a great force of will to present myself prevent myself from running. So I do enjoy I do enjoy psychological throwers like hard Candy though. Thanks again for the podcast. Eric Hard Candy was very intense movie.

It was intense, Yeah, very very well done, but yeah, intense of viewing experience and the shining I agree. I mean, it's you can you can make criticism, certainly on the fact that Jack Nicholson barely plays a human being in the film, and and and and a lot of the humanity of that character is lost in the transition from the film. And that's something King always Stephen King, the original author, always grabbed about with that film. But I can see that because that's very central to his writing

in his character. Yeah, but every but the look of the film, in Kubrick's treatment of the Haunted House in that film, just I mean, it still stands up to be play today. It's like two thousand and one. It's the two thousand and one of haunted houses. So um, certainly, if you've never seen it, um, I recommend it, but be prepared for some shocks. Like even if you think you're prepared, like you, it's it's in the same category

with two thousand one and that you've seen. If you've seen sci fi movies today and you think you've seen it all, and then you go back and watch two thousand one. It will show you something that you haven't seen before. Likewise, if you've seen a lot of modern horror films, I don't care how disturbing or or or whatever they happen to be, go back and watch the Shining and it will give you something to creep you out well, because Kubrick is a master of creating that

environment that is so isolating. Yeah, and I mean, look at those films back back. Um, there's so many, at least in terms of how he sets the mood using sound and the void, that it really does strike you at some sort of primal level. Oh and then we also heard just another quick one related to horror and things. It's frightenness. Carrie with a K wrote in and said, hey, guys, maybe you're too young to remember, but King, in my opinion, didn't start the clown phobia. The original Poulter guys had

a scary clown. That's what started it out for me, my brother, and my husband. King's clown was scarier, but our fears beginnings were from Poulter. Guys. Do you remember this? I kind of I don't know if I'm getting my clown imagery mixed up, but I sort of remember the scene where the kids in bed and the tree branches keep tapping against the window, and that there's there's a creepy clown clown that's sitting on a chair. Yeah right, yeah,

and it's um. This was a film that I saw way too young, Like for some reason, we had a VHS copy of it, Like I think my aunt had taped it off HBO boy back in the day, you know, back when they had that really awesome electronic intro and the crazy like flying into the HBO logo and it might have been partially scrambled or or black and white, black and white, I don't remember which, but that really

screwed me up for a while. I didn't actually watch Polter Guys in its entirety until a couple of years ago. And uh, yeah, it's got so many it's frightening. And the second one is very disturbing as well to me. Oh that's the one that u hr g gre designed. One creature effect in that I think where the guy's vomit turns into a monster and crawls off. Oh I

don't remember that part. I just the the creature characters. Yeah, horrifect So yeah, those that's those are some films that for the most part, still stand up today in terms of their creepy visuals. So so there you have it. Um. Well, hey, if you want to share something with us, be it related to older episodes like The Horror or or cutting edge episodes like Dinosaur Poop and Dinosaur Vomit, let us know.

We'd love to hear what you have to say about what have you learned from examining the leavings of other creatures? Are you one of those people that can look at some droppings on the ground and tell me exactly what kind of animal it is and and how far away they are and what they had for dinner. Um, I'd love to hear some more about that. You can find us on Facebook where we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and you can find us on Twitter where our handle

is blow the Mind. And if you want to talk scat you can always send us an email to blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com