July 31, 2012 • 23 mins
You can learn a lot from an animal's scat, even if that animal hasn't walked the Earth since prehistoric times. In this episode, Robert and Julie explore the fascinating world of coprolite and ponder just what ancient humans and creatures ate.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. My name is
Julie Tuglas. Julie had your weekend go It was great.
It was great. I handled lots of pretend dinosaur poop.
(00:24):
Where did you do this? Um? This was at the
fern Bank Museum here in Atlanta, and they have an
exhibit called the Scoop on Poop and they had a
special little thing for kids. I mean, I think it
was for kids. I was totally hanging out doing it,
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.
(00:44):
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
(01:06):
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
(01:27):
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,
(01:49):
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
(02:13):
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
(02:34):
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
(02:55):
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
(03:16):
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
(03:37):
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.
(03:57):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:42):
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
(05:05):
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
(05:26):
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,
(05:47):
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
(06:11):
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
(06:36):
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
(06:58):
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
(07:18):
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
(07:39):
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
(08:02):
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.
(08:22):
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
(08:43):
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
(09:05):
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
(09:27):
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
(09:49):
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
(10:11):
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,
(10:35):
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,
(10:59):
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,
(11:24):
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,
(11:48):
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.
(12:09):
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
(12:29):
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,
(12:51):
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
(13:15):
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
(13:39):
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
(14:00):
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,
(14:25):
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.
(14:46):
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
(15:09):
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,
(15:32):
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
(15:53):
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
(16:18):
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
(16:39):
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
(17:00):
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,
(17:22):
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.
(17:43):
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
(18:04):
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?
(18:27):
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
(18:49):
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
(19:11):
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
(19:32):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:16):
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
(20:36):
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
(21:00):
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,
(21:21):
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
(21:44):
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
(22:05):
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.
(22:25):
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,
(22:50):
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
(23:11):
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
(23:36):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. My name is
Julie Tuglas. Julie had your weekend go It was great.
It was great. I handled lots of pretend dinosaur poop.
(00:24):
Where did you do this? Um? This was at the
fern Bank Museum here in Atlanta, and they have an
exhibit called the Scoop on Poop and they had a
special little thing for kids. I mean, I think it
was for kids. I was totally hanging out doing it,
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.
(00:44):
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
(01:06):
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
(01:27):
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,
(01:49):
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
(02:13):
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
(02:34):
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
(02:55):
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
(03:16):
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
(03:37):
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.
(03:57):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:42):
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
(05:05):
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
(05:26):
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,
(05:47):
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
(06:11):
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
(06:36):
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
(06:58):
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
(07:18):
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
(07:39):
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
(08:02):
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.
(08:22):
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
(08:43):
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
(09:05):
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
(09:27):
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
(09:49):
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
(10:11):
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,
(10:35):
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,
(10:59):
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,
(11:24):
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,
(11:48):
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.
(12:09):
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
(12:29):
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,
(12:51):
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
(13:15):
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
(13:39):
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
(14:00):
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,
(14:25):
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.
(14:46):
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
(15:09):
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,
(15:32):
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
(15:53):
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
(16:18):
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
(16:39):
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
(17:00):
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,
(17:22):
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.
(17:43):
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
(18:04):
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?
(18:27):
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
(18:49):
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
(19:11):
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
(19:32):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:16):
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
(20:36):
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
(21:00):
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,
(21:21):
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
(21:44):
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
(22:05):
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.
(22:25):
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,
(22:50):
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
(23:11):
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
(23:36):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
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