coprolite

Fossilized feces from the Pleistocene epoch have divulged the mitochondrial DNA of a woolly rhinoceros, whose genome had never previously been assembled. The ancient poop was not excreted by an ancient rhino but by a hyena—an animal that evidently ate the massive herbivore before it, too, died sometime in the Middle…

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We know them in death. We know how they died, some of what they ate, how they grew, where they may have roamed, and even if they suffered from disease or injury. Preserved bones can tell us a lot, but perhaps just as interesting are the stories they left in traces, where their behavior, even for one moment, is…