Frozen squirrel poop hints at sights and smells of Ice Age ecosystems

The tiny frozen pellets are storehouses of DNA from the rodents’ diverse diets

A researcher puts ancient poop into a centrifuge

Paleogenomics researcher Danielle Grant, suited up to avoid contaminating ancient poo with any modern genes, loads fecal samples into a centrifuge to extract ancient DNA fragments.

Bennett Whitnell/Hakai Institute

Ancient squirrel poo doesn’t stink. At least not at first.

But that changes when you begin to break down the pellets.