(Very old) poop analyzed

 

Yep, that's all fossil sloth poop. (Photo by NPS)

Hi all,

Apologies for the radio silence, I've been hard at work analyzing the samples I was able to bring back from Costa Rica this summer, but in addition to those samples I've also been working on some coprolites (i.e., fossilized poop).  The goal of this Experiment.com project was always to compare the geochemistry of modern sloths to their extinct relatives, and it just so happens that prep work required for coprolites was much more straightforward than it was for modern sloths, so it got done first. 

I presented these initial results last week at the annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology and got some great feedback, including a write-up in Live Science by reporter Laura Geggel. I think she did a great job of explaining our results, so I'll just let y'all read her piece. While seemingly tangential, I am hard at work trying to replicate these results for modern sloths, which is part of what your contribution is helping to fund, so stay tuned for more updates but also know that we're already hard at work generating the data we will need down the line interpret based on the results made possible by your support. It's complicated, but that's science!

 http://www.livescience.com/567...

Thanks!

- Ryan