Extinction is a shitty business

[Rokcet Scientist]

Dung helps reveal why mammoths died out

Mastodons and other megafauna left traces of dung in ancient lake beds

Mammoth dung has proved to be a source of prehistoric information, helping scientists unravel the mystery of what caused the great mammals to die out.
An examination of a fungus that is found in the ancient dung and preserved in lake sediments has helped build a picture of what happened to the beasts.
The study sheds light on the ecological consequences of the extinction and the role that humans may have played in it.
Researchers describe this development in the journal Science.

The study was led by Jacquelyn Gill from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US.
She and her colleagues studied the Sporormiella fungal spores contained in the sediment deep within the bed of Appleman Lake in Indiana.

Many very large mammals including mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths inhabited forests in this area of North America about 20,000 years ago.

Sporormiella produces spores in the dung of large herbivores. These are then preserved in the layers of mud and can provide an index of the number of these great animals, or megafauna, that roamed the environment at a particular time. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8368485.stm

[E.P. Grondine]

Yeah, it sure is. You'd be amazed that some people just can't accept that crap from space hits us from time to time.

In this case, what they don't tell you in the article is that the 14C dates for these layers are all over the place. Those 14C abnormalities are what set Firestone off on his quest in the first place.