Researchers have decoded the genetic makeup of woolly mammoths, horses, steppe bison, and ground squirrels that inhabited the grasslands of the Canadian Arctic during the last ice age by analyzing DNA extracted from frozen squirrel excrement in the Yukon.
Interestingly, the fossilized feces, rich in DNA from various animals such as wolves, predatory cats, mammoths, horses, birds, bats, grasshoppers, and parasitic worms, along with over 200 plant species ranging from sages to sedges, were detailed in a recent study published in Nature Communications.
“We were able to truly capture the entire ecosystem, from megafauna and plants to fungi, insects, and a diverse array of microbes,” stated Tyler Murchie, a scientist at the Hakai Institute in Campbell River, B.C., and the lead author of the study.
Did you know that squirrels unintentionally served as ice age archivists? A recent study on thawing permafrost in the Yukon revealed that ancient squirrel feces preserved remnants of plants, seeds, and bones in their burrows dating back to approximately 17,000 to 700,000 years ago.
Preservation in Nature’s time capsule
Over hundreds of thousands of years, Arctic ground squirrels in the region created burrows containing a designated toilet chamber.
These dung-filled chambers, now eroding from valley walls along rivers, have been meticulously collected and preserved by Murchie’s collaborators and co-authors in the Yukon. These burrows harbor other chambers packed with remnants of various snacks collected by squirrels between 30,000 and 700,000 years ago, ranging from plants to bones to insects.
“They act as natural archivists, amassing a diverse array of items in their dens, showcasing a broad dietary range… depositing a significant amount of waste in one location,” Murchie explained.