Everybody poops, but only some of that poop fossilizes, turning into coprolites. While ancient droppings may sound gross — after all, who wants to go digging through feces that are centuries or even millennia old — they can offer a cornucopia of data to scientists.
For instance, coprolites can reveal which foods people ate, the parasites that lived in their guts and even prove that humans lived in an area, like North America during the last ice age, according to coprolites found in a cave in Oregon.
