A tiny piece of frozen poop tells the secret of the Ice Age

Professor Pip adjusted his slightly crooked spectacles and patted the bulging pockets of his green lab coat. "Ah, here we are," he said, fishing out his magnifying glass, his pocket notebook labeled "Notes," and a small brass compass.

The lab was warm and cozy. On the white wooden table sat a tiny pebble-sized lump on a clean cloth. Mia and Leo leaned in over the table, noses almost touching the cloth.

"Today," Pip announced, his tail swishing slowly, "we're going to ask a very rude question."

Mia blinked. "What is it?"

"Can a piece of poop tell us about the past?"

Leo burst out laughing so hard he nearly fell off his stool.

"Ancient poop," Pip clarified, eyes twinkling. "Frozen for thirty thousand years. Scientists in the Arctic just dug up a tiny pellet of fossilized droppings — from a little ground squirrel."

He held up the magnifying glass over the lump. "Now, when this little squirrel was hopping around the Arctic, what do you suppose it was eating?"

"Seeds?" guessed Mia.

"Roots?" said Leo. "Bugs? Berries?"

"All those things!" Pip said. "But it ALSO walked through grass that giant beasts had trampled. It nibbled near pollen the wind had blown about. It even left bits of bug and bone in its little belly. And here's the magical part…"

Pip held an imaginary thread between his paws. "Every living thing carries tiny instructions inside it called DNA. It's like a teeny-tiny recipe for what each creature is. And when an animal eats something — or even sniffs it — a smudge of that creature's DNA gets stuck onto the food. And then it travels right into the little squirrel's poop."

"So if we read the squirrel's poop…" Leo started, his eyes growing wide.

"We can read the names of every creature it brushed past!" Pip finished, beaming. "Scientists used special machines that sort DNA into puzzle pieces. And inside this tiny pellet, they found woolly mammoths. And bison. And wild horses. And great big-toothed cats. All of them — captured in one squirrel-sized smudge."

"Oh!" Mia gasped. "It's like — like a guest list of a party the squirrel went to!"

"Exactly right!" Pip clapped his paws, his tail flicking with delight. "A guest list from thirty thousand years ago. Frozen solid. Waiting all this time to be read."

He gazed out the window at the snow drifting past, picturing shaggy mammoths walking slow across an icy plain.

"All those giant animals are gone now, my friends. But this brave little squirrel kept their names safe — without ever meaning to."

Pip handed each child a tiny smooth pebble. "Now imagine — what stories does your own backyard keep, hidden in the soil? Pollen? An old beetle wing? A whisker from last year's fox? Be a scientist this week. Look closely. Curiouser and curiouser indeed."