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Using hyrax latrines to investigate climate change

Lynne Quick sifts through piles of ancient animal dung and dried urine to find signs of past climates in preserved pollen and charcoal.
  1. Nicola Jones

    1. Nicola Jones is a freelance writer in Pemberton, British Columbia.

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Lynne Quick in a crevasse of a cave during an expedition for research.

Lynne Quick is a palaeoecologist at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Credit: L. J. Quick

This might look like an ordinary rock formation, but the black material is actually preserved faeces and urine from a small mammal called a rock hyrax (Procavia capensis).

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Nature 611, 418 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03587-7

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