Holy Bat Shit!

Science is amazing to me. Amazing because one can study bat shit, write about it and get published.

What brings this up? Well, last week I received my latest copy of Geology and as I was skimming the abstracts during my Saturday morning post-coffee poo I come across the paper titled: "Stable carbon and hydrogen isotopes from bat guano in the Grand Canyon, USA, reveal Younger Dryas and 8.2 ka events". Thats quite a title for something I might have called 'Bat Shit in a Grand Canyon Cave'.

This group basically showed that the Carbon 13 and Hydrogen isotopes analyzed in bat crap shows the affects of the paleo-climate. It is important because it helps increase, or the term they use is -develop high resolution, of the climate on a more local scale. Additionally, because the Grand Canyon is a semi-arid environment other depositional features (lakes for instance) are rare or non-existent, so this is providing another method to gain information.

The information this adds to the world is that during the Younger Dryas (~12,900 -11,600 years ago) this region of the southwest US seems to have been cool and dry at this time and that the small 400 year change detected during about 8,400 -8,000 years ago was also a cool period. The second event is the first time this anomaly has been detected. Possibly indicating a semi-local effect. EUREKA! A DISCOVERY!

So for fun....why the Ace Ventura reference?