Sunday, September 14, 2008

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?

4 comments:

  1. you think that's crazy? Some guy is making millions right now photographing SHIT as art!!

    http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/09/shooting_the_shit_with_andres.html

    Check it out! I am definitely in the wrong business...

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  2. Nubia. Gross. well, at least he is not sculpting with it.

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  3. Ah, the dangers of walking barefoot through the cow pasture in spring chasing butterflies...

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