Moss For microfossils and other largely invisible stuff, the team relied on methods with mouthful names like thermally assisted hydrolysis and polymerase-chain-reaction amplification. One such tiny ingredient in the poop was mineral dust (seen here, in gray, coating a piece of moss). Wind would have lifted this dust from eroded patches of ground and covered plants with it; when the mammoth ate the plants, he took in these minerals as well. The presence in the giant's gut of mosses such as this one showed that his surroundings were not all dry grassland; moist areas existed there as well.
