Sun, Jun-03-12, 15:09
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Experimenter
Posts: 25,869
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Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179
BF:
Progress: 72%
Location: San Diego, CA
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No worries. Have some bacon. 
Read some Jared Diamond. I think in Collapse he talks about the stuff they find in pack rat middens which are remarkably well preserved snapshots of what plant life existed, even 40+ thousand years ago. They pee on them and something in their pee preserves all the stuff they collect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pack_rat#Midden
There are similar creatures on other continents, not to mention they find examples of paleo middens which give some indication of what they eat, although plant stuffs tend to break down more quickly, sometimes it gets preserved.
This is how they can acquire information about how plant life has changed over the centuries, climate and such.
Quote:
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A packrat midden is a debris pile constructed by a woodrat. A packrat midden may preserve the materials incorporated into it for up to 50,000 years. The middens may thus be analyzed to reconstruct their original environment, and comparisons between middens allow a record of vegetative and climate change to be built. Examinations and comparisons of pack rat middens have largely supplanted pollen records as a method of study in the regions where they are available.[7]
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