Fossilized feces, dating back some 14,000 years, stands as the oldest human remains found in America. The ancient shit, found in, of all places, Oregon, “offers important new DNA evidence about the identity of the first North Americans, say the researchers, who published their findings Thursday in the online edition of the Journal Science.” University of Oregon (go Ducks!) archaeologist Dennis Jenkins found the feces in the Paisley caves, which are located in the south-central part of the state. These ancestral leavings, and the genetic data contained therein, suggest that the earliest North American settlers probably came from Eastern Asia and Siberia.

The oldest piece is 14,300 years old, and the samples contain genetic material that is unique to that of the modern indigenous people of North and South American, says Eske Willerslev, a Danish expert in ancient DNA and one of the authors of the paper. It also is similar to DNA found in modern people in East Asia and Siberia.

It also counters a number of theories that suggest the first North Americans were close relatives of ancient Australians, Japanese, Pacific Islanders, southern Asians or black Africans.

The discovery also deflates another popular theory that the earliest settlers of the continent were descendants of the Clovis people, a highly skilled group of hunters who were believed to have come to North America 13,000 years ago across the land bridge that connected Alaska to Siberia. Further inspection of the feces also determined that whoever had left it had gorged him or herself on a meal of sage grouse and chipmunk one day prior to evacuation. Not vegan.

Feel free to make up your own jokes, starting now. When I was a kid, Indiana Jones made me want to be an archaeologist, but he was banging hot barmaids in Nepal, saving the world from the Nazis and uncovering mythical religious artifacts. I suppose finding millennia old shit is pretty cool, too, in it’s own right, but I couldn’t imagine watching Harrison Ford poke around a caveman’s turd for a couple hours would be all that entertaining. What I’m trying to say is, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is going to rule.

The journal Nature is reporting that researchers have found human remains that date back 400,000 years before the previous oldest-known remains, meaning humans roamed Europe a lot longer than previously believed.

A jawbone, teeth and simple tools were uncovered in a cave near the Spanish city of Burgos.

The remains are accurately dated and lay to rest doubts about when early humans first lived in Europe, said Andreu Olle, who has worked at the Atapuerca site since 1990.

“These are the oldest human remains in Europe. With this fossil, we can say it (Europe) was populated earlier than was thought,” he told Reuters.

For more, check out this video courtesy of the Reuters YouTube Channel (believe it or not, you can actually get yourself some learning there).