THE BOOK OF BONES

Mar 13, 2026

When an animal dies, it leaves behind more than just a skeleton. As bones formed during life, blood carried metabolic byproducts from the creature’s diet and environment into the tissue.

Researchers say modern analytical techniques can now detect some of those molecular traces in fossil bones, revealing what animals ate and the environments they lived in — in some cases going back about 3 million years.

This short video explains how scientists are reading those molecular clues in fossilized bone.