TIL a hard choice between a pottery shard and a bone fragment at a dig in Tucson

I picked the bone, which turned out to be from a previously unknown rodent species, but I still wonder about the story behind that broken pot.

4 comments

4 Comments

sean_green441mo ago

That pottery shard could have been a 500-year-old coffee mug with a funny joke on it. You found a new species, but you lost a great story. The universe really makes you choose sometimes.

aaron7401mo agoTop Commenter

That's a lot of weight to put on one broken piece of clay.

smith.parker2d ago

Actually heard a similar story on a podcast about desert archaeology... something about how the Tohono O'odham people used those pots for carrying water across the Sonoran. The shard might have come from that kind of daily use. But yeah, a new rodent species is pretty wild too. Guess both choices tell a different kind of story about life out there.

cole_flores441mo agoMost Upvoted

Man, my luck means that pot was probably just someone's ancient "I hate Mondays" mug.