A Grand Canyon cave that held 30,000 years of ground sloth dung, until most of it burned in 1976.
Documented
The burned library
Discovered in 1936, the cave held dung layers up to six meters deep from the extinct Shasta ground sloth. A 1976 fire smoldered for months; workers described it as nine days in Dante's Inferno, and roughly 70 percent of the deposit was lost. Smithsonian crews salvaged what remained.
Assessment: Documented: excavation reports, fire records, and the salvage collection.
Stories
The cave that fought back
Local retellings give the fire agency: the cave protecting its secrets, punishing the diggers. The timing, mid-study, made the loss feel personal to everyone who worked there.
Assessment: Stories: a grief metaphor; ignition was almost certainly human or lightning, not intention.
Interesting claims
The dung as time capsule, deliberately
A fringe turn: sloths as archivists, the cave as a seed bank of the Ice Age world, curated by the animal's appetite. Some speculate the deposit was the reason later humans visited the canyon depths at all.
Assessment: Interesting: the stratigraphy is real science; the curation is ours projected backward.
Sources and further reading
Martin, Paul S. et al., 'The Sloth Dung of Rampart Cave,' research reports, University of Arizona
Mead, Jim I. et al., Rampart Cave paleoecology studies, Northern Arizona University