If this meat had indeed been unearthed on the island of Akutan, as the Explorers Club claimed, and if it was indeed Megatherium, Davis would have just discovered “the largest range expansion ever.” Even if it were another species of ground sloth—like one that had been found on mainland Alaska, thousands of miles away from Akutan—it would still be the paleontological equivalent of winning the lottery.

* * *

Yet Davis didn’t fly out to the volcanic shores of Akutan. It would’ve been crazy, setting off on a treasure hunt for an unidentified carcass that may not even be there. Instead, he teamed up with another grad student named Jessica Glass—a geneticist who studies fish—and a few other scientists to figure out what this meat actually was.

Glass had known about the meat since around 2006; as an undergraduate at Yale, she had worked as an assistant at Peabody, processing new specimens as they were brought into the museum. As a student assistant, she’d identified minnows and skinned ducks. One day, she’d come in to work to find an ostrich head in the sink; another time, she found a bag on the floor that said, “Do not open until the other zebra has been processed.”

Even with all this under her belt, she found the story of the Explorers Club meat bizarre—she couldn’t stop imagining people gulping down what is basically an ancient cadaver. “Think about how weird that is. You don’t know how it died, how long it’s been dead,” she said.

Identifying the animal would prove difficult. We live in an age of easy DNA analysis—spit in a vial, and six to eight weeks later, you can start exploring the nooks and crannies of your genome—but with ancient DNA, it’s not so simple. “DNA degrades over time, and when the animal dies there are no more repair mechanisms,” explained Glass. “That means the strand of DNA would break up into tiny, tiny pieces.” And 250,000 years allow for a whole lot of disintegration.

It’s possible to sequence those DNA fragments, but if you get any other bit of genetic material in your solution—a cat hair, say, or one of your own cells, or a bacterium that’s floating around in the air—chances are the DNA analysis will pick up on that instead. The newer, still-intact DNA can obscure the ancient bits, the way the lights of Times Square can overwhelm Orion’s Belt.

The Explorers Club meat was even more likely to be contaminated, because it had been cooked in a stew. Glass had no idea what other ingredients she might accidentally unearth. But as curious as she was about the dinner, the mystery she wanted to crack was paleontological rather than culinary.

To reduce the risk of adulterating her precious sample, she went through an elaborate ritual each time she ventured into the lab: She showered at home, and changed into a fresh set of clothes when she arrived, to make sure she hadn’t tracked in any pollen or bacteria from the street. She walked over sticky mats, to clean the soles of her shoes. And then she pulled on a hair net, strapped on a mask, snapped on gloves, and slipped into a lab coat. “You have to be careful you don’t sneeze or cough,” she said. “Or breathe too much.”