The paleofeces also revealed the diet of the people who were underground: plant-heavy, reflecting a gathering economy that included seeds, nuts, and plant material from the surface landscape.

The hickory nuts and sunflower seeds found in the stomach contents of the miner discovered in 1935 fit this dietary picture exactly.

Mussel shells were found in large numbers throughout the cave passages.

These were the tools the miners used to scrape gypsum from the cave walls — the soft mussel shells applied to the relatively soft gypsum crust with a working motion that left distinctive marks in the mineral still visible on cave walls today.

The shells came from the Green River, which was and remains a waterway with historically rich freshwater mussel populations.