By Sandi Doughton SEATTLE - Hold the potty humor, please, but archaeologists digging in a dusty cave in Oregon have unearthed fossilized feces that appear to be the oldest biological evidence of humans in North America. The ancient poop dates back 14,300 years.

DNA from fossil feces discovered by an international team in south-central Oregon is providing the strongest new evidence that humans inhabited North America up to 1,000 years earlier than previously suspected.

By Steve Connor Science Editor Textbook accounts of how the Americas were first populated may have to be re-written after the discovery in Oregon of the oldest human DNA ever recorded.

Researchers recovered human DNA dating back 14,300 years from dried excrement found in Oregon's Paisley Caves. Anthropologist Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon said the DNA is the oldest ever found in the New World, the university said Thursday in a release.

By Dennis O'Brien, The Baltimore Sun Apr. 3--Lumps of desiccated feces, dug from a cave in Oregon and stored in resealable baggies on a shelf at a small museum, now have scientists convinced that humans have been in North America for 1,000 years longer than they previously thought.