Life Among the Dead
Decomposing animals host diverse ecosystems that reveal the inner workings of microbial life.
A threadlike rain has started falling sideways. Jennifer DeBruyn slows down to consider whether to drive us off the pavement and onto parallel tracks of matted grass leading up a steep, slick hill. I can’t see the top, but there’s a faint fog moving through. “It’s going to be sloppy,” she says over the slap-slap-slap of the windshield wipers. She eases off the asphalt and gooses the engine. “Yeah, that’s a little greasy,” she says. The weather is no deterrent; she’s resolutely cheerful about the adventure. “We’re going to try it.” And up the hill we go, on our mission to find a grove of trees, a pair of ambitious paleoecologists, and three dozen dead, soggy lizards.
We’ve been driving on narrow roads through farmlands and fields in Knoxville, Tenn., that host a wide variety of agricultural and plant experiments. Soon after crossing the Tennessee River, DeBruyn pointed out a sprawling patchwork of green where University of Tennessee researchers have been developing grass that will be used in the 2026 FIFA World Cup games. But our destination is elsewhere.
DeBruyn, a microbial ecologist, has light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wears a blue rain jacket, blue jeans, and sturdy black boots. (On her advice, I am also wearing a rain jacket and sturdy boots.) After we park at the level top of the hill, we raise our hoods, open our umbrellas, and walk past two other mud-splashed cars into a grove of tall conifers, which is where we find Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, a cheerful paleoecologist, dressed all in black, who studies how long-dead things become fossils. She’s currently studying reptile decomposition.
Drumheller-Horton and her graduate student, Hannah Maddox, stand near a sturdy frame made of two-by-fours, about ten feet long and three feet wide and covered on all sides, as well as top and bottom, by chicken wire. Another, identical box sits nearby. Inside each box lie 30 dead tegu lizards, averaging about a foot long. One box contains lizards that have been decaying for a couple of weeks, while the other holds lizards that have been here for nearly a year. Tegus are an invasive species. “They’re great pets. They’re not great when they escape out into the wild and start breeding,” says Drumheller-Horton. These particular tegus had been killed and frozen by United States Geological Survey officials in the Everglades, in southern Florida. Maddox, as the graduate student on the project, had been tasked with driving 13 hours each way to retrieve them.