Vinegar is a handy liquid to have around. You can use it to clean your computer mouse, wipe down your blinds, and remove carpet stains. Or, even better, you can use it to discover some seriously cool extinct animals.

Acetic acid—one of vinegar’s main constituents—is commonly used as a chemical treatment to unlock delicate fossils from their rocky shackles. Recently, paleontologists in a remote corner of Australia used the procedure to extract the teeth of two long-dead mammal species from blocks of limestone.

Though the teeth are the only remains of the newly discovered species, we can glean plenty of details from a set of chompers. As paleontologist Steve Wroe says, “you can get a hell of a lot of information