Star formation in high redshift early-type galaxies

Massive early-type galaxies (ETG) have been spectroscopically confirmed up to z>3 which, together with their ages and abundances at z>1.5, implies that their progenitors must have converted gas into stars on short timescales. The termination of star formation in these galaxies can occur through several channels, but they remain largely conjectural, in part due to the current lack of direct measurements of the amount of residual gas in high redshift ETGs. Here I will present constraints on the star formation rate and dust/gas content of z=1.4-2.5 ETGs. These galaxies, close to their epoch of quenching, contained more than 2 orders of magnitude more dust than their local counterparts, which suggests the presence of substantial amounts of gas and a low star formation efficiency.