Coprolite

A coprolite (from the ancient Greek κόπρος kopros, German 'feces' and λίθος líthos 'stone') or fecal stone consists of fossil excrement (feces) in mostly phosphatic preservation. They belong to the trace fossils and are therefore also called faecal traces.

The oldest known coprolites date from the Ordovician. The term was introduced by the British paleontologist William Buckland in 1824, referring to comments by the fossil hunter Mary Anning that supposed stomach stones in the abdominal region of ichthyosaur skeletons, when broken open, often contained fossilized fish bones and scales, and sometimes even bones of smaller ichthyosaurs.

Due to their unstable nature before and after fossilization, coprolites from the early to middle Cambrian are rather rare. The world's most important collections are located at the Natural History Museums of Washington (Smithsonian Institution, D. C.), New Mexico and Oxford (Buckland Collection, UK).

Fecal traces can only in a few cases be clearly assigned to their producers. Coprolites play an important role as a source of microfossils, as they can reveal the dietary composition of herbivores, carnivores and piscivores due to the undigested biological hard parts they contain, such as plant fibres, shells and shell fragments, but also bone remains. Using coprolites, which probably originate from herbivorous titanosaurs, it has been possible to prove, for example, that grasses evolved as early as the Mesozoic.

In 1842 in Suffolk, theologian and naturalist John Stevens Henslow established the mining of coprolites in Falkenham and Kirton and their use as fertiliser. He patented an extraction process using sulphuric acid and soon after coprolites were mined on an industrial scale throughout the East of England until the early 20th century.