Dino Dung

By Back Alley Rock Shop

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What is cooler than actual dinosaur poop?

As fossils, dinosaur dung becomes geological records of biological activity. It is organic material produced by the organism that becomes fossilized droppings called coprolites. Not being body fossils of the dinosaurs themselves such as bones or other body parts, they are trace fossils, left behind to become a rare and valuable record for paleontologists, rare because normally they are easily fragmented and destroyed with little chance of becoming fossilized.

Coprolites can show what dinosaurs ate and give the structure of the lower digestive tract and the size of the anus. Although coprolites show dinosaur behavior through diet, they fall short of positively confirming dinosaur identification.

However, paleontologists are able to tell a few things, like if a dinosaur was a carnivore or herbivore, and even what kinds of foods it preferred just from 100-million-year-old dung. Whether a dinosaur had indigestion, was starving, or was full of parasites could all be learned from their feces. In some cases, even more specific knowledge about what the dinosaur was doing, or how it died, can be determined by coprolite.

Though coprolites true nature can sometimes be apparent on the outside, the inside is usually a dazzling array of patterns and colors. Coprolite has long been mined to make stone jewelry.