Although coprolites had been found for many years, the first scientist to recognize what they were was the Reverend William Buckland, an Anglican priest who also worked as a geologist. Buckand is probably best known for being the first to describe and name a species of dinosaur. In 1824, he named Megalosaurus, eighteen years before Richard Owen coined the name Dinosauria in 1842!
William Buckland was born March 12th, 1784 in Axminster, Devon, England, the son of a minister. He studied theology at Oxford University, and was ordained as a minister in 1808. In 1813 he attained a professorship in Mineralogy at Oxford, and later a professorship in Geology. He spent much of his career in efforts to reconcile the geological and paleontological discoveries of his time with the writings of the Bible, and developed anti-evolutionary theories.
Buckland also did some studies of a late Cenozic Era (65 million years ago to the present) cave in Yorkshire, England in which bones and teeth from a variety of animals, including hyenas, elephants, hippopotami, tigers, deer, rabbits, mice, and birds, were found. In addition to the bones, Buckland also found some small white balls that he decided were hyena feces, based on their resemblance to modern hyena droppings, and the presence of this carnivore's remains. Buckland published his findings in his 1823 paper Reliquiae Diluvianae (relics from the flood). In his 1823 paper, Buckland called the fossilized hyena feces album graecum in reference to their white color.
Buckland did not coin the term coprolite (from the Greek words "kopros" meaning "dung", and "lithos" meaning "stone") until 1829, when he was working on some feces found in sediment from the Jurassic Period (195 to 140 million years ago) in Lyme Regis, England (the same area where Mary Anning found her fossils).
The Lyme Regis area is well known for marine fossils, especially fossils of ichthyosaurs, and fossil hunters in the area had noticed that the ichthyosaurs were often found with strange round "pebbles". Buckland noticed that the objects were often found in the abdominal area of ichthyosaurs, and concluded that they were fossilized dung produced by the ichthyosaurs.
Buckland died August 15th, 1856, best known for his discoveries of Megalosaurus and the true nature of coprolites. Being the first person to recognize the nature of fossilized dung, and to name it may not seem like a great honor to you, but coprolites can tell us a great deal of information about extinct animals. In my next article I will talk about coprolites, and what they can tell us of the ancient world.
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