Coproliths – fossilised animal dung
Dr Heidi Fourie, curator, DITSONG: National Museum of Natural History
Imagine holding in your hand not a skull or a shell, but something far humbler – fossilised dung. It is a coprolite, a fossil excretion that carries within it a treasure trove of biological and ecological secrets. Termed by the English geologist, William Buckland, in 1829, the name derives from the Greek kopros (dung) and lithos (stone). Coproliths or coprolites are classified as trace fossils ranging from a few millimetres to over 60 cm in length. Modern technology can identify the animal’s diet from a coprolite, as it often contains bone fragments, fish scales, or bits of shell, plant remains, seeds or pollen. Coprolites have been used to reconstruct palaeoenvironments and give clues about ancient parasites, disease and gut health.
In South Africa, coprolites are abundant in the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone, Burgersdorp Formation, Tarkastad Subgroup, Karoo Supergroup, which dates to the Early to Middle Triassic. In 2011, palaeontologists described bone-bearing carnivore coprolites found in mudrocks from the Hoedemaker Member of the Teekloof Formation in the Karoo Basin, dated to the Late Permian (about 260 to 252 million years ago). The coprolites were of different shapes and belonged to taxa from the Tropidostoma Assemblage Zone, including the large gorgonopsians Aelurognathus, Gorgonops, smaller therocephalians, Cyonosaurus, Lycaenops, and Rhinesuchus. The microscopic structure of the bone inclusions in the coprolites show that these carnivores often targeted young animals, and that dicynodonts and parareptiles were common prey (Smith & Botha-Brink, 2011).
References:
Editor. (2025). What are coprolites and what can they teach us? Science News Today. https://www.sciencenews.org.
Smith, R.M.H. & Botha-Brink, J. (2011). “Morphology and composition of bone-bearing coprolites from the Late Permian Beaufort Group, Karoo Basin, South Africa.” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 312 (1-2),40-53.
