July 17, 2014

Hey, want to buy some dinosaur poop? (It's botryoidal!)

As readers of The Big Book of Gross Stuff know, coprolite is fossilized poop. How did it get fossilized? It’s really old!

For example, that long dinosaur poop above is between five to 34 million years old. What laid it? Dunno. We just have the poop. But it was almost certainly a dinosaur. (I mean, that thing IS over a yard long!)

What’s weird is that people buy coprolites. And this one is actually for sale; below is its auction description.
ENORMOUS AND RARE COPROLITE

This truly spectacular specimen is possibly the longest example of dinosaur feces ever to be offered at auction. It boasts a wonderfully even, pale brown-yellow coloring and terrifically detailed texture to the heavily botryoidal surface across the whole of its immense length. The passer of this remarkable object is unknown, but it is nonetheless a highly evocative specimen of unprecedented size, presented in four sections, each with a heavy black marble custom base, an eye-watering 40 inches in length overall.
Estimate $8,000-10,000

UPDATE: This may be a fake! (Or what one writer called a "faux-poo.") 

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