WILLIAMS, Ariz. — One way to help tell how a Tyrannosaurus rex digested food is to look at its poop.
Bone fragments in a piece of fossilized excrement at a new museum in northern Arizona — aptly called the Poozeum — are among the tinier bits of evidence that indicate T. rex wasn’t much of a chewer, but rather swallowed whole chunks of prey.
The sample is one of more than 7,000 on display at the museum that opened in May in Williams, a town known for its Wild West shows along Route 66, wildlife attractions and a railway to Grand Canyon National Park.
The Poozeum sign features a bright green T. rex cartoon character sitting on a toilet to grab attention from the buzzing neon lights and muffled 1950s music emanating from other businesses.
Inside, display cases filled with coprolites — fossilized feces from animals that lived millions of years ago — line the walls. They range from minuscule termite droppings to a massive specimen that weighs 20 pounds (9 kilograms).
Poozeum’s president and curator, George Frandsen, bought his first chunk of fossilized feces from a shop in Moab, Utah, when he was 18, he said. He already loved dinosaurs and fossils but had never heard of fossilized poop. From there, his fascination grew.
“It was funny. It was gross,” he said. “But I learned very quickly it could tell us so much about our prehistoric past and how important they are to the fossil record.”
Coprolites aren’t tremendously common but they can make up the majority of fossils found at some sites, and people have learned more and more about them over the past few decades, said Anthony Fiorillo, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
It can be hard to identify them and in some cases, specimens that appeared to be coprolites — with their pinched ends and striations — were examined further and ultimately reclassified as something else.
“There’s a number of sedimentary processes that can produce an extrusion of soft mud to a different layer,” he said. “So think about your toothpaste, for example. When you squeeze it, there can be some striations on that toothpaste.”
Fossil enthusiast Brandee Reynolds recently visited the museum with her husband after finding it was a short detour from a road trip they had planned.
“I mostly find sharp teeth and things like that,” she said. “I haven’t really found a whole lot of coprolite, but who doesn’t love coprolite?”
A highlight of Frandsen’s collection is a specimen that holds a Guinness World Record for being the largest coprolite left by a carnivorous animal. Measuring more than 2 feet (61 centimeters) long and over 6 inches (15 centimeters) wide, Frandsen said it’s believed to be from a T. rex, given where it was found on a private ranch in South Dakota in 2019.
Frandsen also holds the record for the largest certified coprolite collection of 1,277 pieces, earned in 2015 when it was verified at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, Florida.
His collection now stands at about 8,000 specimens. He doesn’t have the room to display it all in the museum in Williams and features some online.
No need to worry about any smell or germs, Frandsen said. Those evaporated millions of years ago, when the feces were covered with sediment and replaced by minerals, making them rock-hard.
Location, shape, size and other materials like bones or plants can determine if something is a coprolite, but not necessarily which creature deposited it, Fiorillo said.
“I think the majority of us would say, let’s pump the brakes on that and just be happy if we could determine carnivore, herbivore and then look at possibly those food cycles within each of those broad groups,” said Fiorillo, a trained paleontologist and author of books on dinosaurs.
Ideally, Fiorillo said he hopes fossils that are rare and can add to the understanding of the prehistoric world find their way into the public sphere so researchers can use them as they form hypotheses about life long ago.
Like Frandsen, Fiorillo said he was captivated by fossils when he was young. He pointed to private quarries in Wyoming’s Fossil Basin where the public can hunt for fossilized fish, plants and even coprolites. People also can visit a research quarry to learn about paleontology at the nearby Fossil Butte National Monument.
If a child goes home inspired after finding a fossil or seeing one on display at a museum, then that’s awesome, Fiorillo said.
“Maybe they’ll be the next generation,” he said.
The Arizona Museum of Natural History has recently unveiled a fascinating new exhibit that sheds light on ancient animal behavior through the study of fossilized feces, also known as coprolites. These ancient animal droppings provide valuable insights into the diets, habitats, and behaviors of prehistoric creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago.
Coprolites are fossilized remains of animal excrement that have been preserved in sedimentary rock. They can range in size from small pellets to large piles, depending on the size of the animal that produced them. By studying the contents of coprolites, scientists can determine what types of plants and animals were consumed by the ancient creatures, as well as how their digestive systems functioned.
One of the most intriguing aspects of coprolite analysis is the ability to reconstruct ancient food webs and ecosystems. By examining the plant and animal remains found within coprolites, researchers can piece together the intricate relationships between different species and gain a better understanding of how these ecosystems functioned in the past.
The Arizona Museum of Natural History’s collection of coprolites includes samples from a wide range of prehistoric animals, including dinosaurs, mammoths, and ancient mammals. One particularly notable specimen is a coprolite from a Tyrannosaurus rex, which contains bone fragments from a small herbivorous dinosaur that was likely its last meal.
In addition to providing insights into ancient diets, coprolites can also reveal information about the health and behavior of prehistoric animals. For example, the presence of parasites or undigested food particles in coprolites can indicate the presence of disease or stress in the animal that produced them.
Overall, the study of coprolites offers a unique window into the lives of ancient animals and provides valuable information that cannot be obtained through fossilized bones alone. The Arizona Museum of Natural History’s exhibit on ancient animal stories revealed through fossilized feces is sure to captivate visitors and inspire a new appreciation for the hidden secrets that can be uncovered in even the most unlikely of places.
