Coprolite

A Koprolith ( from Ancient Greek κόπρος Kopros " feces " and ancient Greek λίθος líthos "stone" ) or Kotstein consists of the fossil excrement (feces ) in mostly phosphatic preservation. They belong to the trace fossils and are therefore referred to as droppings. The oldest known coprolites are from the Ordovician. The term was introduced by the British palaeontologist William Buckland in 1824.

Coprolites play as a source of microfossils an important role, because they can show the nutritional composition of meat and fish eaters because of they contain undigested biological hard parts such as shells and shell parts, but also of bone remains. Droppings can be assigned to their producers only in a few cases. In 1998, it first became possible to isolate DNA fragments from coprolites and prepare for sequence analysis.

1842 in Suffolk founded the theologian and naturalist John Stevens Henslow in Falkenham and Kirton mining on coprolites and their use as fertilizers.