"Records of warfare…embalmed in the everlasting hills": a History of Early Coprolite Research

Although 'coprolite' was introduced as a term for fossil faeces by William Buckland in 1829, specimens had been described and figured in earlier literature. John Woodward described specimens from the Chalk as fossil larch cones a century before Buckland's work, an identity later confirmed by James Parkinson in 1804. Gideon Mantell described more Chalk specimens in 1822, whilst Francois- Xavier de Burtin described further spiral forms from the Brussels area as fossil nuts. Buckland first identified fossil hyaena faeces from the Ipswichian cave deposits of Kirkdale in Yorkshire, and then applied his experience to specimens from the Jurassic of Lyme Regis and the Rhaetic Bone Bed of the Severn estuary area. He developed a nomenclature for the specimens that he described, the first such attempt in ichnology. A rich network of domestic and foreign colleagues and correspondents either supplied him with information and further specimens, or applied his conclusions to their own material. Buckland's coprolite research engendered good-natured ribaldry from his colleagues. The first half of the nineteenth century was a time of radical change in thinking amongst the natural sciences in general, and in geology in particular. A cutting edge contributor to this rapid pace of conceptual change was William Buckland who worked tirelessly as a politician for science, gave many a helping hand to up and coming colleagues, developed a rich network of contacts and friends, and acted as a popular figurehead for geology. Among the many innovations for which he was at least partly responsible was the growing appreciation that the fossil record sampled a diversity of once living communities, rather than being the chaotic record of a universal deluge. It was Buckland who first recognized that in the same rocks that sported the panoply of body fossil such as shells, teeth and bones, there were also traces of the daily activities of once living organisms - footprints and faeces (Duffin, 2006). Coprolites were first identified by William Buckland, who also gave us the name, effectively making him a founder of palaeoichnology.