An Arizona museum tells the stories of ancient animals through their fossilized poop

WILLIAMS, Ariz. (AP) — A technique to assist inform how a Tyrannosaurus rex digested meals is to have a look at its poop.

Bone fragments in a chunk of fossilized excrement at a brand new museum in northern Arizona — aptly known as the Poozeum — are among the many tinier bits of proof that point out T. rex wasn’t a lot of a chewer, however slightly swallowed entire chunks of prey.

The pattern is certainly one of greater than 7,000 on show on the museum that opened in Could in Williams, a city recognized for its Wild West exhibits alongside Route 66, wildlife sights and a railway to Grand Canyon Nationwide Park.

The Poozeum signal includes a vivid inexperienced T. rex cartoon character sitting on a bathroom to seize consideration from the buzzing neon lights and muffled Nineteen Fifties music emanating from different companies.

Inside, show instances full of coprolites — fossilized feces from animals that lived tens of millions of years in the past — line the partitions. They vary from minuscule termite droppings to an enormous specimen that weighs 20 kilos (9 kilograms).

Poozeum’s president and curator, George Frandsen, purchased his first chunk of fossilized feces from a store in Moab, Utah, when he was 18, he mentioned. He already cherished dinosaurs and fossils however had by no means heard of fossilized poop. From there, his fascination grew.

“It was humorous. It was gross,” he mentioned. “However I realized in a short time it might inform us a lot about our prehistoric previous and the way necessary they’re to the fossil report.”

Coprolites aren’t tremendously widespread however they’ll make up nearly all of fossils discovered at some websites, and other people have realized increasingly more about them over the previous few a long time, mentioned Anthony Fiorillo, government director of the New Mexico Museum of Pure Historical past and Science.

It may be exhausting to establish them and in some instances, specimens that gave the impression to be coprolites — with their pinched ends and striations — have been examined additional and finally reclassified as one thing else.

“There’s plenty of sedimentary processes that may produce an extrusion of sentimental mud to a special layer,” he mentioned. “So take into consideration your toothpaste, for instance. If you squeeze it, there might be some striations on that toothpaste.”

Fossil fanatic Brandee Reynolds lately visited the museum together with her husband after discovering it was a brief detour from a street journey they’d deliberate.

“I principally discover sharp tooth and issues like that,” she mentioned. “I haven’t actually discovered a complete lot of coprolite, however who doesn’t love coprolite?”

A spotlight of Frandsen’s assortment is a specimen that holds a Guinness World Document for being the biggest coprolite left by a carnivorous animal. Measuring greater than 2 ft (61 centimeters) lengthy and over 6 inches (15 centimeters) large, Frandsen mentioned it’s believed to be from a T. rex, given the place it was discovered on a non-public ranch in South Dakota in 2019.

Frandsen additionally holds the report for the biggest licensed coprolite assortment of 1,277 items, earned in 2015 when it was verified on the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, Florida.

His assortment now stands at about 8,000 specimens. He doesn’t have the room to show all of it within the museum in Williams and options some on-line.

No want to fret about any scent or germs, Frandsen mentioned. These evaporated tens of millions of years in the past, when the feces have been coated with sediment and changed by minerals, making them rock-hard.

Location, form, dimension and different supplies like bones or vegetation can decide if one thing is a coprolite, however not essentially which creature deposited it, Fiorillo mentioned.

“I believe nearly all of us would say, let’s pump the brakes on that and simply be completely happy if we might decide carnivore, herbivore after which take a look at presumably these meals cycles inside every of these broad teams,” mentioned Fiorillo, a skilled paleontologist and writer of books on dinosaurs.

Ideally, Fiorillo mentioned he hopes fossils which are uncommon and may add to the understanding of the prehistoric world discover their means into the general public sphere so researchers can use them as they type hypotheses about life way back.

Like Frandsen, Fiorillo mentioned he was captivated by fossils when he was younger. He pointed to non-public quarries in Wyoming’s Fossil Basin the place the general public can hunt for fossilized fish, vegetation and even coprolites. Folks can also go to a analysis quarry to find out about paleontology on the close by Fossil Butte Nationwide Monument.

If a toddler goes house impressed after discovering a fossil or seeing one on show at a museum, then that’s superior, Fiorillo mentioned.

“Possibly they’ll be the subsequent era,” he mentioned.