Rock hounds don’t say ‘eww’ to dino poo

BY DAVID ZIZZO Comments 0
Published: November 4, 2009

Longtime rancher Jim Williams knows it when he sees it. Anyone would, he figures.

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Oklahoma Mineral and Gem Show

→When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

→Where: Modern Living Building, State Fair Park, NW 10 and May.

→Admission: Adults, $6; children 12 and younger and Boy/Girl Scouts/Campfire members in uniform, free.

→Information: 485-9446.

"If you looked at one of these patties,” Williams says, "you would say, ‘That is a patty of poo.’”

But the droppings Williams has collected, the ones he travels to a favorite canyon in Utah to find, are not from your typical prairie-prowling bovine. They’re from dinosaurs. That’s right, a large creature once relieved itself, and 140 million or so years later, Williams came along and found the pile, or what used to be a pile. By then, it had become "agatized,” or turned to stone. Buried under volcanic ash or other material, silica under intense pressure and in the absence of oxygen impregnated the dung’s molecules one-by-one and replaced them over the millennia.

Mineralized meadow muffins aren’t the only rocks the 70-year-old Coyle man is interested in. Like most rock hounds, he’s into any intriguing geological oddity, from rocks that fluoresce under ultraviolet light to geodes that hide crystal artwork inside. Williams is a member of the Oklahoma Mineral and Gem Society, a group of people who are fascinated with the variety, beauty and permanence of all things mineral.

"Most of us are just amateur geologists or rock hounds,” Vernon Dorton, 73, said. The Blanchard man is chairman of the organization’s annual exhibition, the Oklahoma Mineral and Gem Show, which will be Saturday and Sunday at State Fair Park.

Many members of the society over the years have collected dinosaur dung, Dorton said. "The real name of it is coprolite.”

That name, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, was coined by English geologist William Buckland using the Greek words for dung (kopros) and stone (lithos.) Researchers have found bits of bone and other remnants of dinosaur dining in coprolite, so it has been useful in the study of the creatures’ diets. For rock hounds, it’s just interesting stuff, especially when it’s cracked open and you can see inside.

"It’s almost always colored,” said Paul Cinnamon, 72, a retired radio and TV engineer who lives west of Yukon and is the Oklahoma Mineral and Gem Society’s president. "Dino dung comes in various colors, from reds to blues, purples, yellow and black.” Color depends on what it was buried under and what minerals leached into it, he said.

A favorite dino dung hunting ground used by society members is a remote canyon in Utah, where specimens buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface wash from the walls and slide down slopes. Most of the coprolite shatters, and rock hunters often cut and polish those pieces to make jewelry or other items, such as a bolo tie Cinnamon owns. Rarely, a piece of petrified poo will be found intact, like two specimens Williams has. Each is at least 2 feet across and weighs 70 pounds or more.

When collectors talk to grade school kids about their hobby, they usually take some coprolite. There’s nothing like passing around polished pieces of stone, encouraging kids to look closely, even take a sniff, then telling them it’s dino dung.

"Ewww!”

"That’s one of the things we have fun with,” Cinnamon said.