Coprolite

This beautiful iron-like mineral is in fact a fossilized turtle faeces, collected as part of our March Delight & Disgust open day. This gloriously knobbly stool was hand burnished by technician Darren and Tim Laughlin, disproving the old adage that you ‘can’t polish a turd’.

Coprolites are a firm favourite with archaeologists and palaeontologists, as these mineralized or dessicated poos give us some of the best evidence for reconstructing ancient diets and health. These well-preserved excretions typically contain seeds, fibres and bones that can tell us what was being eaten, as well as parasites, bacteria and viruses that can tell us about the health of the defecator. The first studies of fossilized fecal matter were performed in the 1820s on dinosaur excrement, but the first specialist in human coprolites emerged in the 1960s: Canadian botanist Dr Eric Callen was the butt of colleagues’ jokes when he first started restoring fossilized poos to their former glory in order to study their contents, but the importance of his faecal research has since been recognised.

This waste-based mineral is occasionally used by lapidarists instead of their usual precious gems, and made into pendants or cufflinks. As an example of one of many disgusting materials that are made delightful by artisans (such as the use of urine in the indigo dyeing processes) it shows that disgust is a slippery category that changes over time, and is a response to materials that break boundaries, question conventions and evoke emotions.