Coprolite

 

This was collected in 1992 .
Rock Type: Iron carbonate (siderite)
Formation: Kanawha
Interval: Coalburg seam
Age: Middle Pennsylvanian Period, approx. 307 million years.

 

Location: Nicholas County, West Virginia; Ramp Run Surface Mine #1, located about 12 miles north of Summersville, West Virginia. Turn west off route 19 north of Summersville onto Spruce Run Road. Follow it about 7 miles. It is now mostly reclaimed, but there is still some darn good collecting along the exposed rock rip-rap outslope of the sediment ditch along Buffalo Creek.


Coprolites are the fossilized excrement of animals. Yes, quite gross, but true. The animals that produced these creations, left few other traces, so there is no way to know what species it may have been, although there were several varieties of primitive reptiles evolving at the time. They were ancestors to the dinosaurs, pre-dating the earliest dinosaurs by some 80 million years.


Okay, so its not a plant fossil.