digging for buried crap
LJ Idol week 3 prompt: coprolite.
Coprolite: not to be confused with coprophile - do not type that into Google. seriously, just don't - a coprolite is fossilized animal dung. Excrement. Poop. Bodily waste. Droppings. Shit. Fossilized and lying around for us to find. Goodie.
I told a friend of mine about this prompt, wringing my hands and saying "What the hell am I going to write about this week!?" He promptly responded with a huge shit-eating (pardon the pun) grin and said, "Well, there's that scientist guy who spent his entire life collecting coprolites and made a kitchen table out of it or something..." I took a long pause after that, to contemplate this new tidbit. My friends have access to the strangest information sometimes.
Apparently it's even true! The scientist in question was named William Buckland. He coined the term "coprolite", which he proposed after Mary Anning described what she thought were bezoar stones. (Side note: the only reason I know about bezoars in the first place is Harry Potter. Who says children's books never taught you anything?) I could go on a sociologist's rant about how men get all the credit for something that women did the legwork for, but I'll spare you, especially since I don't know more details. Instead, let me just say that Buckland sounds like a weirdo. In addition to the coprolite table, he also had a goal of eating every known animal and did much of his fieldwork wearing academic robes.
This is starting to sound more and more like Harry Potter.....
As a brief (unrelated) meditation on the term, I thought about how, when Jurassic Park came out, I briefly wanted to be a paleontologist. It looked like being on a never-ending treasure hunt to me, always discovering something and making history come alive again. Unfortunately, that's less of a reality for paleontologists than probably anybody would like to admit. But think about it: so much of our past is buried just under our feet. We won't find a lot of it. Maybe that's why we're doomed to keeping repeating the past; we may never find the evidence we need to correct our mistakes.
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥
Coprolite: not to be confused with coprophile - do not type that into Google. seriously, just don't - a coprolite is fossilized animal dung. Excrement. Poop. Bodily waste. Droppings. Shit. Fossilized and lying around for us to find. Goodie.
I told a friend of mine about this prompt, wringing my hands and saying "What the hell am I going to write about this week!?" He promptly responded with a huge shit-eating (pardon the pun) grin and said, "Well, there's that scientist guy who spent his entire life collecting coprolites and made a kitchen table out of it or something..." I took a long pause after that, to contemplate this new tidbit. My friends have access to the strangest information sometimes.
Apparently it's even true! The scientist in question was named William Buckland. He coined the term "coprolite", which he proposed after Mary Anning described what she thought were bezoar stones. (Side note: the only reason I know about bezoars in the first place is Harry Potter. Who says children's books never taught you anything?) I could go on a sociologist's rant about how men get all the credit for something that women did the legwork for, but I'll spare you, especially since I don't know more details. Instead, let me just say that Buckland sounds like a weirdo. In addition to the coprolite table, he also had a goal of eating every known animal and did much of his fieldwork wearing academic robes.
This is starting to sound more and more like Harry Potter.....
As a brief (unrelated) meditation on the term, I thought about how, when Jurassic Park came out, I briefly wanted to be a paleontologist. It looked like being on a never-ending treasure hunt to me, always discovering something and making history come alive again. Unfortunately, that's less of a reality for paleontologists than probably anybody would like to admit. But think about it: so much of our past is buried just under our feet. We won't find a lot of it. Maybe that's why we're doomed to keeping repeating the past; we may never find the evidence we need to correct our mistakes.
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥