Those Salmon Creek "turtle Coprolites"

[Diplotomodon]

I'm pretty sure this has been talked over before, but I need a bit of help here. There are "turtle coprolites" for sale everywhere nowadays---Paleogene age, found at this place called Salmon Creek in Lewis County, Washington. Many websites out there say they're siderite concretions. Which makes sense, given comparison with other pseudocoprolites. But there are an equal number of sites defend the original ID, saying that if you slice them open the inside structure explains otherwise. I ony have one and I'm not up to slicing it open, so I can't really confirm that myself. Is there any final conclusion here?

Edited March 29, 2011 by Crimsonraptor

[bruce]

I've collected several of these from Salmon Creek and do not believe that they are coprolites, but I am also puzzled by their origin. If you want to read more, see if your library has this publication or an online pdf. I found it informative and interesting.

"Enigmatic origin of ferruginous ''coprolites'': Evidence from the Miocene Wilkes Formation, southwestern Washington" By George E. Mustoe, Geological Society of America, Bulletin June 2001, v. 113 no. 6, p. 673-681

Some argue that they could be intestinal casts. I don't find that argument convincing. An article on a similar site in Western Canada is:

"Casts of Vertebrate Internal Organs From the Upper Cretaceous of Western Canada" by Paul L. Broughton, Journal of Geology, 1981, vol 89, p.741-749

As you can see, the Salmon Creek ones come in variety of shapes, sizes and colors.

[tracer]

some of the places i have hunted have lots of strange concretionary weirdnesses. some of them have managed to look remarkably similar to um, well, pooprolites. actually, some might even have been considered to resemble pooproheavies.

what i have not done was to gather them all, based on external appearance alone (i don't believe in taste-testing them) and put them in a box and pronounce them pooprolites. especially if they were ferruginous, because i learned quite a while ago that ferruginousities form at the blink of an eye for no apparent reason, and therefore i don't consider it necessary to infer a drop of the drawers, as it were.

lumping based on external morphology is an extraordinarily risky business. and please always remember to never forget that even if you can establish with science <ooh-aah sound> that 99% of squiggley weirdnesses somewhere are pooprolites, that does NOT mean that any given other squiggley thing found there is one. pooprolites and ferruginous concretionary nodularities are not banned from each other's presence by the laws of nature or fizz icks.

your mileage may vary. and i reserve the right to change my post if somebody starts finding a bunch of squinty-eyed turtle fossils in teh area.

[non-remanié]

from what I know, reptilian coprolites are usually the most phosphatic of fossils you can find in a deposit. i personally can't exclude anything including pseudomorphing, but if they are purported siderite and limonite, that seems quite odd to me. looking at them, i would also just have to guess that they are more likely concretions. but the big red one in the upper right hand corner i would love to break open!

also i found the below excerpt from the abstract of Enigmatic origin of ferruginous “coprolites”: Evidence from the Miocene Wilkes Formation, southwestern Washington to be pretty hilarious and quite fitting. it sounds like these might be described as coprolites of the deposit itself!

"Alternatively, carbon stable isotope ratios indicate that sediment extrusion may have been related to emission of biogenic methane during early stages of diagenesis. "

[Wallace Ingram]

Some 60 years ago my dad and family went to salmon creek and collected quite a lot of the coprolite.

I vote for a mammal origin on several points and would like to chat with some one about possible options to a lava flow through a knot hole.

Respectfully

Wallace Ingram

Hood River OR

[Wallace Ingram]

Now, maybe I have your attention.

The samples I have are real varied, some just lumps of - -, others are very defined.

Looking close it would seem the item was expelled and landed on the ground, leaves, then fossilized.

Most birds do not have a urinary system, thus the urine and feces are mixed. A softer stool would be produced.

Birds usually expell a urate sac at the same time as feces.

The shape of the samples would seem to show, a feces, a urate sac, an impact with leaves end, and a sphencter muscle cut-off end.

A three foot "dino - bird" mammal would do the trick. Say an "Ornitholestes" or relative. Meat eating, Pre-historic, cousin to birds.

Maybe even cousin to Owl that expells fur, bones, and hard stuff in a pellet; Thus no bones, seeds in feces.

respectfully submitted

Wallace Ingram

Hood River, OR

[Auspex]

Unfortunately, avian excrement does not in any way resemble the Salmon Creek material. I have strong doubts as to whether these are even of organic origin; the following link is to one site that sums-up most of the scientific rejection of the coprolite idea: LINK

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Since the 1920s, amateur and professional fossil hunters have traveled to a small creek in southwestern Washington to collect masses that look so much like real scat that they are often used in practical jokes. But these deposits are problematic. There are too many sizes. They lack calcium phosphate. No other fossil material has been found nearby. All these clues suggest that the masses are not scat. The great ichnologist Adolf Seilacher of Yale University and Germany’s University of Tübingen suggests that they were intestinal casts. Others favor an “Earth farts” theory: moist ash squeezing through knot holes in hollow logs or mud upwelling into voids produced by methane gas movement results in faux coprolites. George Mustoe, a geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, who has studied the “coprolites” extensively, says that they are sinuous-shaped siderite (an iron-carbonate mineral) deposits. How they were produced is another question, he says: “They must be produced by an anomalous process without a modern analogue. We are fundamentally missing something.”

[Wallace Ingram]

There are tooooo many big words that I am not sure of - anomalous process - sinuous shaped - calcium phosphate - intestinal casts. Back to the dictionary Wally!

My observations simply show some as if soft matter dropped on a surface, recoiled back and forth, then the flow was cut off by a reduction of volume and flow. Some samples show a drop of the last few inches with a stress crack caused by the layover of matter; not something I would expect in a cast situation. Several show a semblance of the urate sac at the side of the beginning of the flow. Not what one would expect from a flow out of a simple knot-hole.

Things I give value to:

Back in the day there was a natural Bridge (dam) across the Columbia River causing a large lake - Kalama Lake, Missoula Lake?

Some animals (bird type) grouped on the west bank, elevation slightly higher near Chelalis, WA

Groups of animals, people often have a latrine area for said group.

Natural bridge fell into oblivion but evidence of same is about.

The area along Salmon Creek, a small bluff now was said latrine.

High water and floods have spread feces matter downstream and to surrounding area.

I still like to give the Bird-type-dino his due. No bones in the area? (not found yet) - The birds flew away from latrine, bones to be found another time another place.

respectfully

Wally

[siteseer]

I have wondered about these specimens too. They can't be from dinosaurs because they come out of a Miocene formation - dinosaurs long gone,.

The question would be what kind of burial and preservation would allow a large amount of separate dung specimens to not only get mineralized and but also maintain its shape? On top of that how would only these "soft-bodied" traces be preserved but no hard parts of the owners? I have seen coprolites in the Green River Formation but in association with fishes and other vertebrates. I have seen them out of the Wenonah. They appear to follow the shape of a shark poop and they are found in association with shark teeth. I believe the Bear Gulch site is also known for coprolites, but again, in association with vertebrate remains.

Where coprolites have been preserved, it is very unusual for it to preserve as three-dimensionally as the Salmon Creek specimens. However, it does happen. In the Green River Formation hunters find it in different shapes and they are three-dimensional owing to a certain set of chemical reactions between the dung, digestive bacteria, and the sedimentary environment. A study of where in the Wilkes Formation these pieces have formed would determine if that kind of preservation was possible there. However, the lack of remains of the sources of all that "coprolite" is not a good indication that it is coprolite.

Washington was more volcanically-active in the geologic past. Could these specimens be some kind of volcanic bomb (but a more ropy-type of lava that might cool rapidly)?

There are tooooo many big words that I am not sure of - anomalous process - sinuous shaped - calcium phosphate - intestinal casts. Back to the dictionary Wally!


My observations simply show some as if soft matter dropped on a surface, recoiled back and forth, then the flow was cut off by a reduction of volume and flow. Some samples show a drop of the last few inches with a stress crack caused by the layover of matter; not something I would expect in a cast situation. Several show a semblance of the urate sac at the side of the beginning of the flow. Not what one would expect from a flow out of a simple knot-hole.

Things I give value to:

Back in the day there was a natural Bridge (dam) across the Columbia River causing a large lake - Kalama Lake, Missoula Lake?
Some animals (bird type) grouped on the west bank, elevation slightly higher near Chelalis, WA
Groups of animals, people often have a latrine area for said group.
Natural bridge fell into oblivion but evidence of same is about.
The area along Salmon Creek, a small bluff now was said latrine.
High water and floods have spread feces matter downstream and to surrounding area.


I still like to give the Bird-type-dino his due. No bones in the area? (not found yet) - The birds flew away from latrine, bones to be found another time another place.

respectfully

Wally

[Carcharodontosaurus]

What does everyone think of the so-called Jurassic dinosaur coprolites from the Morrison Formation that can sometimes be found polished on the market?

[Wallace Ingram]

The micene era would be from sampling the soil - the soil is the age not necessarly the mammal?

I have not seen any books on miocene mammals/birds habitat to give the mammal a name or title. Maybe the miocene "dino" is closer to an owl.

It would seem to me if these excrusions were mechanical or inorganic the would be very much the same shape and size, and some what stacked on top of each other rather than pinched off and dropped again. My pieces look more like the same species but different ages and slightly different diet. A lot of the same birds were together, thus a lot of the small samples, a few large one would follow the "grandpa" of the flock/herd.

My understanding, an ostrich type may deficate some 40 time a day, that's a lot of - - .

respectfully

[Auspex]

I'm afraid that you have some notions which are simply not supported by any actual evidence, and your analytical process involves highly imaginative leaps of logic. In a thought experiment, this is a fine and wondrous thing, as long as the experiment leads to new thoughts; simply reiterating the same interpretation (but with more inventive speculation) does not lead to the core of the truth.

[Blastoid]

No bones of excretors found with the excrement, hence it isn't excrement, nothing complicated about that. How could vast quantities of something that can wash away in a single rainfall be preserved, without a single good sturdy bone anywhere near?

One would think they could be quickly and easily debunked by cutting, polishing, and examination under a microscope.

Hard to understand why this is still being debated!

[Wallace Ingram]

BECAUSE - we can not find the knot holes.

Respectfully

[Auspex]

I agree that the knothole theory has, shall we say, holes in it. Still, some geologic process whereby sediment was extruded (not necessarily through knotholes) seems as likely an explanation as any. Other than a generally suggestive morphology, there is not much to support an organic origin.

[Wallace Ingram]

TOOO far out on a limb for me. I'll keep looking for a zoo mammal/bird with do-do like the samples.

I've got about 35 pounds of the stuff, some are rain washed; others sun dried, checked/cracked on the surface, others as good looking as the day they were made. A lot of small pieces - kinda nondescript and a few to big to be a known bird. Some day I will get to a zoo and check things out on site.

Have not been back to Toledo area since childhood (1950's); has anyone had access to the area lately?

[Auspex]

One of the (many) problems with the coprolite idea is the tremendous variation in size and shape. Just sayin'.

[painshill]

I had been convinced by Dolf Seilacher’s proposition. The material is siderite and (at least some of it) represents intestinal cast material (cololites). Some of the items bear what is interpreted as the impression of the taenia coli - a ribbon of smooth muscle that occurs along one side of the large intestine. There’s are good pictures here, which also show the high morphological consistency that can be observed (which would not be expected in mineral deposits that have a non-biological origin):

http://www.newark.osu.edu/facultystaff/personal/jstjohn/Documents/Cool-fossils/Cololites.htm

Seilacher et al. (2001) posit that the sideritization was the result of bacterial activity and diagenesis in circumstances that favoured dissolution of phosphatic material (bones, teeth) & precipitation of iron carbonate (siderite).

In those circumstances, it would be expected that other odd siderite concretions would also be found that are not necessarily cololites or coprolites or of biological origin. As Tracer pointed out in the earlier part of the post, siderite concretions will form at the drop of a hat (rather than a drop of the pants) in a very short time if the conditions are right.

Edited November 4, 2013 by painshill