AGE: ~180 million years old (approximate)

LOCATION: Madagascar

Look, if you’re thinking that this rock looks a bit like animal droppings…. You’d be right. Coprolites are fossil poops, left by animals from the ancient past. As the good book says, everyone poops, and the animals of yore are no exception. Which is a really good thing for the researchers who want to know about those animals, since fossil poop can tell you a lot about the animal that left it behind.

There’s some obvious things we can learn about, like the animal’s diet. But we can also find fossilized parasites stuck in that dung, too, which tells you about the animal’s health and their ecosystem. Plus both the shape and the, umm, inclusions, can tell you about that animal’s metabolism and digestion, not just what they ate. Which is why researchers certainly don’t think these fossils stink.