1,200 Pieces of Fossilized Poop Earn Collector Guinness Record

George Frandsen has been amassing prehistoric poo since he was a palaeontology scholar in school.

Credit score: Guinness World Data

A set of 1,277 items of prehistoric poop might not sound like one thing price celebrating, however one man's stash of historic feces has set a brand new Guinness World File.

George Frandsen, from the US, studied paleontology in school, which is when he started amassing fossilized poop. His assortment now consists of specimens from 15 states within the U.S. and eight nations worldwide. The 1,277-piece assortment was documented on the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, Florida, incomes Frandsen the Guinness World File title for world's largest assortment of coprolites, or fossilized feces.

"What received me considering discovering and amassing coprolites is the story they inform of prehistoric life and ecosystems," Frandsen mentioned in a Guinness World Data video. "No different fossils can let you know a lot as coprolites can." [Gallery of Wonders: The Weirdest World Records]

The collector defined that the poop fossils include inclusions, or bits of what the animal had ingested. These inclusions can vary from items of crops to bones and scales, and even typically enamel.

Frandsen mentioned that although some folks could also be cautious of a set of poop, the coprolites are exhausting as a rock and do not odor.

Essentially the most prized piece of poop in his assortment is called "Valuable." The mummified excrement is his largest "true-to-form" coprolite specimen, weighing greater than four lbs. (1.92 kilograms), Frandsen mentioned.

"Why I say true-to-form is as a result of it nonetheless carries the unique type from when it was made 20 million years in the past," he mentioned.

"Valuable" is dated to the Miocene epoch, 23.eight million to five.three million years in the past, and was present in South Carolina. An enormous crocodilian species that measured round 20 ft (6 meters) lengthy produced the prehistoric poop, in response to the Guinness World Data.

Coprolites can vary in worth from just a few to many hundreds of , Frandsen mentioned. As an example, in 2014, one of many longest-known coprolites bought at public sale for greater than $10,000. Frandsen mentioned that dimension, distinct impressions, ripples and "the basic poo look" make a coprolite costly or precious.