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A fresh look at sideritic "coprolites"

¹ Adolf Seilacher, Cynthia Marshall, H. Catherine W. Skinner, and Takanobu Tsuihiji. Department of Geology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520. geodolf{at}gmx.decatherine.skinner{at}yale.edu
² Present address: Museum of the Rockies, 600 Kagy Boulevard, Bozeman, Montana 59717

Sideritic "coprolites" from the late Miocene of southwest Washington, the Upper Cretaceous of Saskatchewan and Madagascar, and the Permian of China have often been claimed to be pseudofossils. They are here interpreted as intestinal casts (cololites) prefossilized by bacterial activity and later transformed into siderite with no traces of original food particles left. All occurrences are found within fluvial overbank deposits that carry no other vertebrate remains. Their absence could be due to aquifer roll-fronts that destroyed phosphatic bones and teeth but favored siderite precipitation.