From Coprolites to FGS: An Unexpected Journey

A couple of months ago, I was invited to become a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. It was a nice moment of recognition, and one I was very happy to accept. At the same time, I’m also aware that this is not entirely unusual - learned societies are, understandably, looking to broaden their memberships, and a Professor of Geoarchaeology is an obvious easy win. Still, there is something genuinely meaningful about being welcomed into an organisation with such a long and influential history. The Geological Society of London, founded in 1807, is the oldest geological society in the world, and one that has played a central role in shaping how we understand the Earth. It has been home to many of the figures whose work underpins not just geology, but also archaeology, palaeoecology, and environmental science more broadly. To be part of that lineage, however loosely, feels significant.

I am especially happy as the Society actually is closely linked to the history of my own research. Coprolites (fossilised faeces, for the unfamiliar reader) have a well documented origin story within geology, and one which also says a lot about the unequal recognition of women historically. Mary Anning, working on the cliffs at Lyme Regis, was the one who consistently found these curious spiral and pebble-like objects, then referred to as ‘bezoar stones’, often within the body cavities of ichthyosaur skeletons she excavated. Crucially, she paid close attention to their context and contents. When broken open, they contained fish bones, scales, and other undigested remains, and she appears to have recognised that they were likely fossilised faeces. 

William Buckland, already an established geologist and Fellow of the Geological Society, took these observations and specimens, many of them supplied directly by Anning, and developed them into a formal scientific argument. Building on comparative work (including his earlier studies of fossil dung in cave deposits), he demonstrated that these objects were indeed the fossilised excrement of ancient animals. In 1829, he presented this interpretation to the Geological Society and formally coined the term coprolite, embedding the idea within scientific discourse. In other words, Anning’s careful field observation and recognition laid the groundwork, while Buckland’s institutional position allowed him to formalise, name, and disseminate the concept. 

Mary Anning is much better known today, thanks to many efforts to promote and acknowledge her fundamental contributions, but at the time, many of her contributions went largely unacknowledged. That Buckland himself did acknowledge Anning’s role matters, but so too does the fact that she could not present the work herself, or share in the same institutional recognition. Despite her extraordinary contributions, she was never eligible to join; women were not admitted as Fellows until 1919. It is likely that her working class background also played a part in the under-recognition of her work. It seems there was a complicated relationship between Anning and the Society. Henry De la Beche, then President of the Geological Society, composed a eulogy for her which he delivered at a meeting of the Society and later published in its Quarterly Transactions. It was the first time such a tribute had been given to a woman, and the honour was typically reserved for Fellows. Members of the Society also contributed to a stained-glass window in her memory, an unusual and telling recognition for someone who had never been permitted to join their ranks.

There is something quite resonant, then, about working on broadly similar kinds of material (albeit from much more recent contexts), as a women with a working class background, and finding myself invited into that same institutional space. My own research has focused on coprolites not as deep-time fossils but as archaeological materials, embedded in human histories and environments. In a sense, it is the same curiosity, what can we learn from what organisms leave behind, applied across radically different timescales.

The statue of Mary Anning at Lyme Regis, by Matt Brown.