"If you looked at one of these patties,” Williams says, "you would say, ‘That is a patty of poo.’”
But the droppings Williams has collected, the ones he travels to a favorite canyon in Utah to find, are not from your typical prairie-prowling bovine. They’re from dinosaurs. That’s right, a large creature once relieved itself, and 140 million or so years later, Williams came along and found the pile, or what used to be a pile. By then, it had become "agatized,” or turned to stone. Buried under volcanic ash or other material, silica under intense pressure and in the absence of oxygen impregnated the dung’s molecules one-by-one and replaced them over the millennia.
Mineralized meadow muffins aren’t the only rocks the 70-year-old Coyle man is interested in. Like most rock hounds, he’s into any intriguing geological oddity, from rocks that fluoresce under ultraviolet light to geodes that hide crystal artwork inside. Williams is a member of the Oklahoma Mineral and Gem Society, a group of people who are fascinated with the variety, beauty and permanence of all things mineral.
"Most of us are just amateur geologists or rock hounds,” Vernon Dorton, 73, said. The Blanchard man is chairman of the organization’s annual exhibition, the Oklahoma Mineral and Gem Show, which will be Saturday and Sunday at State Fair Park.
Many members of the society over the years have collected dinosaur dung, Dorton said. "The real name of it is coprolite.”
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