With the success of Steven Spielberg’s box-office juggernauts (“Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World”)—as well as the notable sale by Sothebys of “Sue” (the world’s most complete T-Rex) for $8.3 million–dino fever right now is downright epidemic.
No surprise then that, even after the unfortunate flop of the “Land of the Lost” remake, business is booming for Boonman Poonyathiro, a Thai entrepreneur capitalizing on the prehistoric craze, but with a twist. Remember “Pet Rocks”? Well, here’s something just as useless: prehistoric poop.
Hold on to those “How and Why Wonder Books.”
In Bangkok, smart shoppers are literally buying up, er, crap. Which is proving a boon to dinosaur-excrement-expert Boonman, who has been flogging endangered feces out of his little curiosity shop at 1218 New Road: the seriously misnamed “House of Gems.” Tourists and Thais can’t get enough of his petrified prehistoric poop—100-percent genuine dinosaur dung.
“Welcome to my shop!” beams Boonman, apparently a devout Buddhist. Inside, there are no aggressive salesmen energetically hawking diamonds, sapphires, and rubies, but instead a mild-mannered gentleman reminiscent of the Geico Gecko who seemingly would rather talk all day than sell anything.
On shelves everywhere are what look like just a bunch of rocks–suitable gifts for Charlie Brown’s Halloween bag perhaps–but nah-ah, not for you. “People say I’m crazy for all these dinosaur droppings,” Boonman blurts. “In Thai, they call me ‘Ajarn Ajom’ (Professor Poop). My wife says I care more about droppings than about her, since every day I am touching and dusting them.”
With perhaps Thailand’s largest private collection of multimillion-year-old coprolites (dino droppings) and tektites (extraterrestrial rocks), Boonman, a.k.a. “Dinosaur Daddy,” has at last landed his little prelapsarian latrine on the map. Since discovering rock-hard dino dung in northeast Thailand in 1980, he has scraped the very bowels of the earth, foraging for feces all over the country.
“Before Jurassic Park, there wasn’t many [sic] interest. For millions of years the dung was worthless. After the movie, I sold an eight-kilo piece to a Japanese man. Very big. Then it was very popular, and I increased the price. Before it was one baht per gram, now I make it five baht!” Boonman cracks with evident hilarity.
Thais traditionally (and, alas, mistakenly) refer to dino droppings as “the Dung of the Lord Buddha’s Cow.” To make wishes come true, the sacred droppings are soaked in water, which “Middle Path” Theravada Buddhist Thais either then drink or bathe in. They are also polished and worn around necks as good-luck amulets or kept in houses to protect them from fires.
At first, Boonman thought some samples acquired from villagers were holy cow patties. But the industrious Stone Age gent was polishing pieces one day in his shop when a Brit from the International Gemology Institute happened by this “discovery,” confirming the weird ugly rocks were in fact dinosaur dung.
“I was very happy. I gave some to a museum. They put my name down for giving it to them,” Boonman remembers studious-faced, as if aiming a nonsequitur deep into the subterranean plumbing of the earth.
Though it is impossible to match species with feces—say, T. Rex turds or Triceratops chips–from the droppings you get an idea of the dinosaurs’ diet and dining habits. “The droppings come in different colors so we can tell if the dinosaurs were vegetarians or meat-eaters. “
“See, this one is much darker and heavier: a carnivore,” Boonman says, weighing a piece of Jurassic poop on his palm.
Apparently, the vegans’ are much lighter.
Boonman believes what the dinosaurs left behind, Jurassic scat, can tell us a lot about what happened to them. “Some people even think dinosaurs died of AIDS. But I believe the dinosaurs are wiped out by a big comet striking earth.”
Boonman pauses for effect. “Boom!”
Still, could coprolites uncontain answers to one of the world’s most baffling mysteries? Boonman, inexplicably resembling a friendly bespectacled Brontosaurus from Aesop’s Fables, is philosophical about this possibility: “Sometimes I think, why not give all my dung to Parliament? It might make them realize humans may one day be extinct just like the dinosaurs. . . .”
