The bromalite collection at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), with descriptions of new ichnotaxa and notes on other significant coprolite collections

The National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.) contains one of the largest collections of vertebrate coprolites (and other bromalites) in the world. Specimens come from the middle-upper Paleozoic (Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian), Mesozoic (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous), Tertiary (Paleocene, Eocene, Miocene, Oligocene) and Quaternary (Pleistocene). We recognize two new ichnotaxa in the collection: Iuloeidocoprus mantelli, ichnogen et ichnosp. nov. – a widespread Late Cretaceous coprolite, and Hirabromus seilacheri, ichnogen et ichnosp. nov. – a cololite known from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Other important bromalites collections are at the: (1) New Mexico Museum of Natural and Science, whose extensive vertebrate trace fossil collection (including bromalites) is large, diverse and rapidly growing; (2) the Buckland Collection at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History, the oldest collection of coprolites in the world; and (3) The Natural History Museum, a modest-sized but diverse collection.