Apocrypha

In the world of science one of the signal honours is to have a new species of something or other named after you. It's a bit like being mentioned in dispatches.

Coprolites are the petrified faeces of long-extinct animals. As they cannot be ascribed to a particular animal they're given a scientific name of their own for the purposes of description and study.

Back in the dark ages when I was a student there was an urban myth about the young research palaeontologist at one of our newer universities whose life had been made a misery by an overwheening boor of a departmental head. The story was that he got his revenge by describing a newly-discovered coprolite in an august periodical and naming the new species after the head of his department. The idea of this bloke having to accept the honour with all good grace while everyone and his dog knew that his subordinate had called him a fossilised shit in a peer-reviewed article tickled us no end.