For archaeologists interested in understanding what people ate, how they processed their food, and what plant and animal resources they were exploiting in a specific time and place, a directly dated coprolite is a uniquely informative specimen.

Parasites are another category of preserved content.

The eggs of intestinal parasites — roundworms, hookworms, and other helminths — are remarkably resistant to decay and can survive in coprolites for thousands of years.

The presence of specific parasite species in a coprolite can reveal something about the general health status of the producing population and, in some cases, about the geographic origins of those people, since different human populations carried different parasite assemblages depending on the specific environments they had inhabited.

Pollen preserved in coprolites documents the plants that were seasonally active in the environment when the feces were deposited — contributing to paleoecological reconstruction and, in some cases, helping to confirm the season during which a site was occupied.