On Monday, the Museum of Eastern Denmark announced a finding of a 66-million-year-old piece of fossilized vomit. The specimen was discovered by local fossil hunter Peter Bennicke.
Bennicke made the remarkable find during a walk along the Cliffs of Stevns, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its rich fossil deposits. While splitting a piece of chalk, he noticed unusual fragments embedded within it. These fragments turned out to be fossilized remains of sea lilies—marine creatures that thrived during the Cretaceous period.
Paleontologist Jesper Milàn expressed his excitement over the discovery. "It's a really unusual discovery," he said, according to Politiken. "It provides important new knowledge about the relationship between predators and prey and the food chains in the Cretaceous Sea," he added.
Experts believe that the vomit is composed of at least two different species of sea lilies that were consumed by a fish, which later regurgitated the indigestible parts. "Sea lilies are not a particularly nutritious diet, as they mainly consist of calcareous plates held together by very few soft parts," Milàn noted, according to Ekstra Bladet. "But here is an animal, probably a kind of fish, that 66 million years ago ate sea lilies that lived on the bottom of the Cretaceous Sea and regurgitated the skeletal parts again," he noted.
In a statement, the Museum of Eastern Denmark emphasized the significance of the find. "This type of discovery is considered very important for reconstructing past ecosystems because it provides important information on which animal was eaten by whom," according to the announcement.
The Cretaceous period, which lasted from 143 million years ago to 66 million years ago, was a time of evolutionary development in both terrestrial and marine environments. While dinosaurs dominated the land, the seas were teeming with diverse life forms, including the sea lilies featured in the discovery.
Although the fossilized vomit dates back to the era of the dinosaurs, it does not originate from a dinosaur. As reported by Stern, the vomit was produced by a fish that lived in the Cretaceous Sea. This distinction underscores the diverse range of species that existed during that time and the complex food webs that connected them.
This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq