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A Danish fossil hunter discovered a 66-million-year-old chunk of fossilised vomit, likely from a fish that couldn't digest sea lilies.
A regurgitated clump of sea lily fragments from at least two different species of sea lilies that were eaten during the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago. Picture: AFP/Sten Lennart Jakobsen
The Museum of East Zealand said this week that a piece of fossilised vomit, dating back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth, has been discovered in Denmark.
A local amateur fossil hunter made the find on the Cliffs of Stevns, a Unesco-listed site south of Copenhagen.
While on a walk, Peter Bennicke found the vomit. It turned out to be pieces of sea lily in a piece of chalk.
He then took the fragments to a museum for examination. The museum dated the vomit to the end of the Cretaceous era, some 66 million years ago.
According to experts, the vomit comprises at least two sea lily species. It was likely eaten by a fish that threw up the parts it could not digest.
“This type of find… is considered very important when reconstructing past ecosystems because it provides important information about which animals were eaten by which,” the museum said in a press release.
Paleontologist Jesper Milan hailed the discovery as “truly an unusual find”, adding it helped explain the relationships in the prehistoric food chain.
“Sea lilies are not a particularly nutritious diet. They consist mainly of calcareous plates held together by a few soft parts,” he said.
“But here is an animal, probably some fish, that 66 million years ago ate sea lilies. The lilies lived at the bottom of the Cretaceous sea and regurgitated the skeletal parts.”
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