A lump of chewed up crinoid fragments from 66 million years in the past is now at a museum in Denmark.
Sten Lennart Jakobsen/East Zealand Museum
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Sten Lennart Jakobsen/East Zealand Museum
About 66 million years in the past, simply earlier than the mass extinction that burnt up the dinosaurs, a fish chewed up and spit out some sea creatures. Unbeknownst to that fish, its rejected meal used to be preserved in fossil shape. And it is now arrived at a museum in Denmark. The fossil used to be discovered at Stevns Klint, a cliff in jap Denmark identified for its fossil report and essential geologic historical past. Fossil hunter Peter Bennicke found out it in a work of chalk on the UNESCO International Heritage website and taken it to Denmark’s East Zealand Museum. “It’s really an peculiar to find,” Jesper Milàn, a curator at one of the most museum’s shows, stated in a press unencumber. “Any such to find supplies essential new wisdom in regards to the courting between predators and prey and the meals chains within the Cretaceous sea.”
Why this meal used to be spat out There is a fancy phrase for fossilized vomit: regurgitalite. Paul Olsen, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia College who used to be no longer concerned within the fossil to find, stated regurgitalites aren’t uncommon, however this one is an “particularly great instance.”
“This actual fossil, for those who glance moderately on the symbol that is supplied, you spot that the perimeters of the fossils are very sharp and transparent. And that tells you that this subject material didn’t move into the digestive device of no matter used to be doing the chewing,” he says. (And to be technical, it is not vomit, as a result of that suggests meals reaches the tummy. He calls it a “gastric ejection” as an alternative, likening it to chewing on and spitting out sunflower seed shells.) The predator used to be making an attempt to devour sea lilies, also referred to as crinoids. The deep-sea creatures, which may well be improper for crops, nonetheless exist as of late. The fossil additionally seems to include bryozoans, Olsen says, very tiny creatures which might be also referred to as moss animals, however it is unclear in the event that they have been a part of the fish’s tried meal on this case. Each crinoids and moss animals could be not unusual in that space on the backside of the ocean on the time.
Sadly for this fish, crinoids would not have a lot diet and feature a coating of mucus that may be poisonous to fish. “It may well be that no matter made this regurgitalite used to be cruising about searching for fish, perhaps slightly determined for meals, and choosing up crinoids and no matter else it might in its mouth, chewing it up. And this actual mouthful will have been actually foul. And that is the reason why there are nonetheless bits of unchewed crinoid in it,” he says. There have been 1000’s of species of fish within the space on the time, so it is not transparent what form of fish did the chewing.
Vomit is considered one of various kinds of “hint fossils” Regurgitalites are one form of “bromalite” — fossilized digestive subject material. There also are colonites, the place the meals used to be discovered throughout the intestines, and coprolites — fossilized poop.
Bromalites are in flip a part of the report of “hint fossils.” They don’t seem to be the stays of the animal itself, however of the way it lived. “Regurgitalites give us a window into the feeding processes of more than a few contributors of the ecosystem that have been round on the time,” Olsen says. A majority of these fossils are “a gorgeous representation of items that have been occurring simply earlier than the enormous [asteroid] affect, customary existence within the ecosystem. It is a hint of that motion. … It is a hint of the organisms doing their industry every day.”
