A piece of prehistoric fossilised vomit has been discovered in Denmark. It was discovered by local fossil hunter Peter Bennicke at Stevns Klint, a UNESCO-listed white chalk coastal cliff in the east of Denmark, and has been vital in helping palaeontologists understand more about prehistoric ecosystems and food chains.
While exploring the 15km-long fossil-rich cliffs, he came across some unusual fragments which he soon realised were pieces of regurgitated sea lily – an underwater species related to starfish and sea urchins. He took the fragments to be examined at the Museum of East Zealand, which dated the vomit to the end of the Cretaceous period, a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
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Palaeontologist and museum curator Jesper Milàn explains that the discovery helped give context of prehistoric food chains. "It is truly an unusual find," he says. "Sea lilies are not a particularly nutritious diet, as they mainly consist of calcareous plates held together by very few soft parts. But here is an animal, probably a type of fish, that 66 million years ago ate sea lilies that lived on the bottom of the Cretaceous sea and regurgitated the skeletal parts back up. Such a find provides important new knowledge about the relationship between predators and prey and the food chains in the Cretaceous sea."
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