A man picked up a 66-million-year-old vomit fossil, and scientists discovered an embarrassing prehistoric story from it

When riding a bus, people are bound to encounter people who are carsick and vomit. Smelling that complex smell, you really don't want to stay there for even a second. However, when a pool of vomit exists for more than tens of millions of years, things are different.

Not long ago, a Danish fossil enthusiast named Bennik accidentally picked up a piece of vomit fossil. Instead of being disgusted, the Danish government even gave it the name "Danekræ" - a Danish term specifically referring to cultural relics with important natural historical value , similar to the Oscars in the Danish stone circle.

Let’s first take a look at the place where this fossil was found: Stevns Klint.

Most visitors to the Stewins Cliffs come to see the "black line" on the cross section of the cliff.

The soil layer below the "black line" is from the Cretaceous period, and the soil layer above it is from the Paleogene period, marking the change of two geological eras . The "black line" is also rich in iridium, which comes from the asteroid that caused the extinction of dinosaurs. So, although this cliff is only 40 meters high, it records the vicissitudes of the earth for tens of millions of years.

Not surprisingly, the Stewyns are rich in fossils, and since the area was once below sea level, most of these fossils are marine life. In 2014, UNESCO listed the Stewyns as a World Heritage Site.

It was in such a historically significant place that Bennick discovered the strange-shaped stone while knocking around. He immediately sent it to the local geological museum. After analysis, the museum's archaeologists found that it was actually a vomit fossil from 66 million years ago!

Don't worry! Over time, the organic matter in the vomit has long been decomposed and replaced by geological processes, so there won't be any bad smell (Image source: East Zealand Museum)

In this pool of vomit, scientists can see some bryozoan clumps and a sea lily. Although the remains of this sea lily are fragmented, its edges are still quite sharp, which means that it should have been vomited out before entering the stomach of the predator.

Scientists tried to reconstruct the scene at that time: In the vast seabed of the Cretaceous period, a big fish was swimming around looking for food. Suddenly, it saw a sea lily and opened its mouth without thinking because of hunger.

Although sea lilies look like corals, they are actually a type of animal belonging to the class Crinoids of the phylum Echinodermata. However, sea lilies themselves do not have much meat, and their trunks are mostly hard skeletons, and they even contain toxins.

A sea lily called Ben's tooth flower (Image source: Wiki)

The fish probably realized something was wrong just as it was about to swallow the food, so it quickly spit it out. As for this somewhat tragic fish, scientists speculate that it should be a bottom-dwelling shark with less sharp teeth, most likely a close relative of the Australian tiger shark.

So far, this fossil seems to reveal only a small episode that happened in prehistoric times, but in fact, its significance is far more than that.

Vomit fossils are a type of digestion fossils, similar to which include stomach content fossils, fecal fossils, etc. Their importance is not that they are disgusting, but that they can help scientists get a glimpse of the composition of the food chain in prehistoric times and gain a deeper understanding of some extinct organisms.

The picture shows the oldest vomit fossil, which is 160 million years old. The vomit comes from an extinct ichthyosaur and contains a shellfish mollusk (Photo source: Guinness World Record)

For example, a Swedish team once analyzed dinosaur coprolites and discovered one of the reasons why dinosaurs were able to defeat other creatures and eventually dominate the earth.

In that study, scientists collected more than 500 dinosaur feces fossils dating back about 230 million years ago, breaking the record for the largest dinosaur feces research. After a detailed analysis of the feces, they believe that one of the reasons why dinosaurs were able to dominate the earth is that they ate almost everything, whether it was insects, fish, or plants... they would not refuse anything!

According to the study, 180 million years ago, the Pangaea continent gradually disintegrated, the ocean began to form, volcanoes erupted violently, and the climate changed dramatically. Compared with other animals with relatively stable eating habits, the flexibility of dinosaurs' diet allowed them to quickly adapt to environmental changes, thus outperforming other species along the way.

Let’s talk about the stomach contents fossils.

Similar to coprolites, stomach content fossils can also reveal to scientists the eating habits of prehistoric creatures. And in more detail, people can even use them to know what a particular individual ate for the last meal before death , as if they had a close contact across time and space.

In 2023, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed the stomach contents fossils of Jehol Bird 120 million years ago. They found microfossils of angiosperms in the stomach of Jehol Bird, confirming the early origin of the leaf feeding of ancient birds.

Fossils of Jehol Bird (Image source: Wiki)

Whether it is fossilized vomit, fossilized feces, or fossilized stomach contents, digestion fossils have opened a small window into the prehistoric world for humans. They are like scattered diary fragments, depicting moving details of survival.

As for the general public, if they must learn something from this, it is probably this: if it is gold, it will always shine; if it is not gold, it may also shine after a long time!

Planning and production

Source: Bring Science Home (ID: steamforkids)

Author: Liu Liuqi

Editor: Zhong Yanping

Proofread by Xu Lailinlin