Copenhagen:
A piece of fossilized vomit, dating back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth, has been discovered in Denmark, the East Zeeland Museum said on Monday.
The find was made by a local amateur fossil hunter on the Stevns cliffs, a UNESCO site south of Copenhagen.
While out for a walk, Peter Bennicke found some unusual fragments, which turned out to be pieces of sea lily, in some chalk.
He then took the fragments to a museum for examination, which left with the vomit until the end of the Cretaceous era about 66 million years ago.
According to experts, the vomit is composed of at least two different species of sea lilies, which were probably eaten by a fish that threw away the parts it could not digest.
“This type of find… is considered very important when reconstructing past ecosystems because it provides important information about what animals were eaten,” the museum said in a news release.
Paleontologist Jesper Milan praised the discovery as “truly an unusual find”, adding that it helped explain relationships in the prehistoric food chain.
“Sea lilies are not a particularly nutritious diet, as they consist mainly of calcareous plates held together by some soft parts,” he said.
“But here is an animal, probably some type of fish, that 66 million years ago ate sea lilies living at the bottom of the Cretaceous Sea and regurgitated the skeletal parts.”
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