Regurgitated material contains prey of hunter who lived before dinosaurs
Two hundred and ninety million years ago, in a mountain valley in the central region of the supercontinent Pangea, an apex predator grabbed at least three other animals and vomited up the bones some time later.
This material has hardened over time and today constitutes the oldest fossilized vomit ever discovered in a terrestrial ecosystem. The pile of bones and digestive material provides rare information, published January 30 in Scientific reports, about the behavior of some of the world’s first terrestrial predators.
“It’s a bit like a photograph of a moment from the past which tells us about the animal that lived,” explains Arnaud Rebillard, paleontologist at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. “Any data we can find on their behavior is very valuable.”
Paleontologists discovered the lime-sized specimen in 2021 at a site called the Bromacker locality in central Germany. The researchers then scanned the bones to create 3D models showing a group of parts from different animals, suggesting they came from the gut of a predator. They also chemically analyzed the material surrounding the bones and found that it was low in phosphorus, suggesting that it was not fossilized dung.
