In a discovery that’s equal parts groundbreaking and gross, scientists have identified what may be the world’s oldest fossilized predator vomit. At nearly 290 million years old, it offers a glimpse into how ancient land animals fed before dinosaurs evolved.
The fossil, discovered at the Bromacker excavation site in Germany, is described in a new study
published in Scientific Reports
. Researchers say it represents the earliest confirmed example of fossilized vomit, known scientifically as regurgitalite, from a fully land-based ecosystem.
Mark MacDougall is a paleontologist and assistant professor at Brandon University, based in Manitoba. He also co-authored the study. He said the find provides direct evidence of predator-prey relationships in a “prehistoric time capsule.”
“This fossil is extremely important for understanding how early land ecosystems worked,” MacDougall said. “It’s rare to get such direct evidence of who was eating whom nearly 300 million years ago. In this case, the predator clearly bit off more than it could stomach.”
Using CT scanning and chemical analysis, the international research team identified bones from at least three different animals within the regurgitated cluster, including a small reptile, a fast-moving lizard-like animal and part of a much larger plant-eater.
Unlike coprolites, which are fossilized feces, regurgitalites preserve material that was expelled rather than fully digested. The distinction allows researchers to examine partially intact skeletal remains that might otherwise have been broken down in the digestive process.
Evidence suggests the vomit came from a large predator, likely an early relative of mammals such as the sail-backed Dimetrodon. Though often mistaken for dinosaurs, these animals lived some 40 million years before the appearance of dinosaurs.
“These animals lived together, died together, and ended up in the same regurgitated pile, probably within days of each other,” MacDougall said. “That kind of detail is incredibly rare in the fossil record.”
Modern predators such as owls and wolves also expel indigestible material, but finding evidence of that behaviour so far back in time is unusual. The fossil provides the first direct evidence of opportunistic feeding by a land predator.
The study was led by scientists from Germany’s Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and France’s CNRS, with Brandon University playing a key role in interpreting the fossil and its ecological meaning.
Beyond its unusual preservation, the regurgitalite reveals how early land ecosystems functioned long before dinosaurs appeared.
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