Amateur fossil hunter finds 66-million-year-old animal vomit

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An amateur fossil hunter has uncovered a piece of animal vomit dating back 66 million years on a beach in Denmark.

Peter Bennicke noticed a “strange small cluster of lily pieces in a piece of chalk” at Stevns Klint in eastern Denmark, according to a statement from Geomuseum Faxe, a local museum where the find will be displayed, sent to CNN on Wednesday.

Bennicke brought the fossil to the museum, where it was cleaned and examined by John Jagt, a lily expert from the Netherlands.

Jagt said the cluster contains at least two species of lily combined in a round lump, which is likely the indigestible parts of the lilies that were regurgitated by an animal that ate the plants.

“In technical terms, this type of find is called regurgitalite, and they are considered very important when reconstructing ancient ecosystems because they provide valuable information about which animals were eaten by whom,” reads the statement.

Jesper Milàn, curator at Geomuseum Faxe, said the fossil “is truly an extraordinary find.”

“Lilies are not a particularly nutritious food, as they are mainly made up of calcium plates held together by very few soft tissues,” he said in the statement.

“But here we have an animal, most likely some kind of fish, that 66 million years ago ate lilies that lived on the seabed of the Cretaceous Sea and then vomited up the skeletal parts.”

Milàn added that the discovery “provides important new knowledge about the relationship between predators and prey and the food chains of the Cretaceous seas.”

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