You might think paleontology is a dry, dusty, boring old discipline -- just old men digging up bones and whatnot.
But every so often you get lucky and stumble across a pile of shark puke:
Yup, they found fossilized shark vomit from 66 million years ago a few thousand years ago (throwing that in there for the Young Earthers AKA people who know their Bibles).
Scientists discovered the prehistoric shark (or shark-like animal) vomit on the country's Cliffs of Stevns, a coastal destination about one hour from Copenhagen.
The prehistoric patch of puke sat there long enough to turn into a fossil — languishing in obscurity until an amateur sleuth made the gross and engrossing discovery last November.
Everybody who ever sat over that patch of fossilized shark puke without realizing it:
Admittedly if you saw it you might think it was just a piece of sea-worn rock:
Scientists have determined that the ancient barf arose after a shark consumed some sea lilies:
Sea lilies 'aren't that great to eat, because they are almost only skeleton,' Dr. Jesper Milàn, curator of Denmark's Geomuseum Faxe, which will showcase the previously unknown upchuck, told the [New York Times].
'So they took what they could and threw up the rest,' he said.
Who among us hasn't upchucked a sea lily or two at some point?
At the time of the primordial upchuck, "Europe was said to be a series of islands, due to higher sea levels."
And here's a fun fact:
The scientific term for fossilized vomit is regurgitalite.
Good to know!
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