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 Milà n, 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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