Try to wrap your head around this concept: imagine eating something that upset your tummy so badly that you ended up puking it up. And then, scientists 110 million years from now discover the remains of a previously unknown animal species in the fossilized remains of your puke.
That’s basically what just happened, but with a new type of flying dinosaur.
Published in Scientific Reports, paleontologists in Brazil have discovered the remains of a new Cretaceous-era dinosaur within the vomit of a different dinosaur.
Roughly 110 million years ago, some fish-loving predator (likely a spinosaurid) wolfed down a pair of small pterosaurs and four fish. The meal didn’t sit well, so it barfed it all back up. The researchers have named one of those barfed-up creatures Bakiribu waridza, meaning “comb mouth” in the Kariri Indigenous language.
The name is pretty on the nose. This thing’s jaws were lined with long, broom-like teeth. These bristles would have worked like a living colander, letting Bakiribu skim tiny aquatic critters straight out of the water, more or less the pterosaur equivalent of a baleen whale.
Bones this fragile traditionally don’t fossilize well, let alone survive a trip through a digestive system, thus explaining why we didn’t know this particular species existed until now. The pterosaur bones were found cracked, chewed, and then abruptly abandoned mid-processing inside what researchers identified as a regurgitalite, the official, very scientific term for fossilized barf. The arrangement of the bones suggests the dinosaur ate the pterosaurs first, then the fish, before deciding it did not like this particular blend of dishes.
The specific identity of the puking dino hasn’t been totally confirmed, but as mentioned before, the spinosaurid is the leading suspect. Imagine a T. rex silhouette but stretched out and with a longer, alligator-like snout, and a fan-like spine running down the center of its back. If you’re imagining the Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3, you’re right on the money. They were semiaquatic hunters that mostly went after fish, but weren’t above opportunistically snacking on some pterosaur.
The post Dinosaur Puke Reveals New Flying Reptile Species appeared first on VICE.
