Let’s be candid here. Vomit is something you want to get rid of. You don’t want it hanging around for a day, or an hour, or even a few minutes.
And certainly not for 66 million years.
And yet, scientists say, vomit that old has been found in the Cliffs of Stevns, a white chalk cliff and UNESCO World Heritage site on the Danish island of Zealand.
Sometime in the Cretaceous period, a shark, or perhaps another kind of fish, made a meal of some sea lilies. But sea lilies “aren’t that great to eat, because they are almost only skeleton,” said Jesper Milàn, the curator of the Geomuseum Faxe. “So they took what they could and threw up the rest.”
And then the vomit was lost to the mists of time. Until last November, when an amateur fossil hunter, Peter Bennicke, split a piece of chalk and discovered it.
For decorum’s sake, we had now better switch to a formal scientific name for fossilized vomit: regurgitalite. Ah, no, let’s just stick with “vomit.”
Dr. Milàn speculated that the source of the vomit could have been a bottom-dwelling shark, one with crushing teeth, not sharp teeth. If that hypothesis is correct, the closest living relative would be the Port Jackson shark, found in Australia in modern times, he said.
Though 66 million-year-old vomit is very old vomit, it falls short of a record. Dr. Milàn knows of finds from Germany dating back 150 million years. This was, however, the first find of its kind in Denmark, he said.
The upchuck has attracted attention from all over, including China, Russia and the Arab world, Dr. Milàn said.
And why does he think it has already gained such renown?
“Journalists are big boys,” he said. “They like a story about vomit.”
And he added, “With the world situation, this is a funny story the world can relate to.”
Now you may be laughing, too. Fine, go ahead. Barf is so funny. Ha-ha.
But fossilized vomit can be informative to scholars, because it can reveal who ate what when.
And this particular sample of vomit has been officially classified as “danekrae,” a designation saved for Danish objects of “exceptional natural historical value.” That means the vomit belongs to Denmark, not the finder, and must be turned over to a natural history museum.
This vomit with “exceptional value” will be displayed in the Geomuseum Faxe, in the town of Faxe, about 48 miles by car south of Copenhagen, over the winter holiday.
As Dr. Milàn said, with perhaps more solemnity than you might expect, “This is the most famous piece of puke in the world.”
