A brand new find of Danekræ can be seen at Geomuseum Faxe during the winter holidays. It is a lump of 66 million-year-old vomit that has been found on Stevns Klint and has just been declared Danekræ.
In good old-fashioned Danish, a blob of fossil vomit has been found on Stevns Klint. Finds like this are rare, and the Danekræ Committee has just declared the fossil vomit to be Danekræ. In technical terms, this type of find is called regurgitalite and is considered very important when reconstructing past ecosystems because the finds provide important knowledge about which animals were eaten by whom.
The find was made by local fossil hunter Peter Bennicke, who discovered a strange little cluster of sea lilies in a piece of chalk he had just split. He brought the find to Geomuseum Faxe, where it was cleaned and examined by Dutch sea lily expert John Jagt.
The expert concluded that the accumulation consisted of at least two different species of sea lilies mixed together in a round lump, and that it must be the remains of sea lilies that had been eaten by an animal that had then regurgitated the indigestible parts of the sea lilies.
Curator at Geomuseum Faxe and member of the Danekræ Committee Jesper Milàn explains:
"This is a really unusual find. Sea lilies are not a particularly nutritious diet as they are mainly composed of calcareous plates held together by a few soft parts. But here is an animal, probably some kind of fish, that 66 million years ago ate sea lilies that lived at the bottom of the chalk sea and regurgitated the skeletal parts. Such a find provides important new knowledge about the relationship between predator and prey and the food chains in the Cretaceous sea."
Fossil vomit goes to a museum
If you want to see the new Dane vomit from the cliff, you can do so during the winter holidays (weeks 7 and 8), where it will be exhibited in a small special exhibition at Geomuseum Faxe.
Facts: What is Danekræ
The term "Danekræ" was introduced in 1989 as a term for earth-found natural objects of unique natural historical value. Like Danefæ, Danekræ belongs to the state and must be handed over to one of the state's natural history museums. The Danekræ Committee is appointed by the Natural History Museum of Denmark and decides whether finds submitted are to be declared as Danekræ.
Further information:
Jesper Milan, Curator, Geomuseum Faxe: jesperm@oesm.dk, tel: 30242543