Plesiosaur Puke

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Dirk Knaust. 2026. The fate of supposed plesiosaur vomit from Jurassic delta deposits offshore Norway. Geological Magazine 163: e43; doi: 10.1017/S0016756826100806

You may know about coprolites, but what about regurgitalites? This fossilized vomit has been identified as being from a plesiosaur, and it was left somewhere WEIRD.

Episode 348

Notes:

So, are you ready to learn about Plesiosaur puke? Talk about coprolites or fossilized scat a lot. It's fairly common in the fossil record and extremely informative. But, food material doesn't have to pass all the way through an animal to fossilize. There are also coprolites which fossilize inside the animal and regurgitalites which fossilize after being regurgitated. And these trace fossils don't have to be from dinosaurs. They can be from pretty much any animal that died long enough ago to fossilize. In this case, Plesiosaurs. And if you don't know what a Plesiosaur is, picture the Loch Ness Monster. Small head, long neck, small tail, and flippers. That said, that doesn't account for all Plesiosaurs. Pliosaurs are a type of Plesiosaur, but that's a topic for a different day. Anyway, even though it can be incredibly difficult to connect trace fossils to a specific animal, sometimes paleontologists can. In this case, paleontologists have been able to link three different types of regurgitalites to late Jurassic Plesiosaurs from Norway. Specifically in a kind of weird spot. One type is full of bivalves like clams. Another type is full of tube worms. And the third type is full of crinoid segments. Now, obviously with the prey being very different, it's not surprising that the residue is kind of different. What's weird about it is these are all full salinity marine animals. Meaning all these animals live on the sea floor of the actual ocean. But, these regurgitalites were found in brackish or delta deposits. Meaning that these Plesiosaurs were foraging the sea floor for their dinner only to go into brackish or fresh water just to throw them all up. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.