One hundred and ten million years ago in what is now Brazil, a dinosaur’s dinner got the best of it. The reptile regurgitated its meal, leaving behind a pile of vomit that happened to fossilize—a stroke of geologic luck that preserved the remains of a newly discovered species.
When paleontologists recently examined the petrified puke (pictured), known scientifically as a regurgitalite, they found the bones within it came from two pterosaurs representing a previously unknown species. The discovery, published this week in Scientific Reports, is the first instance of an animal being described based on remains found in fossilized vomit.
The team named the new pterosaur Bakiribu waridza, which means “comb mouth” in the Indigenous Kariri language spoken in northeastern Brazil’s Araripe region, where the fossil was unearthed. The name references the animal’s bristlelike teeth, which it likely used to catch crustaceans and other small aquatic animals. The first filter-feeding pterosaur ever found in Brazil, B. waridza exhibits a mix of features seen in both older pterosaurs from Germany and slightly younger species from Argentina.
It's hard to tell which species of dinosaur devoured the two pterosaurs and then threw them back up. The researchers think the most likely culprit is a spinosaur (illustration), a group of dinosaurs with crocodilelike jaws that dominated the region during the early Cretaceous period. These predators apparently had a taste for pterosaurs: Another pterosaur skeleton from this area of Brazil was found with a spinosaur tooth lodged in its neck.
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